Five to eight hours before you mix, build your levain. Combine 15 g of mature starter with 25 g of flour and 25 g of water. Use it when it has domed and is just starting to flatten out, not once it has collapsed.
Put the 362 g of water in a bowl, break in the ripe starter and whisk until it is milky with no lumps left. Make sure it is fully dispersed before you go further, because once the oil is in you cannot see a stray lump. Then whisk in the olive oil.
In a second bowl, whisk the flour, salt and sugar together.
Pour the wet into the dry and work it with your hands for three or four minutes until there is no dry flour left. It will feel rough and short. That is normal.
Cover and rest 15 minutes, then mix another two minutes. It comes together noticeably in that second mix.
Transfer to a straight sided container. Put a rubber band around the outside at the level of the dough, and a second band a fifth of the way higher. That second band is your target.
Bulk ferment two hours at room temperature with three sets of folds, 30 minutes apart, all in the first half. Wet one hand, reach down the side of the container to the bottom, pull the dough up and out until it resists, then fold it over the top. Rotate 90 degrees and repeat. Four pulls is one set.
After the third set, leave it alone. You are looking for about 20 percent rise, which is your second rubber band. That is a much smaller rise than you would take a bread dough to, and it is meant to be. The dough keeps fermenting for hours after it goes into the fridge.
At two hours, put the whole thing in the fridge as one mass. Do not divide it into balls yet.
At around 48 hours, divide into three pieces of 350 g and ball them up tight, sealing the seam underneath. Rest on the counter 20 to 30 minutes, then back into the fridge in individual sealed containers. Shaping them 24 hours before you bake is what gives you lift. Ball them on day one and they spread flat.
At 72 hours, take the balls out two hours before you want to bake. Check the middle of the ball, not the surface. If it still feels cool in the centre it is not ready. One hour is not enough, three hours is too much.
Press out from the centre with your fingertips and leave the outer half inch alone. Drape it over the backs of both fists and rotate, letting gravity do the stretching, out to 14 inches. If it springs back, rest it ten minutes and come back to it.
Bake, then rest the pizza on a wire rack for a minute before slicing. Steam coming off the bottom has nowhere to go on a solid board and will soften a base that came out of the oven crisp.
