While he loves a chewy, old-school Neapolitan-style crust and suggests letting your dough rise overnight for fuller flavor, Mr. Vetri has also developed a simpler Romana-style dough that forgoes the use of a yeast starter and shines in thin-crust preparations.

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In his early days of baking, Steve created a leavener with a starter inoculated with wild yeast from wine grapes.

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"Sourdough" even became the nickname for California Klondike miners at the turn of the last century because they carried starter in their backpacks to make bread without having to find a town, let alone yeast.

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