Formula for the dough in my most recent pics:
100% All Trumps Flour
44% Water
0.6% Active Dry Yeast
0.5% Salt
5% Oil
0.5% Sugar
*The hydration figure is a bit of an estimate because I added scraps from a batch of dough with a slightly different hydration figure. I also added a few ounces of excess dough from a very soft NY style dough. 44% is probably a good estimate, though.
OK, so here's the details:
1. I removed the previous batch's scraps from the refrigerator about 24 hours before mixing the dough.
2. This dough was about 50% fresh dough, 50% scraps. That's considerably more scraps than I had been using, and it is definitely better this way.
3. I started mixing about 30 oz of dough using the formula above. Right away I added about 15 oz of scraps from previous batch of dough. Throughout the remainder of the 5-minute mix time I added small chunks of the remaining 15 oz of scrap dough.
4. After mixing, I placed the dough into a 9x9 square cake pan and pressed it with my fists in an attempt to make the dough take the shape of the pan.
5. I covered the dough loosely with plastic wrap and set a timer for 30 minutes.
6. After a 30-minute "bulk-ferment," I pressed the dough again to make it better take the shape of the pan, then I removed the dough from the pan. This short "bulk-ferment" is a crucial procedure because, as I said in a recent post, Tommy's dough is heavily fermented (due to the scraps) but essentially unleavened. If I could get the dough to take the shape of the pan without the short bulk-ferment, I would omit the bulk-ferment.
7. I removed the dough from the cake pan and divided it into 8 cubes of about 7 oz apiece. I bagged 6 of the dough cubes and immediately put them in the refrigerator.
8. I immediately rolled the two remaining dough cubes. I rolled each dough cube to at least 12" x 12", then folded into four laminates with a liberal dusting of bench flour between each laminate.
9. Without adding any bench flour between the two pieces of dough, I rolled them together into one dough "pre-skin."
10. When the pre-skin was large enough to accommodate my seasoned, perforated 10" pan, I placed the pan atop the pre-skin and cut out a 10" dough skin with a pizza wheel.
11. I set the scraps aside and weighed the skin. It was probably about 10.5 oz, which is a lot more than I needed.
12. I put the skin back on my work surface and rolled it so it was a little bigger than 10", then used the pan again as a template to trim. (I usually have to do this a couple times to get the proper dough weight, which seems to be about 9.25 oz (TF=0.1178).
13. I do not dock the dough, as this dough should not be docked.
14. After I trimmed the dough to the proper weight, I rolled the skin a little more to make it nearly an inch bigger than the pan (because it always shrinks in the fridge).
15. I put the skin on the pan and placed them both in the fridge, uncovered. I also bagged the scraps and put them in the fridge.
16. I left the dough in the fridge for a few hours.
17. After preheating the oven at 500 for at least half an hour, I removed the skin from the fridge.
18. I sauced and cheesed the skin, using about 2.5 oz of sauce and 5.25 oz of cheese. (I also added pepperoni to the pepperoni pizza at this point. Duh.)
19. I placed the pan on a stone on the bottom rack of the oven. (I have to put a piece of aluminum foil on the top rack to preven excess top heat, but that's only because my oven sucks. You probably won't have to do that.)
20. I tend to bake for 11 or 12 minutes on the pan, then finish directly on the stone for about a minute and a half or two minutes. (Keep a bubble popper handy; you'll probably need it. DO NOT DOCK THE DOUGH!!!)
Sauce
12 oz can of tomato paste
1 can of water (12 oz)
2 tsp dry basil
Changes I plan to make, or other important things I should let you know:
1. I've been decreasing the sugar figure with each batch. It's down to 0.25% with my latest batch, and that is still too high. So there is a good chance I'll end up cutting sugar out entirely.
2. Hydration should probably be about 42%. However...
3. ...With my next batch, I'll probably omit oil, just to see how that works out. If I do that, I'll probably also bump the hydration up to 44% or 45%.
4. I'm pretty sure Tommy's uses AT LEAST as much scrap dough as fresh dough in each new batch of dough. Now that I'm using about 50% scrap dough, I'm finally starting to get the heavily fermented flavor that is so present in Tommy's pizza, yet I'm not ending up with a crust that seems overfermented.
How was that? Any questions?
