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DOUGHRISEFOUNDERS
Baking Tips
5 min read
Smoked Salmon, Crème Fraîche & Dill Sourdough Flatbread Pizza
A spring sourdough flatbread pizza topped with crème fraîche, smoked salmon and fresh dill. Quick, elegant and genuinely delicious.
a pizza on a cutting board on a tableThere is a specific kind of Friday evening in April where you want something that feels a bit special but you absolutely cannot be bothered to spend three hours in the kitchen. This sourdough flatbread pizza is exactly that. A thin, blistered sourdough base, a slick of crème fraîche, good smoked salmon, and enough fresh dill to make it feel like spring actually turned up for once.
Why Sourdough Flatbread Works So Well Here
Sourdough flatbread pizza dough is leaner and a bit more extensible than a full Neapolitan-style dough, which means you can stretch it thin without it fighting back. The fermentation gives you that subtle tang that works brilliantly against the richness of crème fraîche and the salt of the salmon. It is not a complicated recipe, but the flavour payoff is genuinely out of proportion to the effort involved.
The key is a hot oven and a preheated baking surface. Whether you are using a pizza stone, a steel, or just flipping a heavy baking tray upside down, get it ripping hot before the flatbread goes anywhere near it. That initial blast of heat is what gives you those charred bubbles and a base that is crisp underneath rather than pale and sad.
Ingredients
For the Sourdough Flatbread Dough
- 300g (about 2 cups + 2 tbsp) strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
- 60g (4 tbsp) active sourdough starter, fed and at peak
- 185g (¾ cup) lukewarm water
- 6g (1 tsp) fine sea salt
- 10g (2 tsp) olive oil
For the Topping
- 150g (generous ½ cup) full-fat crème fraîche
- 1 small garlic clove, finely grated
- Zest of half a lemon
- 150g good-quality smoked salmon, torn into rough pieces
- 1 small red onion, very thinly sliced
- 2 tbsp capers, drained
- A generous handful of fresh dill, roughly picked
- Extra virgin olive oil, for drizzling
- Freshly ground black pepper
Method
- Mix the dough. Combine the flour, active sourdough starter, water, and olive oil in a bowl. Mix until no dry flour remains, then leave to rest for 30 minutes. This short rest lets the flour hydrate before you add salt, which makes the dough noticeably easier to work with.
- Add the salt. Sprinkle over the salt and squeeze it through the dough with your fingers until fully incorporated. It will feel a bit slimy for about 30 seconds, then it will come back together. Cover the bowl.
- Bulk ferment. Leave the dough at room temperature for 3 to 4 hours. Perform 3 sets of stretch and folds during the first 90 minutes (one set every 30 minutes), then leave it undisturbed for the remainder. In a warm spring kitchen, around 22 to 24°C, 3.5 hours is usually the sweet spot. The dough should feel airy, slightly domed, and noticeably puffier than when you started.
- Divide. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide it into two equal pieces (roughly 275g each). Shape each into a loose ball, cover with a damp cloth, and rest for 20 minutes. This relaxes the gluten and makes stretching much less of a battle.
- Preheat your oven. Set it to its maximum temperature (230 to 260°C, fan if you have it) with your baking stone, steel, or inverted tray on the highest shelf. Give it at least 45 minutes to fully heat through.
- Prepare the crème fraîche base. Stir the grated garlic and lemon zest through the crème fraîche with a pinch of salt. Set aside.
- Stretch the dough. On a lightly floured surface, use your fingertips to press one dough ball out into a rough oval or round, roughly 25 to 30cm across. Keep it thin, around 3 to 4mm. Transfer it to a sheet of baking parchment.
- Top and bake. Spread half the crème fraîche mixture evenly over the base, leaving about a 1cm border. Slide the flatbread (still on its parchment) onto your hot baking surface. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes until the edges are golden and the base has taken some colour underneath. Repeat with the second flatbread.
- Add the cold toppings. Straight out of the oven, lay over the smoked salmon, scatter the red onion, capers and fresh dill, and finish with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and plenty of black pepper. The contrast of hot base and cool, fresh toppings is the whole point.
A Note on Timing
This is an easy one to plan around a busy Saturday. Mix the dough mid-morning, let it ferment through the afternoon, and you are stretching and baking by early evening. If your kitchen is on the cooler side (it is only April, after all), the bulk ferment might creep closer to 4.5 hours. That is fine. The dough will tell you when it is ready: puffy, a little wobbly, with visible bubbles under the surface.
If you are thinking about scaling something like this for events or building out a bake menu more seriously, the DoughRise Bakery plan has commercial batch scaling and bakery cost reporting built in alongside team accounts, which is genuinely useful if you are running a small operation or pop-up and need the numbers to actually make sense.
Baker's Tips
- Do not skip the rest after dividing. A 20-minute bench rest after shaping your dough balls makes a real difference when it comes to stretching. If you try to push the dough out immediately, the gluten will be tight and it will snap back on you. Patience here saves frustration later.
- Use a lower hydration than you might expect. At around 62% hydration, this dough is more manageable than a wet sourdough loaf and holds its shape on a peel or parchment without spreading everywhere. If anything, err on the slightly stiffer side for flatbread pizza dough.
- The toppings go on after baking, not before. Smoked salmon and fresh dill have no business going into a 250°C oven. Bake the crème fraîche base plain, then dress the flatbread immediately as it comes out. You get better texture, better flavour, and the whole thing looks the part.
Serve It and Enjoy It
Cut these into slabs and eat them while they are still warm, ideally with a cold glass of something crisp alongside. This is the kind of cook that reminds you why sourdough fermentation is worth building into your week: a bit of patience with the dough, and you get something that genuinely tastes special at the end of it. Give it a go this weekend.
Happy baking! Find everything you need at doughrise.store
Photo by Jonathan Castañeda on Unsplash