One of the pizza styles that I have been longing to try for some time using a natural starter/preferment has been the cracker style. When forum member mischeal posted on the same subject at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5594.msg47364.html#msg47364, I decided that when the weather cooled off a bit here in Texas I would attempt a cracker style pizza based on using a natural starter/preferment. That time arrived a couple of days ago.
For the dough formulation, I started with the basic Lehmann cracker-dough recipe recited earlier in this thread. What I was primarily after was a dough that would not be so stiff or dry that it would be difficult to roll out using an ordinary rolling pin. Toward that end, I modified the Lehmann recipe in several respects. First, I omitted the baking soda, as I had done before in versions of that recipe. Second, I lowered the hydration from 50% to 47%, in the hopes that that would yield a more crackery crust. Third, I replaced the IDY with a natural preferment. In this case, the preferment was based on the Camaldoli starter. The preferment was about 58% water and I used it at a rate of 25% of the weight of the formula flour. The 25% figure was selected because of the low hydration of the recipe (which suggested a low fermentation rate) and the fact that my Camaldoli starter had been in the refrigerator for some time and was not as active as I might have liked it. Were it more active, I would have used less.
To ready the starter when it came out of the refrigerator, I discarded about half of it and fed the rest with flour and water and allowed it to sit at room temperature (around 82 degrees F) for about 6 hours. I then measured out the required amount (in this case it was a bit less than 1/4 cup) and used it in the recipe. Finally, I used 1% sugar in the dough. The sugar was used as insurance since I wasn’t sure how long I would allow the dough to ferment at room temperature. As it turned out, I used a 24-hour room temperature fermentation. For that fermentation time, I could have omitted the sugar. The sugar itself was raw cane sugar, which I selected because of its higher mineral content, which is good for the yeast.
To calculate the ingredient quantities, I used the preferment dough calculating tool at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/preferment_calculator.html. The final dough formulation was as follows:
Total Formula:
Flour (100%):
Water (47%):
Salt (1.5%):
Oil (5%):
Sugar (1%):
Total (154.5%):
Preferment:
Flour:
Water:
Total:
Final Dough:
Flour:
Water:
Salt:
Preferment:
Oil:
Sugar:
Total:
|
186.36 g | 6.57 oz | 0.41 lbs
87.59 g | 3.09 oz | 0.19 lbs
2.8 g | 0.1 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.5 tsp | 0.17 tbsp
9.32 g | 0.33 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2.07 tsp | 0.69 tbsp
1.86 g | 0.07 oz | 0 lbs | 0.47 tsp | 0.16 tbsp
287.92 g | 10.16 oz | 0.63 lbs | TF = 0.065975
19.57 g | 0.69 oz | 0.04 lbs
27.02 g | 0.95 oz | 0.06 lbs
46.59 g | 1.64 oz | 0.1 lbs
166.79 g | 5.88 oz | 0.37 lbs
60.57 g | 2.14 oz | 0.13 lbs
2.8 g | 0.1 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.5 tsp | 0.17 tbsp
46.59 g | 1.64 oz | 0.1 lbs
9.32 g | 0.33 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2.07 tsp | 0.69 tbsp
1.86 g | 0.07 oz | 0 lbs | 0.47 tsp | 0.16 tbsp
287.92 g | 10.16 oz | 0.63 lbs | TF = 0.065975
|
Note: The flour used was King Arthur Sir Lancelot (KASL) flour (sifted); the water temperature was 66 degrees F; the thickness factor used was 0.065; the preferment amount was 25% of the weight of flour, with a water content of 58%; the bowl residue compensation factor was 1.5%; the finished dough weight was 10 ounces, and the finished dough temperature was 82 degrees F.
I prepared the dough using the same method as described earlier in this thread, using the whisk/paddle/C-hook combination, but with the following changes: the sugar was dissolved in the water along with the salt, and the preferment was added to the water mixture after the sugar and salt had been completely dissolved. As before, I had to use some hand kneading to get the dough to come together into a unitary dough ball. It was a bit ragged, but it held together reasonably well. The finished dough was placed in a lightweight, thin-walled, transparent snap-fit takeout container (see the first photo below) and put on my kitchen counter. The dough was left there for 24 hours, at a night/day room temperature that averaged around 78 degrees F. For a good part of the 24-hour period, the dough rose little. It just slumped into a disk shape. But gradually, the dough filled the container at the sides and then started to rise. I estimate that the dough rose by a total of about 30 percent.
After the 24-hour period had expired, I rolled the dough out on a lightly floured work surface using a standard rolling pin. The dough handled extremely easily and offered no resistance to the rolling process. The skin itself was like a thin sheet of rubber, and could be lifted and stretched by hand with no difficulty. I rolled and stretched the dough out to 15” initially and then folded the outer edge inwardly and firmly crimped it using my fingers to form a rim, resulting in a final skin size of 14”. (I'm sure I could have rolled and stretched the dough out even further but my stone wouldn't be able to handle the larger size.) I then docked the skin using a dough docker (to see what a dough docker looks like, go to the second photo in Reply 1 in this thread), and transferred the docked skin onto a very lightly floured wooden peel.
Since I decided that I would pre-bake the skin, I brushed some light olive oil over the docked skin, as was suggested earlier in this thread by November. Doing this would serve to increase the crispiness of the finished crust and provide a partial barrier to the pizza sauce and mitigate its migration into the dough. The docked skin was baked on a pizza stone that had been placed on the lowest oven rack position and preheated for about an hour at about 500-550 degrees F. Once the skin was deposited on the pizza stone, I turned the oven temperature down to 450 degrees F. Bubbles formed in the skin and, after about 4-5 minutes, or when the skin had turned a light brown, I removed the skin from the oven and dressed it in preparation for finishing the baking of the pizza. For sauce, I used only 6-in-1 tomatoes (about 7 ounces) right out of the can and some dried Sicilian oregano and some dried Italian oregano from my garden. For cheese, I used shredded Grande whole-milk mozzarella cheese (about 6 ounces). I used that cheese because it holds up well to long oven bake times without breaking down and releasing fats onto the pizza. Hormel pepperoni slices finished the dressing of the pizza.
Once the pizza was dressed, it was redeposited onto the pizza stone and allowed to bake (at 450 degrees F) until the cheeses had started to melt and to turn light brown and the crust was darkening. That took about 7-8 minutes. I then moved the pizza from the stone to the top oven rack position, where it remained for another 2 minutes or so to get increased top crust browning.
The pizza itself was delicious. The crust was crispy from edge to center, with a crunchy rim, and the slices remained straight and rigid when held by the rim. Where the bubbles in the skin formed, they charred and contributed to a nice flavor of char on the bottom of the crust (see the third photo below). I had all I could do to keep myself from devouring the entire pizza at one sitting.
The second and third photos below show the finished pizza. It’s a really easy pizza to make. The dough coming out of the mixer bowl can simply be left at room temperature for around 24 hours (and, I suspect, even longer), and the dough, even at 47% hydration, is so easy to work with and shape and stretch out to the desired size. Quite possibly, the preferment alters the dough structure to help make this possible. And the use of the natural preferment enhances the finished crust flavor. I suspect that if one uses less preferment than I used (maybe around 10% of the weight of flour) and allows for a longer room temperature fermentation (maybe close to 40 hours), the crust flavors should be even better. That may be my next experiment with this style.
Peter
