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[Essen1]

Looks wicked man! I see what you're saying about the temps though, NY isn't that hot I s'pose. I love the opening cut in the side. It has a handy double use if you ever need to save any distressed damsel's.
http://www.swordsandarmor.com/images/H002403.JPG

LOL!

The elite pies à la Totonno's, Lombardi's and other coal-fired places I'm sure are baked at such temps. But I'm sure their dough formula is a lot different. More like a Naples dough, I assume.

[Pete-zza]

Also no offense to you or Peter on no honey thing, I love Jerry Mac's for example, but just look below at the NY skyline at night... says it all man.

Jim,

I was going to suggest maple syrup instead of honey but I was afraid that you would revise your photo to say "No maple syrup either!!".

Peter

[NY pizzastriver]

Jim,

I was going to suggest maple syrup instead of honey but I was afraid that you would revise your photo to say "No maple syrup either!!".

Peter

Lol. No Sir, I'm not one to fill the board with meaningless edited pictures for pure entertainment value, I'm far too serious of a man. Indeed that is the NYC skyline, be assured.

That said in searching for medieval knight helmets I was shocked to learn of our dear friend Mike's plagiarizing ways. I mean this is in a museum!



Ok, maybe a little entertainment value...now and again.   

[Essen1]

Lol. No Sir, I'm not one to fill the board with meaningless edited pictures for pure entertainment value, I'm far too serious of a man. Indeed that is the NYC skyline, be assured.

That said in searching for medieval knight helmets I was shocked to learn of our dear friend Mike's plagiarizing ways. I mean this is in a museum!



Ok, maybe a little entertainment value...now and again.   

ROTFLMAO!!!

[Essen1]

Jim,

I was going to suggest maple syrup instead of honey but I was afraid that you would revise your photo to say "No maple syrup either!!".

Peter

LOL. Jim's on a roll today, no?  Maybe he could put the Maple syrup sign on top of the Chrysler Building.

I thought of maple syrup, too, but am not sure how it compares to honey or sugar.

[Pete-zza]

I thought of maple syrup, too, but am not sure how it compares to honey or sugar.

Mike,

You can see some of the comparisons in November's post at Reply 5 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,4159.msg34719.html#msg34719. In making substitutions, there are two balances involved, sweetness and water content. Honey has a higher sweetness factor than maple syrup but it contains less water. If you start out with sugar in your dough formulation, you can use the data given in the abovereferenced post to determine how to substitute either honey or maple syrup for it.

I once saw Tyler Florence make a pizza dough using maple syrup as the sweetener. You can see his recipe at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/the-ultimate-pizza-recipe/index.html.

Peter

[Essen1]

Mike,

You can see some of the comparisons in November's post at Reply 5 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,4159.msg34719.html#msg34719. In making substitutions, there are two balances involved, sweetness and water content. Honey has a higher sweetness factor than maple syrup but it contains less water. If you start out with sugar in your dough formulation, you can use the data given in the abovereferenced post to determine how to substitute either honey or maple syrup for it.

I once saw Tyler Florence make a pizza dough using maple syrup as the sweetener. You can see his recipe at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/the-ultimate-pizza-recipe/index.html.

Peter

Peter,

Basically what RN's saying is that one would need less honey (83g) compared to Maple Syrup(100g) in order to get to the same sweetness as 100g of sucrose if I understood his post correctly?

[Pete-zza]

Basically what RN's saying is that one would need less honey (83g) compared to Maple Syrup(100g) in order to get to the same sweetness as 100g of sucrose if I understood his post correctly?

Yes, that is my understanding.

Peter

[Essen1]

Peter,

Thanks for the clarification. I think I have Maple syrup in my pantry.

[Essen1]

Peter,

Here are the numbers from last night's batch that's still in the fridge:

878g 50/50 KABF/SBBF          100%
553g Water (Temp @ 90°)      63%
26g   Raw Honey                       3%
22g   Sea Salt                         2.5%
18g   Olive Oil                            2%
9g     Sugar                                1%
4g     IDY                                 0.5%

The formula makes 4 balls at 377g each.

Other than that, I followed your mixing & poolish suggestion from your previous post. I just checked the dough and I might be able to get a 48hr rise out of it, which would work out perfectly since I have my GF's daughters over tomorrow (Prom Dress shopping is on the agenda  ) and they love pizza.

I'll report back on the results.

[Piumerl]

Mike,

I want to try your formula in reply#173.
Since you're now using Peter preferment technique, What mixing procedure are you using for the final mix. I see too that you increased the hydration ratio on your last one?

Thanks in advance
Claude

[s00da]

Mike,

I agree with Norma.

The basic point I was trying to make with this exercise is that it is possible to take an existing dough recipe and convert it into a preferment format and, by so doing, get more and better crust flavor than you can get from the original recipe. I think that you also learn a lot by such experiments.

With respect to the degree of crust coloration that you got using the honey, that is the natural result of the desire to cram everything into the window you selected, in this case, eight hours. To get everything into the eight-hour period, and get the desired end results in terms of crust flavor, you have to resort to using a poolish and a lot of yeast to get the degree of biological activity needed to produce the byproducts of prefermentation that will enhance the flavors of the final crust. Unfortunately, that high degree of biologic activity can rapidly consume the sugars released from the flour by amylase enzyme performance and leave too little for final crust coloration. To make up for this, you can either increase the amount of honey or add some diastatic malt to the flour as part of the final mix, or possibly a combination of both (which would be my personal choice). In your case, should you decide to repeat the experiment, you might increase the amount of honey. The risk here is that if you add too much honey, you might find that the bottom of the crust darkens prematurely, or even blackens, before the rest of the pizza is done. There are perhaps ways of avoiding this while staying within the eight-hour window, as by baking the pizza on a screen rather than a pizza stone or by adding dry milk powder or dairy whey to your dough formulation, but then that might change the results in a way that you might not like or take you away from the NY style you have selected as the goal of your NY pizza project.

Peter

Sorry for jumping in like this  but how about decreasing the poolish % as a possible solution to get more crust coloration? I can see that from the formula you provided, that the poolish is 300% of the final formula's flour. I'm sure you have an explanation for selecting this high percentage but I think not saving enough flour for the final dough contributes a lot to the lack of crust coloration.

This thread caught my attention again cuz I've been playing with poolish baguette these days. My current recipe uses a maximum of 50% poolish to the final formula's flour. The coloration has been amazing with a sweetness that can only be achieved by adding sugar. I'm not recommending 50% here as I'm sure this takes away from the complexity of the crust but I believe going less than 300% is a very logical approach.

Saad

[Pete-zza]

Saad,

If you are referring to the dough formulation at Reply 184 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,8093.msg82892.html#msg82892, that formulation was modified after one of my versions of JerryMac's basic dough recipe (at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6515.msg55855.html#msg55855) because I knew it would work within an eight-hour period at room temperature, which was an up-front requirement that Mike set as a goal.

As you will note from the Rosada article at http://web.archive.org/web/20040814193817/cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food3_apr2004.htm, the amount of a classic poolish is typically measured with respect to the total formula water, not the total formula flour or the flour used in the final mix. The poolish that Mike used was outside of the 20-80% range (with respect to the total formula water) mentioned in the Rosada article but that was only because I elected to use JerryMac's dough recipe rather than the classic poolish measurements. I could have come up with a dough formulation that would have been within the 20-80% range, but I didn't want to give something to Mike without knowing if it would work for an 8-hour window or how well it would work. If Mike would like to modify his dough formulation to fit the classic poolish mold, or if he would like me to assist him with this, I'd be happy to do it. In fact, I have already had some experience modifying the JerryMac dough recipe for a classic poolish, at 80% of the formula water, to achieve a prefermentation period of 18 hours, as discussed at Reply 4 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6515.msg56131.html#msg56131. It would be pretty straightforward to do the same sort of thing but for a poolish with a prefermentation period in a 4-5 hour range.

One of the problems with residual sugar in the present case is a timing issue. If the first 4-5 hours of the 8-hour window are taken up by the poolish, that leaves about 3-4 hours to try to achieve enough residual sugar in the dough to contribute to crust coloration. There will be some natural sugars released from the flour by enzyme performance during the final 3-4 hours but if there is also sugar (sucrose) used in the dough formulation, as was the case with Mike's original dough formulation, 3-4 hours may not be enough to convert sucrose to reducing sugars to contribute meaningfully to crust coloration. One of the reasons why I suggested honey in lieu of sugar (sucrose) was because I found from my own experience that I can get more crust color more quickly using honey than sucrose. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that JerryMac used honey for the same reason.

Your suggestion makes sense since it tries to shift more of the sugar formation into the back end of the dough preparation process. Another way might be to shift more of the yeast into the back end of the process (but at a cost of some loss of fermentation byproducts). How well these measures would work would have to be determined by experimentation. If Mike would like to further explore another version of a poolish that is more classic, I'd be happy to work with him on it if he so wishes. He may prefer to move on to some other form of exploration of the NY style pizza that is more traditional.

Peter

[Infoodel]

Blimey this is an epic thread!
I'm sorry Mike I guess I'm hopping onto this one a little late. Your efforts on this project are impressive!
Regarding the addition of sweeteners - it's probably been covered before, but have you tried adding malt extract? (not diastatic malt but the regular syrup). I've found it can make a difference to colouration - not huge but still noticeable.
Here's a pic of a 5 minute pie that had ~1% malt extract added to dough made with high gluten (canadian) flour @ 65% hydration. Notice the deep colouration on the crust (admittedly burnt in some places!):

[s00da]

Saad,

If you are referring to the dough formulation at Reply 184 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,8093.msg82892.html#msg82892, that formulation was modified after one of my versions of JerryMac's basic dough recipe (at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6515.msg55855.html#msg55855) because I knew it would work within an eight-hour period at room temperature, which was an up-front requirement that Mike set as a goal.

As you will note from the Rosada article at http://web.archive.org/web/20040814193817/cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food3_apr2004.htm, the amount of a classic poolish is typically measured with respect to the total formula water, not the total formula flour or the flour used in the final mix. The poolish that Mike used was outside of the 20-80% range (with respect to the total formula water) mentioned in the Rosada article but that was only because I elected to use JerryMac's dough recipe rather than the classic poolish measurements. I could have come up with a dough formulation that would have been within the 20-80% range, but I didn't want to give something to Mike without knowing if it would work for an 8-hour window or how well it would work. If Mike would like to modify his dough formulation to fit the classic poolish mold, or if he would like me to assist him with this, I'd be happy to do it. In fact, I have already had some experience modifying the JerryMac dough recipe for a classic poolish, at 80% of the formula water, to achieve a prefermentation period of 18 hours, as discussed at Reply 4 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6515.msg56131.html#msg56131. It would be pretty straightforward to do the same sort of thing but for a poolish with a prefermentation period in a 4-5 hour range.

One of the problems with residual sugar in the present case is a timing issue. If the first 4-5 hours of the 8-hour window are taken up by the poolish, that leaves about 3-4 hours to try to achieve enough residual sugar in the dough to contribute to crust coloration. There will be some natural sugars released from the flour by enzyme performance during the final 3-4 hours but if there is also sugar (sucrose) used in the dough formulation, as was the case with Mike's original dough formulation, 3-4 hours may not be enough to convert sucrose to reducing sugars to contribute meaningfully to crust coloration. One of the reasons why I suggested honey in lieu of sugar (sucrose) was because I found from my own experience that I can get more crust color more quickly using honey than sucrose. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that JerryMac used honey for the same reason.

Your suggestion makes sense since it tries to shift more of the sugar formation into the back end of the dough preparation process. Another way might be to shift more of the yeast into the back end of the process (but at a cost of some loss of fermentation byproducts). How well these measures would work would have to be determined by experimentation. If Mike would like to further explore another version of a poolish that is more classic, I'd be happy to work with him on it if he so wishes. He may prefer to move on to some other form of exploration of the NY style pizza that is more traditional.

Peter

I see... If the target was an 8 hours dough with maximum flavor, then such extreme fermentation does make sense. This is also completed by drawing coloration from the addition of honey to the recipe.

[Essen1]

Blimey this is an epic thread!
I'm sorry Mike I guess I'm hopping onto this one a little late. Your efforts on this project are impressive!
Regarding the addition of sweeteners - it's probably been covered before, but have you tried adding malt extract? (not diastatic malt but the regular syrup). I've found it can make a difference to colouration - not huge but still noticeable.
Here's a pic of a 5 minute pie that had ~1% malt extract added to dough made with high gluten (canadian) flour @ 65% hydration. Notice the deep colouration on the crust (admittedly burnt in some places!):

Infoodel,

I haven't tried the malt extract so far but might look into that. Thanks for the tip! 

Here are some pics from last weekend's pies that go with above-mentioned formula. One's a spinach, ham, fresh garlic pizza and the other just a plain cheese. Both pies went actually through a 72hr fermentation period with the first two dough balls going through a 48hr cycle.

Didn't get the chance to take pics of the first two because the kids devoured them just as they came out of the oven. Their overall consensus was that the pies were "awesome, yummy and perfect". So there. 

[Infoodel]

I'd say your kids were spot-on with their assessment. The cheese pie in particular looks awesome. Great cornicione.

[Essen1]

I'd say your kids were spot-on with their assessment. The cheese pie in particular looks awesome. Great cornicione.

I think they were. 

And thanks for the nice words! However, even with the increase in honey and an additional pinch of sugar, I have not seen a significant increase in coloration. The strange thing is, though, that pizzas I made with organic sugar (Safeway brand), had better coloration than the last few I made without it. I think I just try one again with the O-sugar just for comparison purposes.

[soflnoles]

That cheese pie looks better than 99% of the NY-Style pie that restaurants sell.  Making me hungry.

[Essen1]

Mike,

I want to try your formula in reply#173.
Since you're now using Peter preferment technique, What mixing procedure are you using for the final mix. I see too that you increased the hydration ratio on your last one?

Thanks in advance
Claude

Claude,

I'd stick with the mixing regimen I posted before here in the first paragraph: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,8093.msg82638.html#msg82638

That should work fine. But it also depends a bit on your mixer.

That cheese pie looks better than 99% of the NY-Style pie that restaurants sell.  Making me hungry.

  Thanks. I'm getting there it seems, albeit in baby steps.