How to Make a Long (20-24 Hour), Room-Temperature Fermented Dough

[NY pizzastriver]

The next time I attempt a long room temperature fermentation along the lines discussed in this thread, I think I will cut the yeast in half, to 1/512 teaspoon of IDY, and see what happens.

Lol, you're driving me crazy! Sheer madness I say! 

In about a week you're gonna have a new formula, it will be something like...

"For this pie I took the jar of yeast and just showed it to the dough ball. I placed it next to the ball for 30 seconds, so the dough could get acquainted with the yeast, then I put the yeast back in the fridge. The pizza was very good! Next time I'm going to try just saying "yeast" 3 times while I am kneading..."

The pizza does look great my friend, all jokes aside. 

 

[UnConundrum]

LOL, at the very least he'll be counting the grains.

[widespreadpizza]

Peter,  how much naturally occuring yeast is actually in you bread flour do you think.  Enough to raise the dough.  Ive always wondered that,  but never tried it.  Of course if it worked it would vary bag to bag,  and brand to brand.  -marc

[Pete-zza]

Marc,

That is a good question. I, too, wondered whether there was any natural yeast in the flour or possibly natural airborne yeast that might have affected the dough. However, with respect to the airborne yeast, I could not see how it might have affected my dough because it was in a tightly lidded container the whole time it fermented. It would be interesting to know whether yeast is in flour in trace amounts and with the capacity to raise a dough . One simple test to answer that question would be to make a dough without any yeast and let it ferment at room temperature to see if it rises and, if so, how long it takes. I think I will conduct such a test.

What I found most impressive, and surprising, is how little yeast is needed to get a dough to double in volume, or even triple, and how powerful a force temperature is.

Peter

[widespreadpizza]

Peter,  i just happened to have picked up a 50# bag of KA special/bread flour.  Its real hot up here in the northeast right now too.   Maybe I'll mix one up one ball tonight in my stand mixer?  -marc

[widespreadpizza]

Well,  I am getting one going.  two actually,  one to use if it works and one to measure expansion with.  Here is what I am doing.

Flour (100%):
Water (62%):
Salt (1.5%):
Total (163.5%):
550 g | 19.4 oz | 1.21 lbs | TF = N/A

rated absorbtion of flour,  median amount of salt.  all room temp ingredients,  apx 75 degrees,  10 min mix.  theen move to unconditioned room for X hours,  should be about 80 tonight and 90 tomorrow.  finished dough temp was 80.5 degrees.  We'll see what happens with this basic experiment.  -marc

[Pete-zza]

Marc,

I also made a dough--just like the last one but without any IDY. For the record, I did not bring the jar of yeast anywhere near the dough ball and I did not say "yeast" three times during kneading, not even under my breath. It got to 99 degrees F here today so my kitchen is a bit warmer than usual, and I had the oven on earlier, so I expect an average room temperature during fermentation of around 82 degrees F. I put down two poppy seeds to monitor the dough expansion, if any. Without the IDY, the exercise might be like watching paint dry.

Peter

[s00da]

Pete,

What's interesting to me is the almost no change in fermentation time with respect to the changed yeast %. I think it would've been a more accurate test if you hadn't changed the flour. Nonetheless, the latter dough should have risen slower because of the higher gluten % and the use of less yeast. This makes me wonder about the relation between yeast % and fermentation time at the extremes; is it a straight line kind of relationship? even when you go this low?

I will attempt today making my similar dough and cut on the yeast % by half and see how would that affect my fermentation time.

One thing I always wondered about your dough is the lower hydration. I know you are doing this to avoid excessive moisture when handling the dough due to release of water from starch and gluten but I wonder if this much adjustment is really necessary as I haven't really noticed the protease activity being any faster in my higher hydration dough. In my case, I tried the recipe in the range of %64.5 to %62 and I only notice the protease effect at %63 and higher as the dough becomes sticky but still very easy to handle.

Saad

[Pete-zza]

Saad,

I had run out of the King Arthur all-purpose (KAAP) flour but I suspect I would have gone with the KABF bread flour anyway just to test the use of that flour with the same protocol as the original effort described in the opening post but using less yeast (1/256 teaspoon of IDY). I was also counting on the color contribution of the higher-protein KABF flour to compensate for the longer fermentation time and its effect on sugar depletion. The KABF dough did hold out four hours longer than the original KAAP dough, which I punched down and re-kneaded at 20 hours. I realize that you were able to use higher hydrations than I, but in my case I used the lower hydration (5% less than the rated absorption value for the flour) because prior experiments with higher hydrations turned out dough that was too wet and extensible and hard to work with on the peel without the risk of the dough skins sticking to the peel. I was also looking for an overall approach that I could reasonably confidently recommend to our members so that they might achieve success without having to make a lot of mid-course corrections and without the need to use a unit such as the ThermoKool MR-138 unit or some other comparable unit. As I have noted before, long room-temperature fermented doughs are among the most difficult to make because of all the variables.

From all of my reading on yeast and its performance at different temperatures, for example, as discussed and shown at http://www.theartisan.net/yeast_treatise_frameset.htm (look under the link Dough Fermentation and Temperature), I learned that there is no linearity in the fermentation process itself. There is also a "sweet spot" for yeast fermentation. In our cases, we slowed down the time aspects because of the minuscule amounts of yeast we used. The subject of using less yeast is discussed at the theartisan.net website under Yeast Growth, where the following is stated:

Other findings indicate that the smaller the original quantity of yeast in the dough, the greater the percentage increase in cell numbers during the fermentation, with all other conditions being held constant. Thus a 0.5% yeast addition to a test dough produced an 88% increase in cell count after 6 hr of fermentation, while with a 2% original yeast level the corresponding increase in cell numbers was only 29%. This is not surprising given the fact that at the lower yeast level, the competition for nutrients is far less than at the higher yeast levels. Thus, each yeast cell has access or at least the opportunity for access to greater food supplies during fermentation.

Member November also discussed fermentation rate issues in a series of posts starting at Reply 53 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3985.msg37297.html#msg37297. November also alluded to the "sweet spot" for enzyme performance at Reply 20 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,4986.msg42783.html#msg42783. More was written on this topic in the context of room-temperature fermented Neapolitan style doughs at Reply 3 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5966.msg51186/topicseen.html#msg51186.

In my experiments under this thread, I did not attempt to control or optimize the room temperature. I accepted whatever room temperatures existed rather than using my MR-138 unit that could have fixed the fermentation temperature at whatever value I wanted within the capabilities of that unit. That exposed me to the vagaries of room temperature and its effects on yeast and enzyme performance. I also changed the rules in my last experiment by using a different (higher) hydration value, the effect of which might have been to increase the rate of fermentation. I would have to go back to the original dough recipe and run it again but using the lower yeast value to come up with a more meaningful comparison, just as you noted. In such an instance, I might even be able to do some mathematical calculations such as described at Reply 6 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5028.msg42572.html#msg42572.

Peter

[Pete-zza]

Well,  I am getting one going.  two actually,  one to use if it works and one to measure expansion with.  Here is what I am doing.

Flour (100%):
Water (62%):
Salt (1.5%):
Total (163.5%):
550 g | 19.4 oz | 1.21 lbs | TF = N/A

rated absorption of flour,  median amount of salt.  all room temp ingredients,  apx 75 degrees,  10 min mix.  theen move to unconditioned room for X hours,  should be about 80 tonight and 90 tomorrow.  finished dough temp was 80.5 degrees.  We'll see what happens with this basic experiment. 

Marc,

Just a note to let you know that if your dough doesn't rise you don't have to throw it away. It happens from time to time even among professionals that yeast is inadvertently left out of the dough. The solution that Tom Lehmann recommends is described at the PMQ Think Tank at http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewtopic.php?p=48641#48641. Of course, in your case, the dough will not need warming up, and you will have to decide how much yeast to add based on how and when you plan to use the dough if it comes to that.

Peter

[widespreadpizza]

Peter,  I am seeing some pinhole size bubbles up against the glass cylinder that I am using to judge expansion,  but little to no expansion yet.  Thanks for the tip though,  talk abould a non traditional autolyse   -marc

[Pete-zza]

Peter,  I am seeing some pinhole size bubbles up against the glass cylinder that I am using to judge expansion,  but little to no expansion yet.  Thanks for the tip though,  talk abould a non traditional autolyse   -marc

Marc,

Lol. Maybe we will end up telling people how to make a 500-hour room temperature fermented dough .

Peter

[s00da]

Pete, thanks for the link http://www.theartisan.net/yeast_treatise_frameset.htm

I've been looking for such graph.

Just like you concluded in your post, revisiting the original recipe and adjusting the IDY % would be a good idea. I would consider a wet and too extensible dough as a sign of over-fermentation. Did you by any chance checked the dough for readiness prior to the end of the 24 hours? I would guess it was probably ready at a much earlier time.

The first thing that occurred to me when I read your post is if your original IDY amount was (~0.009375 tsp) and that resulted in an over-fermentation (or almost maybe) and then your new adjusted amount is (~0.00390625 tsp) needed 4 more hours of fermentation. Then, the ideal IDY amount needed for the original recipe would have probably something in between those previous values. Something around 0.005 tsp.

Saad

[Pete-zza]

Saad,

I agree with you that a wet dough and high extensibility are usually signs of overfermentation. However, my original dough (the one described in the opening post in this thread) was not really wet when I used it and the dough was pretty well balanced between elasticity and extensibility, as I noted in the opening post. I believe that the re-kneading of the dough at 20 hours strengthened the gluten structure and absorbed the wetness of the dough at that stage. With the most recent dough (the one discussed in Reply 58), I suspect that it was usable after 24 hours of room temperature fermentation and maybe it would have endured beyond that point without overfermenting, or I could have punched the dough down as I did the original dough, but I decided at that point to see if I could slow down the fermentation and have the dough still be usable by putting it in the refrigerator. That was a good test because it told me that refrigerating the dough after a long room-temperature fermentation was a viable option.

Your estimates of yeast quantities are a little bit different than mine, possibly because I use the IDY conversion factor used in the various dough calculating tools. However, your numbers are still close to mine. For your information, I used the methodology described in Reply 6 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5028.msg42572.html#msg42572 and, assuming a Reference Rate of 20 hours at 82 degrees F (representing a doubling of the dough) and a Predicted Rate that is 48 hours at 82 degrees F, the amount of IDY I would need comes to 0.00499%. Based on the formula flour of the original dough formulation, 268.87 grams, the amount of IDY needed comes to 0.004454 teaspoon. So, your number, 0.005 teaspoon, is about the same. As a practical matter, the actual amount of yeast may be a bit different because my kitchen temperature varies by a few degrees above/below 82 degrees F over the course of a 24-hour period.

I would still like to try using 1/512 teaspoon IDY at some point to see if there are any lessons to be learned from such an experiment. It has been around 100 degrees F here lately, with more of same on the horizon for the next few days, so I may have to wait for cooler weather to arrive before making more pizzas.

Peter

[widespreadpizza]

Peter,  can confirm that there is some expansion happening up here in the steaming hot northeast.  Like enough to really work.  It has been covered the whole time too,  so there should be no airborne yeast in there.  I may end up keeping this experiment as a starter,  who knows.  -marc

[Pete-zza]

Marc,

How are you measuring the expansion and what is the % expansion to this point?

Peter

[s00da]

Pete, you're well ahead of me in terms of decreasing IDY % ... I must catch up  

But Marc's dough my also just end the race  

[widespreadpizza]

Peter,  I remembered the only true cylinder type piece of glassware that I have and decided to use it,  along with a rubber band to monitor progress,  here is are some before and now shots.  these were taken minutes ago.  I had the day off today and despite the heat I  have not fired the oven up in a couple weeks so it is heating up now.  I really think that I will bake this as my oven cools down from my scheduled neapolitan bake around 7:00 tonight.  Here are some pictures.  The first three are from right after dough making last night.  The next five are current.  I hope you can see the deatil in these shots,  I can on my pc.  I am estimating about a 15 -20% expansion has occured and seems to be speeding up.  I am not making this up.  -marc

[Pete-zza]

Marc,

Great job with the photos.

It stands to reason that the expansion of the dough should pick up its pace with the passage of time. Yeast, even natural yeast, needs simple sugars for fermentation purposes and there are few of them in the flour to start. It isn't until the alpha- and beta-amylase enzymes work on the damaged starch to produce the bulk of the simple sugars for the yeast to feed off of and to increase the budding, gas production, etc.

I have taken a photo of my dough, which I took a few minutes ago. I believe my dough is roughly at the same stage as yours. Right after I had oiled the dough ball last night, I placed the two poppy seeds one inch apart at the center of the dough ball. When I took the photo this afternoon, the poppy seeds were 1 1/16" apart. I have never used the poppy seed trick with a yeastless dough before, that is, one without commercial yeast, but the 1 1/16" spacing translates to an expansion of 19.9%. I plan to monitor my dough ball to see how far it goes.

Peter

[widespreadpizza]

well,  its going before the neapolitan its really ready.  about 80% expansion.  I'll be back later.  -marc