Arturas Tamulionis is the head chef at The Kitchen Club in Riverside Avenue, Bournemouth.

Having started his career in Europe, Arturas moved to England where he gained three years’ experience at The Regents Park Marriott Hotel.

He left London for Christchurch where he worked with Gary Rhodes for a year before taking up his current role with The Kitchen Club.

Here he shares his recipe for an authentic sourdough thin crust pizza base.

Making the sourdough starter needs to be done up to a week in advance but once made will make rustling up pizza bases a relatively straightforward exercise.

Once cooked, simply top with a tomato sauce, a generous sprinkling of cheese and whatever toppings you fancy.

Italian Thin-Crust Pizza

For the pizza base:

  • 5.2kg flour – grade 00
  • 3 litres of cold water
  • 2kg sourdough starter (see below)
  • 250ml extra virgin olive oil
  • 100g fine sea salt

To make the sourdough starter: Note – this needs at least three to seven days of preparation to be ready for use.

Day one – in a bucket add 200g of flour and 100ml water. Mix well with your hands until the flour is dissolved. Cover with a lid and leave it refrigerated.

On day two, add 400g of flour and 200ml of water and mix well with hands for about five minutes. Cover again and keep in the fridge.

On day three, add 800g of flour and 400ml of water and mix for five minutes. Cover and leave overnight at room temperature. If the sourdough doesn’t look ready, repeat process increasing amount of flour and water.

Put the flour in a food mixer bowl then add the cold water and the sourdough starter.

Next add the olive oil and set the machine for 15 minutes kneading. After the first 10 minutes on speed one, add the salt. Then switch to speed two for the final three minutes of the 15 minute kneading time. Be careful not to keep the dough too long in the mixer because the temperature of the dough will rise and could kill the yeast.

When the dough is ready, place it on the workshop and measure the temperature, it has to be between 22 and 25 degrees Celsius. Cover with a wet towel or clingfilm to prevent it drying out.

After one hour’s rest, you can start to make portions of no more than 220 grams each ball and place on the dough tray. Keep this dough in the fridge for 24 hours. After that you’ll take it out two hours before you start stretching out your pizza base, ready to go in the oven.