Getting pretty frustrated

[Moondance]

Regina,I never take the dough out until the final rise time of 20-30 minutes is finished.

(I choose this amount of time to allow the dough rise,but the machine does have an hour for rise built in the timer...that is too long,and makes my dough way too big and will overferment in the fridge or get too many bubbles)
 

The dough is usually a little bit(minor) sticky,and I sprinkle some bench flour around the dough edges to help it come out the bucket easier and not stick too much to my hands when scooping it out.

Ok.  So if I did that my machine does an 11.5 min knead; 15 min rest; 13.5 min knead, 50 min rise.  So do you think I should try letting it go through the knead cycles and instead of 50 min final rise, take it out about 20 min.?
I was thinking to take it out after the first knead cycle and let it sit on the counter for 1/2 or 1 hour.  What do you think?

[buceriasdon]

Regina, I use this free downloadable program to reduce image size. Works like a charm.   http://www.imageoptimizer.net/Pages/Home.aspx
A simple right clip, left click and it makes your image easy to use on the internet. Your stone will not get any higher than 550 without oven tricks. I place my dough balls in the fridge right after kneading.
Don

[chickenparm]

Ok.  So if I did that my machine does an 11.5 min knead; 15 min rest; 13.5 min knead, 50 min rise.  So do you think I should try letting it go through the knead cycles and instead of 50 min final rise, take it out about 20 min.?
I was thinking to take it out after the first knead cycle and let it sit on the counter for 1/2 or 1 hour.  What do you think?

You may want to try both ideas for yourself and experiments.

Its the only sure fire way you're going to see a difference for yourself,instead of wondering if it may or may not do the job.

That said,Yes to your first question,as per My suggestion like before,first is to let the dough go through its full kneading cycle that included the rest too and when its done final kneading,let it rise in the machine for 20-30 minutes.Do not take it out between knead/rest cycles.You want to see if this dough is going to rise in the machine the way it was meant to.

The warmer inside the machine should cause/help the dough to become a little larger,smoother and somewhat silkier looking.If the dough is unchanged at all during the rise period,leave it in for the next 30 minutes.Thats the advantage of the machine over a dough sitting out on the counter.The warmer or heating element speeds up the process.

If that works,all will be solved.The yeast will be working and then you can cold rise it for a time in the fridge.
Reminder,Do not use very cold water either.Room temp is perfect or maybe cooler tap water.Keep the water for the dough room temp.See if that helps.I bet if you used warm water, the dough would really grow,possibly too much.Experiment is key.

There is nothing like the smell and taste of a good dough,crust when you make it Tuesday or weds,and let it cold rise until ready for use on Friday.Its wonderful and has a lot more flavor.


 

[Jackie Tran]

Regina, thanks for providing more details about your ideal pizza.  The type of crust you describe I think happens to be the type of crust a lot of members prefer including myself.   I think between the lot of us, we should be able to help you find your goto recipe.  

Re: IR thermometer.  Highly recommended.  You can find other uses for it around the house as well.  

Re: Resizing and posting pics.  Or even when making long posts, it's a good idea to highlight and copy before you hit the "post" button.  If you lose your post, you can recopy it.  You can also type a long response in a word doc and copy it over right before sending.   I have lost many long posts b/c of pictures being too big, or losing my internet connection, etc.  

Since you are working with a BM and Bill's recipe and method, I'll hold off on making further suggestions for now.   Please do update us with your next few bakes and if you are getting your desired results.  If you continue to have problems, then we can look at tweaking the recipe or method.  I'm sure you'll be getting much more consistent results, especially if you stick with one recipe and one method and make small changes.  

Bill makes a good point about experimentation.  The advice and suggestions you recieve here are based on member's own experiments.  Your preferences may differ widely and you'll come to know them with each new bake.   Just be patient and I promise your pies will get better and better.  

Chau

[Moondance]

So it's Wed evening.  I am going to mix in my BM the following for 2 pies

[Moondance]

ok, something went wrong there.  Here we go again.

It's Wed evening and i am mixing in my bm for Fri night bake;

100% FLOUR
63% WATER
0.20 idy FLEISHMANS BREAD MACHINE
1.75% salt Celtic Sea Salt
2% EVOO
1% sugar, organic pure cane
two dough balls at 17.67 oz ea

I am waiting for the water to get room temp.  dry ingredients are in a bowl mixed as per chick parm instructions.  Oil is in the BM waiting for the water, then the pre mixed dry will be added.  I will let it go thru the cycles but take it out at about 20 min in the final rise.  I'll see how the dough ball looks.  If it looks beautiful, I guess I will go ahead and put it in my oiled bowl, seal it and slip it into the fridge.  I was wondering if any of you agree that by keeping it on the stone, it over cooks.  I am guessing yes.  But I like hot pizza, that is why I tend to do it.  I have a stainless steel pizza pan that I will slide the pizza onto and slice it.  Then I  will sometimes put it back on the stone to stay hot.  Mistake?  Thanks so much for your suggestions. I feel like I'm going to get this figured out with your help.   

[Jackie Tran]

Yes keeping a cooked pizza on a hot stone for any longer than 1 minute will cook and dry it out.   Once the pizza comes off the stone, I place it on a rack and allow to cool for 30seconds to 1 minute before cutting.   Eating hot pizza is best, but it will cool the more slices you eat.  Well that depends on how fast you can eat the slices.        

If the pie has cooled or the bottom has softened up, then I will occasionally place the remaining slices back onto the hot stone but will leave it there only 1 minute or so and then remove and eat. 

If you are putting your baked pizza on a SS pan and then the pan on the stone, that may be okay.  Hard to say as I haven't tried that.   Your pies maybe dry or tough on the outset prior to placing it back on the hot stone from overkneading, so it's hard to say if the stone is to blame for drying out the crumb. 

Chau

[chickenparm]

Regina,
What size is the dough balls for? I was just curious.When I make a dough for a smaller size,the rise does not seem very significant like it does when I make a larger dough say 16-17 inch dough ball.It can play tricks on your eyes and sometimes look like its not working as much.

Hope your new experiments work out for ya.

 

[Moondance]

Things didn't quite go as planned last night.  I used the warmer water, I think it was about 65 degrees, mixed as per chickparm's method.  I let it go through the knead cycles and took it out of the BM.  I divided and placed them in my oiled rubbermaid containers and planned to let them rise about 30 min prior to going into the fridge.  I guess I forgot to set my timer and I proceeded to forget about them and then fell asleep watching TV.  So upon waking up about midnight (about 4 hours later) my poor doughballs had definitely risen and dried out on the top.  I was too tired to deal with it much so I just deflated and put the lids on.  This morning they were trying to escape out of the containers again.  I gently reballed and put them back in the fridge.  Should I toss them and try again tonight or should I go ahead and plan to bake tomorrow night?

Thanks Don for the link to the image reducer.  I downloaded it but when I right click the jpg file, it doesn't give me the option to reduce it.  I'll try to figure this out yet. 

I hope I am attaching 3 pics. 
Dough coming out the BM
Dough divided and into containers to rise for a short time on the counter
Dough the next morning 

Ok, I'm just going to attach one pic of the dough this morning.  The file is 64kb for one pic. 

[Moondance]

Regina,
What size is the dough balls for? I was just curious.When I make a dough for a smaller size,the rise does not seem very significant like it does when I make a larger dough say 16-17 inch dough ball.It can play tricks on your eyes and sometimes look like its not working as much.

Hope your new experiments work out for ya.

 

It's for 14-15 inch.  This dough was quite wet in the BM which I don't recall was ever the case before.  I had to add about 4 finger pinches of flour and it was still quite sticky coming out of the BM.  It was not a firm dough ball in the end.  Here is hopefully a pic of it coming out of the BM

[Jackie Tran]

Well at least now you get to see how water temps and higher fermentation temps affect yeast activity.  Not sure if that dough will make it till tomorrow night.  It looks about ready to use at the time of that photo.  

If you want pizza tomorrow night, I'd make up a new batch but don't toss these balls.  Save a few to see what happens.  Bake one up and compare it.  Try to see the connection between amount of yeast, temps, extended cold fermentation, flavor, etc.

BTW, that dough looks great.  Divide, ball, and fridge.

Chau

[Moondance]

Well at least now you get to see how water temps and higher fermentation temps affect yeast activity.  Not sure if that dough will make it till tomorrow night.  It looks about ready to use at the time of that photo.  

If you want pizza tomorrow night, I'd make up a new batch but don't toss these balls.  Save a few to see what happens.  Bake one up and compare it.  Try to see the connection between amount of yeast, temps, extended cold fermentation, flavor, etc.

BTW, that dough looks great.  Divide, ball, and fridge.

Chau

I will make up a new batch tonight.  That was my thinking too.    I think I may go ahead and bake one of last night's attempt this evening.  Good idea.

[buceriasdon]

Regina, One thing I would do is change the camera setting to small image. That will help reduce the image size. I see Image Optimizer did work. I concur, that dough will be less than optimum for Friday night but do bake it with just sauce and cheese for comparison to newer dough. Hey, things happen, it's just dough.
Don

[pdog]

Hi Regina,

I have noticed the one of the biggest factors in cold ferment doughs is the time period between mixing, balling and refrigerating.

A time window of as little as 15-20mins will make all of the difference in the world.  For example I made dough on Monday night, and was going to cold ferment for Friday's pizza night.  I got tied up on the phone, and my normal 4-5 day cold ferment (bare minimum time frame) rise dough was left on the counter 20 minutes at room temp.  Needless to say..... i had to make pizza last night!  There was no way the dough would have lasted, and not have over fermented by Friday.

I have to change my dough approach depending on how many days I need the dough to sit in the fridge.  Kneading, and fermentation take a lot of trial and error to get the right mixture so the dough will work for your oven, and your home set up.

I normally use room temp to cold water, with little kneading <5mins, and minimal room temp exposure to make my dough.  Then its balled and off to the fridge for 5-7 days. This allows time to do the kneading for the dough, and a cold temp to retard yeast activity.  At the end of 5 days there will be small yeast bubbles in the bottom of the dough with this process.

If I need dough for the next day..... its luke warm water, and a 30 minute room temp rise, and then balled and off to the fridge.  There will be small to medium yeast bubbles in the bottom of the dough within 4 hours.

Its takes a lot of tasty failures to achieve a great pie!

[Moondance]

Hi Regina,

I have noticed the one of the biggest factors in cold ferment doughs is the time period between mixing, balling and refrigerating.

A time window of as little as 15-20mins will make all of the difference in the world.  For example I made dough on Monday night, and was going to cold ferment for Friday's pizza night.  I got tied up on the phone, and my normal 4-5 day cold ferment (bare minimum time frame) rise dough was left on the counter 20 minutes at room temp.  Needless to say..... i had to make pizza last night!  There was no way the dough would have lasted, and not have over fermented by Friday.

I have to change my dough approach depending on how many days I need the dough to sit in the fridge.  Kneading, and fermentation take a lot of trial and error to get the right mixture so the dough will work for your oven, and your home set up.

I normally use room temp to cold water, with little kneading <5mins, and minimal room temp exposure to make my dough.  Then its balled and off to the fridge for 5-7 days. This allows time to do the kneading for the dough, and a cold temp to retard yeast activity.  At the end of 5 days there will be small yeast bubbles in the bottom of the dough with this process.

If I need dough for the next day..... its luke warm water, and a 30 minute room temp rise, and then balled and off to the fridge.  There will be small to medium yeast bubbles in the bottom of the dough within 4 hours.

Its takes a lot of tasty failures to achieve a great pie!

Thanks pdog.  The longer I keep trying to figure it out, the more I realize how complex pizza making is.  But it's a fun and as you say tasty journey.  That's good information and I will start paying a lot more attention to the water temps and rise factors. 

What do you use to mix your dough with only 5 min of kneading?

[chickenparm]

It's for 14-15 inch.  This dough was quite wet in the BM which I don't recall was ever the case before.  I had to add about 4 finger pinches of flour and it was still quite sticky coming out of the BM.  It was not a firm dough ball in the end.  Here is hopefully a pic of it coming out of the BM

The dough looks good to me there.! Making good progress as well.Now for sure you are getting your rise out of the dough.Its too bad you fell asleep before putting it away!

My dough sometimes comes out a bit stickier than other times,maybe its the weather or the humidity, and I use a little more bench flour as well to remove it from the bread machine.I don't want the ball to get firm or tight,it should be very soft,almost baby bottom soft when you put a little flour on it so it doesn't feel sticky anymore.

Am very glad to see the progress you just made.It seems so complex but its not.Once you dial in how the dough making works in the machine,you will produce nearly the same thing every time.

 

[Moondance]

I baked one of the over=risen dough balls tonight.  It was not great.  It did not strech out like usual so and it cooked up thicker than I like.  It tasted ok and the rim was puffy but a bit too chewy overall.  I removed it from the stone to my ss pizza pan.  I cooked it at 550 for about 8 min on the bottom rack and it still did not look quite done so I moved it to the top rack for about 2 min.

I mixed up another batch for tomorrow night.

flour 100%
water 60%
IDY 0.3 %
Salt 2.0%
oil 2.0%
sugar 2.0%

one dough ball 14" 15.39 OZ

i took it out after the first knead cycle about 12 min.  I did not have to add any flour or water and I will let it sit on the counter about 1/2 hour for bake tomorrow night.  It came out firmer than last nights dough.  Maybe I mis-measured last night.  I can post pics tomorrow from work. My computer at home is slow speed mountain connection.  In town I have high speed.

Timer just went off and I did not notice much rise in the doughafter about 1/2 hour.  I sealed it and put it in the fridge. 

[Essen1]

I baked one of the over=risen dough balls tonight.  It was not great.  It did not strech out like usual so and it cooked up thicker than I like.  It tasted ok and the rim was puffy but a bit too chewy overall.  I removed it from the stone to my ss pizza pan.  I cooked it at 550 for about 8 min on the bottom rack and it still did not look quite done so I moved it to the top rack for about 2 min.

I mixed up another batch for tomorrow night.

flour 100%
water 60%
IDY 0.3 %
Salt 2.0%
oil 2.0%
sugar 2.0%

one dough ball 14" 15.39 OZ

I took it out after the first knead cycle about 12 min.  I did not have to add any flour or water and I will let it sit on the counter about 1/2 hour for bake tomorrow night.  It came out firmer than last nights dough.  Maybe I mis-measured last night.  I can post pics tomorrow from work. My computer at home is slow speed mountain connection.  In town I have high speed.

Timer just went off and I did not notice much rise in the doughafter about 1/2 hour.  I sealed it and put it in the fridge.  

Regina,

Do you have a pic of the latest pie you just made?

When I look at your formula, might first thought was "Too much oil & salt".  Your doughball was 436gr. and when I ran those numbers through the calculator it came out to this:

Flour (100%): Water (60%): IDY (0.3%): Salt (2%): Oil (2%): Sugar (2%): Total (166.3%):

262.18 g  |  9.25 oz | 0.58 lbs 157.31 g  |  5.55 oz | 0.35 lbs 0.79 g | 0.03 oz | 0 lbs | 0.26 tsp | 0.09 tbsp 5.24 g | 0.18 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.94 tsp | 0.31 tbsp 5.24 g | 0.18 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.17 tsp | 0.39 tbsp 5.24 g | 0.18 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.32 tsp | 0.44 tbsp 436 g | 15.38 oz | 0.96 lbs | TF = N/A

IF that is your formula above...I suggest that you might want to lower the salt amount, lower the oil amount and keep the sugar the same. Salt is known as an inhibitor to yeast activity and oil can make the crust too pliable. It can also prevent the flour from absorbing all the water.

What kind of mixer are you using?

[pdog]

Thanks pdog.  The longer I keep trying to figure it out, the more I realize how complex pizza making is.  But it's a fun and as you say tasty journey.  That's good information and I will start paying a lot more attention to the water temps and rise factors.  

What do you use to mix your dough with only 5 min of kneading?

Hi,

I use a Kitchen Aid mix, or the stretch and fold method.

I might even go so far as to say I mix my pizza, and not knead.  I keep my dough very wet right up to the last minute.  I use a wet dough for my pizza 68-70% hydration and 3% of oil.  My dough will look like a thick pancake batter up to the last 1/4 of flour is added.  Even then it does not form a ball in the mixer and does not pull away from the bowl. I even use the paddle attachment until the last one minute of mixing.

I would spend sometime and read through this website..... It has a lot of info and technique listed out in one place:

http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

This site got me to make a pizza that actual looked like pizza!  This forum has taken me from this site to the next level.  Jeff's pizza is very specific to a high heat approach to pizza making, and this site will help balance his high heat approach with a traditional oven approach.  I have a standard GE gas oven, and with some creative fire block placement I can achieve 750-800 degrees with the thermometer registering only 480-500 F.

Here is a picture of how wet my dough is once all the flour is mixed into the dough.  It may be surprising to see!

[pdog]

Thanks pdog.  The longer I keep trying to figure it out, the more I realize how complex pizza making is.  But it's a fun and as you say tasty journey.  That's good information and I will start paying a lot more attention to the water temps and rise factors.  

What do you use to mix your dough with only 5 min of kneading?

The picture of above is the stage I spoke about yesterday regarding time before balling.  If I need the dough within two days I will let the dough sit in the mixing bowl for 20-30 mins in this stage.  Then pour the dough, yes POUR the dough, onto a heavily floured surface and ball, and straight into the fridge.

If I want 6-7 day cold ferment dough, once I stop the mixing.... its balled and into the fridge with 2-5 minutes! This pizza was cooked in my home over on a simple stone with fire block placed on the rack above it.