Sourdough Pizza Scrolls
Pizza Scrolls
For years I was intimidated by the mystique surrounding sourdough bread baking. It was a sense reinforced by the scientific sounding language used to describe the processes involved with the development of the dough. The words sounded foreign to my cook’s ear especially when all I wanted to do was make great bread.
In the 1980s I regularly made sourdough bread. It was adequate for our needs and eased the demands placed by a growing family on the household budget, but the quality of that bread was nothing to brag about. I had much more success with yeasted loaves.
I think the sourdough bread I bake now is as good as any professionally made local artisan bread. It’s with great pride that I share my freshly baked loaves. It’s bread made by a cook, using cook’s language and with a simple cook’s understanding of the bread making process. The crusts are crisp and crunchy, the crumb open and moist and the flavour is nutty with characteristic underlying sourness.
Making pizzas with sourdough bases recently I was reminded of the pizza scrolls I made in my bread baking phase in the 80s. My kids would greedily scoff down those warm savoury rolls baked stuffed with tomato cheese and herb. They loved them as an after school snack or to round out a cold winter’s day lunch of soup.
In recent years I’d applied this concept to scone dough so I was sure they be equally successful made with slowly fermented 100% spelt flour sourdough.
I was right.
Sourdough Pizza Scrolls
200g active sourdough starter
600g white spelt flour
400 mls filtered tap water
15g salt
1 cup thick tomato passata
250g shredded tasty cheese
1/2 cup roughly chopped green olives
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons mixed seeds for sprinkling (poppy, white sesame, nigella)
Measure the bread dough ingredients into a bowl in the order listed.
Mix the ingredients into a shaggy dough, then cover the bowl and set aside for 20 minutes.
Tip the dough onto a well floured bench top, then wash and dry the bowl.
Knead the dough until it’d smooth and flexible.
Tip 2 tablespoons of olive oil into the bowl and swirl to coat the inner surface.
Put the dough into the bowl and turn it over so the exterior surface is coated in oil.
Cover the bowl and set the dough aside for 40 minutes.
Tip the dough onto the bench (no flour this time) and gently stretch out the dough until it’s as thin as you can make it without tearing.
Fold the dough into thirds in each direction until you have formed a ball.
Return the dough to the oiled bowl, cover and refrigerate the dough for up to 36 hours.
Line a lamington tin with baking paper.
Tip the dough onto the bench and stretch it into an oblong 25cm X 60cm
Spread the tomato passata over the dough leaving a margin of 3cm along the long edge furthest away from you.
Sprinkle the dough liberally with cheese, chopped olives and dried oregano.
Use a pastry scraper to firmly roll the dough into a sausage shape, beginning at the edge closest to you and rolling toward the unsourced margin.
Cut the dough into 3cm slices and arrange, cut side up with a few millimetres between in the lamington tray.
Sprinkle with seeds.
Cover the tray with oiled baking paper and a clean tea towel and set aside to prove.
The scrolls will be ready to bake when the dough, when poked, only recoils a small amount.
Preheat the oven to 200C.
Uncover the tray of scrolls and bake in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes.
Transfer to a wire rack to cools.
Makes 20 pizza scrolls
Delicious served warm.
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20 comments on “Sourdough Pizza Scrolls”
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Please Pass the Recipe by Sandra Gay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Please Pass the Recipe 
I tried your recipe today but didn’t have much success. The dough was too wet and sticky to handle and couldn’t be rolled at all. I think my mix was overproofed but I was wondering if I also need to reduce the water as it was too hard to handle. I haven’t worked with all spelt before but would like to do more sourdough spelt baking.
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Hi Jen, I’m sorry my scrolls recipe let you down. The dough is made to the 1,2,3 method. Handling high hydration dough can be tricky but it’s a technique worth mastering. A pastry scraper is essential here. You could try again reducing the water or alternatively you could try with any bread recipe you find reliable. Just pick up the recipe from the shaping and adding seasoning step. Good luck, it’s worth the effort.
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It’s great to revisit recipes from the past and re-invent them for the here-and-now. I bet these pizza scrolls would be fantastic with a nice warming soup.
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I’m so with you on the mumbo-jumbo surrounding sourdough. I’m sure half the books are written by men with modish beards who like to blind their readers with science. You should write a book demystifying it! These look fab. Lx
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Haha great visual! That geeky language really shattered my confidence initially but I’ve shaken that off now and just bake bread. You can add whatever you like really, sweet or savoury😘
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I had a jar of sourdough starter in my fridge that I probably treated horribly, but it made the best bread when my kids were little. The pizza dough, however, was out of this world.
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It’s hard to beat good sourdough for flavour and texture..
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Nothing beats the look and taste of homemade bread 🙂
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Sourdough is beyond my ambitions, but I think this preparation would be appealing even with my very ordinary pizza dough!
best… mae at maefood.blogspot.com
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Must find the time…
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You’ll be glad you did…
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Looks scrumptious 🙂
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Thanks Chef K, scrumptious is a great word…
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Oh this is a wonderful recipe
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Thanks so much..
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You’ve made me think I should have a go at turning my almond meal ‘bread’ roll mix into something more adventurous. Why didn’t I think of scrolls…? Wonder if I can make it work. Thanks for the inspiration.
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You’re welcome Kate, I’m sure you’ll find a way. The jungle drums are telling me that a serious GF sourdough bread book will hit the market by Christmas, I’ll keep you informed…
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It would be amazing to eat ‘proper’ bread again, but I wonder where I’ll get a GF sourdough starter. I suppose I’ll have to try and make my own, if I can entice some good bugs 🙂
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I’m so grateful to you for the spelt starter you sent me over a year ago, and for the joy of the subsequent baking experience. No grains at all for me these days, but a girl can reminisce. Your scrolls look amazing 😉
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Thanks Ardys. Battling with the gut can be quite a challenge. Turns out a lot of my issues had never been properly diagnosed and I’d been carrying around a gift from India for close to 10yrs. Still need to take care with my diet but thankfully the reactions have been minimized. 😘
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