Almost-WFO-politans but baked in the home oven thread.....

[David Deas]

I agree - very nice.

Another master.  I appreciate the compliments Craig.

[David Deas]

Beautiful job David.  One of the nicest ones I've seen from a home oven.  If you don't mind posting a shot of your oven setup, I'm sure lots of folks would like to duplicate it.

Thanks Chau. You're the man when it comes to this, I have seen, from reading the thread.

And I will post some oven pictures hopefully tomorrow.

[David Deas]

Dear David, it is very impressive what you have achieved with your electric oven! The way you modified your electric oven, per your brief description above, seems much simpler than the way I modified my gas oven. I look forward to more pizzas coming out of your oven. Good day!

Thanks.  Yeah.  I made a filetti this evening in about 30 or so seconds, give or take.  I might have *too* much heat going on.  I don't even cook that fast in a WFO.

What I like about it is that immediately after turning the oven on, slicing the cherry tomatoes, tearing the cheese, tearing the basil, opening the dough and dressing the skin, the oven was already at temperature for launch.  Very cool.  The whole entire process just all happens in one fluid motion without any waiting around.

I've seen some of your pizzas.  They are nice.  How have you modified your oven?

[Pizza Napoletana]

How have you modified your oven?

Dear David, my gas oven (purchased for $100 at Sears) is very basic. It contains no self-cleaning, no electric pilots, no convection fan, and no broil element. In the process of modifying the oven, first, I lined all the oven walls and floor with polished aluminum plates (not foil). Next, I placed a stack of 4 thick, round pizza stones right above the bake element (the only source of heat) to act as the oven floor. About 4 inches above the floor, I placed a large rectangular pizza stone, extended from wall to wall, hence blocking heat escape. This rectangular pizza stone, sealed all the way around, acts as the oven dome/ceiling, which contains two exhaust holes toward the back. At last, in order to minimize heat loss, I installed two heat shields (made out of steel plates that are covered with aluminum plates) at the front of the oven, both the upper and lower areas. Presently, it takes about 1 hour and 30 minutes for the oven floor to reach 850ºF. I have included some pictures below. Good night!

[David Deas]

OK.  Here goes the second test firing.  We have the aforementioned filetti.  

The cherry tomatoes were huge.  Mammoth.  Like small plum tomatoes or something.  Hated it, but that's why they're being used in test.

This was an approximately 30 second bake.  No gum line.  Burrata was barely melted, though.  Curious how that can work.

[TXCraig1]

Impressive. What does the bottom look like?

[David Deas]

The stone is at about 875-900 degrees at launch according to IR.  So it looks about like how you'd imagine.

[bakeshack]

Nice leoparding.  Would you mind posting your dough formula and workflow even if it's a test formula?

Marlon

[David Deas]

Nice leoparding.  Would you mind posting your dough formula and workflow even if it's a test formula?

Marlon

Incredibly experimental.  But I'm like that.  Normally I'd just grab a sourdough starter and hydrate to about 59% to 60% and be done.  But every now and then I like to play around and see what can be done with different fermentation processes.

Anyways.

This is an old dough method.  The original yeast came from the barm of a Belgian wit.  The yeast characteristics here are very interesting.  The dough turns a brown hue as it matures and smells incredibly sweet.  Like candy.  Best smelling dough ever, IMO.  Unlike anything else you'll find.  These yeast will not produce a great deal of alcohol and will not consume all the sugar in the dough no matter how long left to mature.  As opposed to CY or sourdough (where the longer the fermentation process the less and less sweet the dough becomes), in this case here the longer the fermentation, the sweeter and sweeter the dough became!!  

Towards the tail end of fermentation I like to let a little bit of bacteria into the mix.  They'll play a very subtle sour note at the finish.  Sort of a sweet and sour type of deal.  So the dough does not start out a sourdough, but it ends up as one.

The flour is 00.  Hydration is around 57% or so.  The performance of the dough was fine.  The flavor was just fine, and not overpowering.  But the hydration needed to be increased to probably over 60% I think.  The gluten never degraded one single iota, which is normal for a sourdough and to some extent a pure commercial yeast dough.  I was counting on protein degradation and water release during extended fermentation in order to compensate for the relatively low hydration, but that never occurred.

For a 30 to 40 second pie, I'm not sure what the dough formula should be to be quite honest.  50 seconds is around about my previous record so I'm in brand new territory here as far as I'm concerned.  I haven't made up my mind about whether ultra fast bakes are a negative or a positive thing.  I'll have to play around with the whole thing and see where it leads.

[TXCraig1]

I'd love to see the cross section of a 30 second pie if you get another opportunity.

[David Deas]

That's cool.  I gotcha coming.  It'll be a few days because I'm remixing this batch of dough to hopefully better suit it.  When I checked the crumb for these last ones I did not notice anything out of the ordinary though.

[Jackie Tran]

David, I love that leoparded look but have worked away from it b/c of the undesired aspects of the crumb I would get from my starters.  This yeast sounds really fascinating and could possibly allow for the look while still maintaining a healthy crumb texture.   Your pie reminds me of Toby's Nearlypolitian pies.

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,10024.msg87446.html#msg87446

A lot of fun to look at for sure. 

[bakeshack]

Towards the tail end of fermentation I like to let a little bit of bacteria into the mix.  They'll play a very subtle sour note at the finish.  Sort of a sweet and sour type of deal.  So the dough does not start out a sourdough, but it ends up as one.

The flour is 00.  Hydration is around 57% or so.  The performance of the dough was fine.  The flavor was just fine, and not overpowering.  But the hydration needed to be increased to probably over 60% I think.  The gluten never degraded one single iota, which is normal for a sourdough and to some extent a pure commercial yeast dough.  I was counting on protein degradation and water release during extended fermentation in order to compensate for the relatively low hydration, but that never occurred.

Thanks David.  Your technique is very interesting especially with the late addition of the bacteria into the mix.  How much culture did you add to the dough in your estimate (% wise)?  How long did you ferment before you added the bacteria into the mix and how many total hours did you ferment the dough before baking?  all room temp fermentation?

Marlon

[tinroofrusted]

30 seconds! That is really fast. Beautiful leoparding.  And the yeast sounds super interesting too. 

Thanks for posting the pictures.

Regards, 

TinRoof

[David Deas]

David, I love that leoparded look but have worked away from it b/c of the undesired aspects of the crumb I would get from my starters.  This yeast sounds really fascinating and could possibly allow for the look while still maintaining a healthy crumb texture.   Your pie reminds me of Toby's Nearlypolitian pies.

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,10024.msg87446.html#msg87446

A lot of fun to look at for sure.  

Toby was an ace with his oven.  Whatever happened to him?

I understand what you mean about gluten degradation and sourdough cultures.

The heavy leapording of the last pie I fired may suggest I need to move toward a different flour at these sorts of temperatures and bake times.  A flour that is even more difficult to brown than Caputo (which is already difficult to brown).  Is there a such thing as 000 flour somewhere?

[David Deas]

Thanks David.  Your technique is very interesting especially with the late addition of the bacteria into the mix.  How much culture did you add to the dough in your estimate (% wise)?  How long did you ferment before you added the bacteria into the mix and how many total hours did you ferment the dough before baking?  all room temp fermentation?

Marlon

I'm not so much adding bacteria as I am letting it in.  To let bacteria in, I simply stop doing the things I'm doing to keep it out.

The first time I worked with this particular culture I did not know anything about what I was doing.  I simply put a small amount of yeast slurry into some dough and let it rise for 24 hours at room temperature.  This resulted in a pure sourdough, which wasn't what I wanted.

So this time I changed a few things.  For one, I frothed the yeast.  For two, I added small amounts of flour each day at a time.  For three, I rotated enough fresh oxygen into the preferment from time to time to give the yeast an advantage.  I did a few other things as well, but you get the gist.  The more the yeast thrive, the less, it seems, the bacteria can gain any traction.

The rest of the questions you ask are very detailed.  Posting from a cell phone is not comfortable enough for me to answer at length.  I'll return to edit this post.

[TXCraig1]

Toby was an ace with his oven.  Whatever happened to him?

He is still around from time to time. He goes by "Foolish Poolish" now.

CL

[TXCraig1]

I'm not so much adding bacteria as I am letting it in.  To let bacteria in, I simply stop doing the things I'm doing to keep it out.

The first time I worked with this particular culture I did not know anything about what I was doing.  I simply put a small amount of yeast slurry into some dough and let it rise for 24 hours at room temperature.  This resulted in a pure sourdough, which wasn't what I wanted.

So this time I changed a few things.  For one, I frothed the yeast.  For two, I added small amounts of flour each day at a time.  For three, I rotated enough fresh oxygen into the preferment from time to time to give the yeast an advantage.  I did a few other things as well, but you get the gist.  The more the yeast thrive, the less, it seems, the bacteria can gain any traction.

Do you think the yeast and bacteria in your culture are competing for the same food (unlike typical cultures)? If not, I could see how what you are doing would help the yeast multiply faster, but why would it have a negative effect on the bacteria – again unless they were competing for the same food – or perhaps your bacteria are obligatory anaerobes?

I’m wondering if the relatively high oxygen environment somehow makes your bacteria act more like yeast and you just don’t notice them – meaning they are producing more CO2 and ethanol and less acids? 

[David Deas]

Do you think the yeast and bacteria in your culture are competing for the same food (unlike typical cultures)? If not, I could see how what you are doing would help the yeast multiply faster, but why would it have a negative effect on the bacteria – again unless they were competing for the same food – or perhaps your bacteria are obligatory anaerobes?

I’m wondering if the relatively high oxygen environment somehow makes your bacteria act more like yeast and you just don’t notice them – meaning they are producing more CO2 and ethanol and less acids?  

Hmm.

If I were to take a mixture of flour and water and just set it out onto the countertop, within a few days it would begin to smell like buttermilk.  If I were to take an identical mixture of flour and water and add a large enough amount of yeast to it, it would never develop any buttermilk smell.  If I add just the right amount of yeast to a mixture of flour and water, I will get a combination of bacterial activity and yeast activity.

According to my understanding, while yeast and bacteria do enjoy different foods, they also enjoy eating some of the same foods.  There is some overlap present, and it isn't totally insignificant. But I'm not sure the details.

I think of brewing beer.  Much of what you're doing with the wort is keeping out bacteria.  That's basically a huge and difficult part of the job.  And doing that means not only being as sanitary as you can, but making sure the yeast have the clear upper hand in the fermentation process.  If you don't, here come the lactic acid bacteria to ruin everything.

Some of it may have to do with alcohol tolerance.  The alcohol slows down the growth of bacteria.  But lactic acid bacteria are, in fact, quite resistant to alcohol.  Not sure what the mechanisms or combinations of mechanisms are.  Perhaps you have more to add on that?

[TXCraig1]

I don't know. I think your observation is very interesting. It seemes reasonable to me that the bacteria are still there doing their thing - but maybe it's just a different thing than they do under ordinary culture/dough conditions where there is less oxygen. Even if they are eating the same food supply, are you letting the food supply get to near zero? If not, would the bacteria not still be doing their thing? The yeast may be eating more, but there is still food for the bugs. Helping the yeast only hurts the bacteria if what you're doing to help the yeast also hurts the bacteria (e.g. takes their food, oxygen bad for them, some yeast byproduct hurts them, etc.) Its not intuitive to me how that would be the case here. Just because the yeast are growing faster doesn't automatically mean the bacteria are suppressed, I don't think. I stand to be corrected.

It seems rather different than beer making. As you noted, beer making starts with sanitation. You culture probably starts with bacteria outnumbering your yeast by two or three orders of magnitude.

CL