going from Hamelman's recipe to Lehmann NY style using preferment

[artellan]

Hi all!

I'm pretty much a newbie to this site, although I first discovered it a year ago, but haven't 'visited' much, until lately.

Now I'm really pumped about improving my pizza making. My pizzas have taken a huge leap forward over the last few months when I started to use the pizza recipe from Hamelman's "Bread", which includes an overnight IDY-based 'biga' preferment. Overall formula (including biga) is:
- bread flour 100%
- water 68%
- salt 1.8%
- IDY 0.5 - 1.5%*
- extra-virgin olive oil 5%
Prefermented flour (percentage of total formula flour that comes from the biga) is 20%.

* there is apparently an error in the book saying to use only 1/2 tsp of IDY for total dough weight of 2 lbs; Hamelman has released a correction saying it should be 1 1/4 tsp. However, I've tried using the 1/2 tsp and liked that better, though I increased the fermentation time accordingly when I did so. (recipe says 2 hours @ 75F)

After doing it by the book the first few times, and liking both the handling of the dough and the resulting pizzas, I tweaked the recipe by replacing the biga with my sourdough starter. This required doing some simple math because the biga in the recipe is 60% hydration whereas my starter is 100%, so I end up using 7.2oz of starter in place of 5.8oz of biga, and reducing the final dough water accordingly. (Note these weights are when making roughly 2 pounds of dough = two 16" pies.) While the biga version had good flavour, the sourdough starter version is much better, a subtly richer flavour without being sour. Sometimes I've used recently refreshed starter and sometimes used it directly from the fridge where it's been sitting for 5-6 days since last refresh; in both cases the flavour was excellent.

Another tweak is that last time I made it, I used about half the olive oil than called for, so 2.5% instead of 5%. I thought this improved the pizza as well.

Since then I've come to this site looking for more ways to improve my pizza. The first thing to focus on is the dough and I've honed in on one of the Lehmann recipe variations that uses a natural preferment, as I already know I love the flavour sourdough imparts. (And based on pictures the Lehmann at least looks like what I want!). So I think that means using one of the following:

Reply # 132, page 7: 13-inch, KASL, 62% hydration, IDY plus preferment, 0.105 thickness factor, room-temperature rise (a combination of overnight and during the day), stand mixer. http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.msg10461.html#msg10461

Reply # 151, page 8: 16-inch, KASL, 64% hydration, 0.105 thickness factor, natural preferment only (in liquid form), Calvel autolyse, stand mixer. http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.msg11774.html#msg11774

Reply # 161, page 9: 16-inch, similar to recipe in Reply # 151 but without autolyse and the dough is made entirely in one day (9-hour room-temperature fermentation period), stand mixer. http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.msg12367.html#msg12367

Reply # 165, page 9: 16-inch, KASL, 63% hydration, natural preferment (dough-like consistency, with overnight rise), no autolyse, room-temperature fermentation, same day dough, stand mixer. http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.msg12644.html#msg12644

Reply # 175, page 9: 16-inch, same as recipe in Reply # 165, except (1) using an unrefreshed natural preferment with overnight rise and only in the quantity needed, (2) an autolyse, (3) food processor. http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.msg12748.html#msg12748

Next on my to-do list: (re)read the above formulas and decide which one I want to try! (Note the sizes don't matter too much as I'm comfortable with scaling recipes using baker's percent, my home sourdough/artisan baking has tough me plenty of that, although I have yet to try the Calculator of Insanity [lol] on this site.)

If anyone has any suggestions or knows other Lehmann NY Style variations that use natural preferment, please let me know!

Note: I will be posting a separate thread to talk about improving my toppings, especially sauce and cheese.

Cheers
- Mike

P.S. Other relevant info about me: electric convection range with max temp 500F, basic 16" baking stone (1/2" thick) - unknown brand but I think cordierite, no IR thermometer (yet), use canadian no-name all-purpose flour (~13% protein) but often supplement with VWG.

P.P.S. Thanks very much to all the site contributors, especially Peter/Pete-zza, for the vast amount of experimentation you've performed and information you've added over the years. What an awesome resource!!
I think back to the days when my dad made homemade pizza every Saturday, his pizza was known among all our friends and family as being the best. And it was good! I know now there was plenty of room for improvement but in those days before the internet, it was hard to even imagine what improvement would mean or where to start. The advantages I have now, compared to my dad thirty-odd years ago, are huge!

[Pete-zza]

Mike,

Thank you for the nice compliment.

For another Lehmann dough recipe that has been adapted for a natural starter/preferment, see the thread at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,12173.msg114728.html#msg114728. The preferment Lehmann versions discussed in that thread are unique in that they use a milk kefir prefement, but you might still get a feel as to how the basic Lehmann recipe can be adapted for use with a natural leavening system.

It is also possible to modify the basic Lehmann dough recipe to use a natural starter/preferment in many different preferment formats. I gave a hypothetical example at Reply 3 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6969.msg59844/topicseen.html#msg59844.

I assume you have renamed the preferment dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/preferment_calculator.html as the "Calculator of Insanity". That is funny. I know that it almost drove me insane when I developed it with Mike (Boy Hits Car) when we were trying to make it handle commercially-leavened preferments also, like poolish, sponge, biga, old dough, etc.

Peter

[norma427]

Mike,

I don’t know if you would be interested, but I did use the Ischia starter (poolish) for the Lehmann dough starting at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,11700.msg108007.html#msg108007

Peter helped me with the formula for that Lehmann dough.  I am not good with numbers, and if you are interested, you can see though the series of posts what happened to the dough and the pizzas using the starter poolish with the Lehmann dough.  The formula Peter helped me with was for my small market stand, which I had to make the poolish one day, let it cold ferment for 3 days, use the poolish to make the final dough and then let the dough cold ferment for one day.  The pizzas did get very good, but I decided to try the milk-kefir poolish preferment (which I am still working on) before I go back to the Ischia poolish preferment in the Lehmann dough.

I would be interested in what happens if you use a biga preferment in the Lehmann dough.  I had tried a biga at one time in the regular Lehmann dough (without a starter) and I couldn’t find the right formula to try that. I am currently using a poolish (not starter) in the Lehmann dough for market.  I always wondered how a biga would work out in the Lehmann dough.

I couldn’t even use the "Calculator of Insanity" at one point in time, but I did learn to eventually use it.  I also had to chuckle that you called the preferment dough calculating tool, the "Calculator of Insanity".

Norma

[artellan]

Hi Peter,
Yes the preferment dough calculator was what I meant ... I actually tried it out just now and realize it's actually really simple to use, no "Insanity" involved. In fact it (and the other similar calculators) look to be extremely useful. I think my initial reaction was based on a) "holy crap how did someone put this together!?" and b) "what the heck is Thickness Factor and bowl residue compensation?" But having read through some of your threads I totally get TF and bowl residue now, both valuable concepts. (I've always wondered why recipes esp. the more advanced bread ones didn't take bowl residue into account!)

Some comments now:

• It appears to me that Thickness Factor is measured in units of ounces per square inch, or oz/in², neat! So it's basically "the weight of dough per unit surface area" of the pizza. I just calculated my Hamelman recipe and the TF is only 0.08, very thin, no wonder I could never make as many / as big pizzas as it was supposed to!
• Just a comment about the preferment calculator, I find the "preferment's percentage of water" field a bit strange, probably due to my sourdough baking background. Because usually one expresses a preferment's hydration level using baker's percent, i.e. a 50:50 (water/flour) is a "100% hydration starter". For a 60% hydration preferment you'd have to enter 37.5 into this field. Not a biggie, just something to take note of.
• One thing that might help people on future preferment-based baking, is the concept of the "percentage of prefermented flour" in the formula. This actually matters a lot more than the baker's percent (percent of flour weight) of the preferment itself, because as I understand it, the leavening and flavour-enhancing strength of a preferment is usually based on the amount of flour in it. So if, for example, you want to modify a recipe that calls for a 60% hydration preferment weighing 160g (100g of flour, 60g of water), and use your 100% hydration preferment in its place, the most accepted practice would be to use 200g of starter (100g of flour, 100g of water), and subtract 40g of water from the final dough.
  I noticed in your original attempts to use natural preferments in the Lehmann dough, that you were initially unsure how much to use, but got a tip to use 15-20% preferment by weight of flour. While that sounds very reasonable, the assumed hydration of the preferment should be noted, as you might get very different results when using same weights of say a 50% "stiff starter" one vs. 125% hydration "liquid starter" in your dough.
  Take all this with a grain of salt, as it's just as I understand it from bread baking, I'm certainly no expert!
• A final comment, I found it very interesting that you once said you initially found sourdough starters to impart too much sourness for pizza, and only using a different starter variety gave the right "subtlety". (Ischia I think you said, that's one of Ed Wood's right?) It's funny because on so many sourdough baking forums you see people posting "my bread isn't sour enough, how do I squeeze more sour out of my starter". I've actually never found my sourdough bread to be very sour (just delicious) so I think I was lucky enough to have created a starter that has a more subtle flavour profile -- good for bread and pizza.
  Anyway, thefreshloaf.com under the sourdough forum is great place to ask about things like how to make your starter less sour, there is one member there with biology background (Debra Wink) who understands the microbiology of sourdough better than anyone I've seen!
  The main tip I would have to make a starter less sour is to make sure you give it a lot of new food when refreshing. Something like 1:5:5 (starter:water:flour, by weight) is often recommended (that's for a 100% hydration starter obviously).
  Also, I think feeding it only white flour might tend to make it less sour, I usually give it 5-10% rye to keep it healthy, especially when feeding out of the fridge. Rye has a lot of stuff that the sourdough microbes love!

Anyway, I hope some of the above helps.

Cheers and happy baking,
Mike

[artellan]

Hi Norma,
Thanks very much for your reply and pointing me to that thread. The pizzas look amazing! (although I haven read through the whole thread yet - kind of hit the first couple and last couple pages)

I think I once saw a thread where you posted some youtube videos of you stretching / opening up your dough, at the market ... is that on the same thread or somewhere else? I was trying to find it but can't now.

Can I ask why you are experimenting with milk-kefir preferment now? Is it to try something new (constant improvement!) or is it because the kefir may impart some health benefits? I am quite interested in the health angle, but I will wait to hear from you before inundating you with information.

I would be interested in what happens if you use a biga preferment in the Lehmann dough.  I had tried a biga at one time in the regular Lehmann dough (without a starter) and I couldn’t find the right formula to try that. I am currently using a poolish (not starter) in the Lehmann dough for market.  I always wondered how a biga would work out in the Lehmann dough.

You actually lost me a bit on that paragraph, because I'm not sure I understand the definitions for "biga", "poolish" etc. When you say biga do you mean a commercial-yeast-based preferment, or just a dough-like hydration (~60%) preferment? or both? And when you say poolish (not starter) do you mean, a 100% hydration commercial-yeast-based preferment?

For the short term I don't plan on using any commercial-yeast-based preferments, as I found I could just use my sourdough starter -- even straight out of the fridge if I was making pizza on short notice -- with better results.

After seeing so many of your pizzas I have to share some images of my bread ... sorry I've never taken pictures of pizza (too much else going on usually!)
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/9-yno3-zzWn0luzXYtwt0w?feat=directlink
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/LITHo-t0sI6io0gyX32G5g?feat=directlink

Cheers and happy baking,
Mike

[norma427]

Hi Norma,
Thanks very much for your reply and pointing me to that thread. The pizzas look amazing! (although I haven read through the whole thread yet - kind of hit the first couple and last couple pages)

I think I once saw a thread where you posted some youtube videos of you stretching / opening up your dough, at the market ... is that on the same thread or somewhere else? I was trying to find it but can't now.

Can I ask why you are experimenting with milk-kefir preferment now? Is it to try something new (constant improvement!) or is it because the kefir may impart some health benefits? I am quite interested in the health angle, but I will wait to hear from you before inundating you with information.
You actually lost me a bit on that paragraph, because I'm not sure I understand the definitions for "biga", "poolish" etc. When you say biga do you mean a commercial-yeast-based preferment, or just a dough-like hydration (~60%) preferment? or both? And when you say poolish (not starter) do you mean, a 100% hydration commercial-yeast-based preferment?

For the short term I don't plan on using any commercial-yeast-based preferments, as I found I could just use my sourdough starter -- even straight out of the fridge if I was making pizza on short notice -- with better results.

After seeing so many of your pizzas I have to share some images of my bread ... sorry I've never taken pictures of pizza (too much else going on usually!)
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/9-yno3-zzWn0luzXYtwt0w?feat=directlink
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/LITHo-t0sI6io0gyX32G5g?feat=directlink

Cheers and happy baking,
Mike

Mike,

Thanks for your kind words that the pizzas look amazing.  The videos aren’t for the Ischia preferment Lehmann dough. These are the two videos of me opening the preferment (poolish)  Lehmann dough at Reply 179 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9908.msg89267.html#msg89267

Peter explains what a biga is in this post at Reply 62 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9908.msg86667.html#msg86667 and here is where he set-forth the formula for with a biga at Reply 101 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9908.msg87684.html#msg87684 That formula didn’t work out with a biga, so then I went to a poolish preferment, but it wasn’t with a starter.

I really have no real reason for experimenting with the milk kefir poolish other than I like to experiment with different ideas.  I was looking for a starter that was probiotic and I just happened to find the milk kefir grains and saw they could be used in bread or pizza, but not a lot of information was found about using milk kefir in pizza.  Milk kefir is supposed to be good for people and the milk kefir grains can be kept out with milk without them spoiling.  I drink the milk kefir.

I am not an experienced bread baker like you and I have a hard time with all the math, but as I understand a poolish is contains equal amounts of starter and flour or in the case I wasn’t using a starter is equal amounts water and flour with added IDY.  I use equal amount of water and flour with IDY in the regular preferment Lehmann dough. 

Your bread looking amazing.  I am only learning to make bread and can’t make anything that looks like your bread. 

Sorry if I confused you in anyway.

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Anyway, I hope some of the above helps.

Mike,

Thank you for your thoughtful post.

The idea for the thickness factor came from Tom Lehmann, of the American Institute of Baking. However, he usually refers to the thickness factor as a "loading factor". I took Tom's idea a couple steps further from what he was doing by combining the thickness factor in the various dough calculating tools with baker's percents and the bowl residue compensation factor. That added a lot of versatility to the dough calculating tools. The bowl residue compensation factor was not my idea either. I took that from member Jeff Varasano's website when he was making pizzas at home (he is now the owner of the eponymous Varasano's in Atlanta, GA).

Toward the end of last year, I updated my list of typical thickness factors for different types of pizzas at Reply 1 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,12243.msg115759/topicseen.html#msg115759. Some time before that, through an email exchange with Tom Lehmann, I calculated a thickness factor for his NY style dough formulation of 0.0882813. I started out higher than that and, as a result, became attached to the higher value. But one of the values of the dough calculating tools is that you can pick whatever thickness factor value you prefer.

FYI, the thickness/loading factor can also be used to extrapolate the amounts of sauces, cheeses and perhaps some toppings from one pizza size to another, much as Tom Lehmann has used that factor to extrapolate from one dough batch size to another to make larger or smaller pizzas. Tom discusses how to do this for cheese and sauce in one of his PMQ Think Tank posts at http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6169&p=38621&hilit=#p38621. I have used that approach many times for sauce and cheese to be sure that the larger or smaller size pizzas have the same characteristics as the pizza from which I did the extrapolation. It is also a good approach for professional pizza operators to use when they offer different size pizzas. In fact, many such operators have found that they were using too much cheese on some pizzas and were able to save quite a bit of money by using the loading factor approach.

As a bread baker, you will perhaps be interested to know, if you haven't already discovered it yourself, that the preferment dough calculating tool can also be used to come up with dough formulations for naturally-leavened bread dough. However, the ingredients for the preferment dough calculating tool are limited to flour, water, yeast (three types in addition to the wild yeast), salt (4 types), sugar and oil. You would use the Dough Weight option in the tool since thickness factor does not apply to bread dough (unless, I suppose, you are making flatbreads).

You are also correct that the preferment dough calculating tool uses a different "hydration" methodology for the preferment. My recollection is that Mike (Boy Hits Can) and I concluded that it was easier to program the tool using the alternative hydration calculation, but to avoid confusion as much as possible we put the following statement in the box where the data relating to the preferment would be entered: Note: Preferment's percent of water = (weight of water divided by total weight of preferment) x 100.

When I first started experimenting with natural preferment versions of the basic Lehmann NY style dough formulation, the various dough calculating tools did not exist, and my understanding of preferments, both natural and commercially-leavened, was quite rudimentary. However, I came to understand the math involved and, with Mike's help on the programming side, we were able to create the dough calculating tools that embodied what we learned. The preferment dough calculating tool was one of the hardest to devise, along with the deep-dish dough calculating tool that had some messy math that we had to program into that tool. But all of the dough calculating tools are unique, one-of-a-kind tools (as best I can tell) and quite useful to our members. I consider them and my digital scale to be the two most useful things I have to make pizza dough.

Peter

[artellan]

Thanks Peter, you're right those tools are awesome, I actually did use it this morning (to help me scale) as I was mixing up some Roasted Garlic Bread -- a sourdough-based recipe from Hamelman's Bread that involves roasting the garlic in the oven first, mashing it and then just adding it directly to the dough. (the recipe includes both a sourdough levain and IDY so it's technically a hybrid). I made it once before and the garlic flavour is amazing.

You're right, the note about how to calculate preferment percent of water is quite clear, even the first time I knew to use 50 instead of 100 for my 100% hydration starter, so it's all good.

Cheers
Mike

[artellan]

Forgot to mention, I also made up some pizza dough this morning using the preferment calculator. It basically matched this formula:

Reply # 151, page 8: 16-inch, KASL, 64% hydration, 0.105 thickness factor, natural preferment only (in liquid form), Calvel autolyse, stand mixer. http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.msg11774.html#msg11774

except I only used 62% hydration because even though I added some VWG I think my flour is still not as high in gluten as your KASL (best guess is ~14% after the VWG; it's all-purpose flour with about 1% VWG added, but canadian all-purpose flour is around 13% to start with, I think)

I scaled for two 16" pies although I just promised that I will make at least one into heart-shape (valentine's day) so I might end up with some leftover dough to make another small pie.

The two dough-balls are retarding in the fridge now, one in a plastic storage container and the other in a ziplog bag that was "blown up" using the cool technique you posted about. I actually let them sit on the counter 30 minutes or so before putting into fridge because they were only 76F when done, instead of your 80F. The plan is to make them tomorrow which would be about 30 hours of fermentation.
Note: the dough was hand mixed and underwent a 20 minute autolyse (autolyse was with just preferment, water, and flour).

Cheers
Mike

[artellan]

Hi Norma,
My humble opinion about biga vs. poolish etc. is that the hydration or "stiffness" of the preferment doesn't affect the final dough very much, as long as:
 a) you make sure the total formula includes the correct amount of flour and water. (this basically involves adding or subtracting water in the final dough recipe), and
 b) the amount of prefermented flour remains the same. (so if the recipe calls for a 60% hydration biga, and you want to use a 100% hydration poolish, the preferment itself will need to be heavier)

I think the decision of biga vs. poolish is really a question of starter management ... i.e. which one is easier to use in your situation. I like a poolish because it makes the numbers easier (same amounts of flour and water so no need for math when refreshing!) and it's easy to mix into doughs: just dissolve it in the water first!

That's all based on my bread experience though, I may be proven wrong when I get into pizza making perhaps!?

Cheers
Mike

P.S. I'll have to remember to post later about my thoughts on health benefits of natural preferments ... gotta go attend to the baby now!

[norma427]

Mike,

Thanks for your opinion about biga vs. poolish.  I don’t know what happened when I tried to use a biga in the Lehmann dough, but it sure didn’t work out for me. 

In my opinion you already have a head start on pizza, since you understand so much about bread. 
I would be interested in hearing the health benefits of using natural preferments.

Norma

[artellan]

Hi Norma,
I decided to start a new thread about the health benefits, it's here: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,12999.msg126769.html#msg126769

Cheers

[artellan]

Okay, I actually made the pizza on Sunday but didn't have time to post until now! I'll try to remember how everything went.

I did re-ball the dough once during its "cold rise", I think maybe 8-10 hours in. It hadn't really expanded in volume by that point, nor had it expanded much by the next morning, so I decided to take it out of the fridge early and let it have a bit more room temperature time. I think I took it out around noon, which was about 25 hours in the fridge.

At room temperature it eventually started to rise and got to a really nice consistency for a dough. It had maybe expanded by about half by the time I wanted to use it (5pm). After spreading it out on the counter and giving a brief rest, I tried "opening it up" in the air, holding it with my fists/knuckles like I'd seen Norma do in one of her youtube videos. This worked wonderfully for a while, until one part started to get a bit too thin and looked like it might tear, so I did the rest of the shaping on the counter.

I would say the dough was much more extensible, and easier to work with, compared to my usual Hamelman recipe (see the initial post in this thread). The only exception was some pieces of dough that I cut off the first two pizzas, due to the fact that I was shaping them into hearts for my wife & kids for valentine's day. These pieces I had to reshape into small skins, and they were very elastic and hard to stretch out. But, that's what happens when you reshape I guess!

We did one ham & cheese for the kids, one olive/onion/tomato/mushroom for my wife (with a few pepperoni pieces thrown on one side for me), a pepperoni/mushroom/jalepeno for me, and a "pit pie" (leftovers). The pizzas turned out awesome, the flavour was on par with my recent Hamelman doughs, but the crust was nicer, crispy but still light and somewhat foldable.

I also managed to do a better 'bake' than before, I had preheated the oven with pizza stone (basic 16" cordierite) on convect at 530F* for over an hour. I switched to regular bake when I put the pizzas in, and made sure to let the stone reheat in between each one. I also put a pan of ice cubes directly under the thermostat probe several minutes before putting in my last pies. The pizzas cooked in 6-7 minutes (6 for the smaller ones, 7-8 for larger) which is much shorter than previous bakes. I also made sure to take the parchment paper out from under the pies after 2-3 minutes baking, this makes a difference as well. (Although I was thinking I probably didn't need parchment with this dough, it hardly seemed to need any flour, compared to the 68% hydration Hamelman dough!)

* 500 is the highest my oven goes, but it does allow a +30 offset. This was the first time I used the offset since using it one time last year, and it really does make a big difference.

The only downside was that the crust was just a bit chewy, and on the two pies that got reshaped it was noticeably chewy. I think next time I will leave out the vital wheat gluten, and just use my canadian AP flour. Also I will try to make it in advance enough to have 2-3 days in the fridge, to hopefully get even more flavour (and maybe surpass the flavour profile I get from Hamelman dough with natural starter substituted for commercial-yeast-biga).

Pictures follow... please note on the crumb shot, it looks like the rim is huge, that is actually because that piece was cut at a very strange angle. (I had put some pepperoni on my wife's pizza which she wasn't happy about. By making a weirdly shaped piece, I was able to consume all of it, without taking away any of the non-pepperoni parts.)

Cheers & Happy Baking
Mike