dough temp question

[pbspelly]

Tom,
In an earlier discussion you described a method you use when making pizza at home.  I've copied over what you wrote below.  I had two questions about it:

The home process you described did not involve using a stand mixer.  If I'm using a stand mixer, do you still generally recommend suspending Instant Rise yeast in a small amount of 100 degree water for ten minutes before adding it to flour?

Should the small amount of water for the yeast be 100 degrees regardless of what temperature the remainder of the water should be as calculated by the subtract-from-145 method?

thanks
Paul

Pete;
Good point. For home use, where we are trying to get a finished dough temperature in the 80 degree range, the procedure where we subtract the flour temperature from the number 145 seems to work pretty well. In any case, it sure beats the guess and by gosh method. So, simply take the temperature of the flour and subtract that from 145 to get the desired water temperature to give you a finished dough within the range of 80 to90F. which is quite workable when making pizzas at home. When I make my pizzas for demonstration at home, or for family enjoyment, I use this method for calculating the water temperature, and my mixer consists of a wood spoon and a suitably sized bowl. I suspend the yeast in a very small amount of water (100F) for 10-minutes if using instant dry or active dry yeast. If using compressed yeast, I just stir it into the water that I've added to the mixing bowl, then add the flour, followed by the salt, sugar (if called for), and then I begin stirring, until the mixture looks like wet oatmeal, then add the oil, and stir in for about 1-minute, I then turn the "paste" out onto a floured surface, making sure to scrape the bowl clean, I oil the bowl, the then scoop up the "dough" and kneed in the flour adhering to the outer surface (this just takes a few seconds) and then place the dough back into the oiled bowl where it is allowed to ferment at room temperature for anything from 2 to 5-hours. I then turn the dough (it now actually looks like a dough) out onto the bench with a little dusting flour and kneed the dough for about a minute, or so, adding just enough dusting flour to it to make a nice feeling dough. Then place back into the bowl to ferment again for 30-minutes, now turn out of the bowl into some dusting flour, and roll or hand toss the dough to desired size, dress and bake. This makes for a very rustic looking pizza with a lot of old world charm. Most people that I show this to are amazed at how little work is actually needed to make a great pizza.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor  

 
 

[The Dough Doctor]

Paul;
The answer to your questions are yes and yes. Home mixers just don't provide the mixing action that the larger mixers provide, so you are safe to hedge your bets by suspending the yeast, be it instant dry yeast, active dry yeast, compressed yeast, or instant rise yeast in a small portion of water (95 to 100F), leaving the remainder of the water at a lower (calculated)  temperature to adjust your finished dough temperature.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

[pbspelly]

Paul;
The answer to your questions are yes and yes. Home mixers just don't provide the mixing action that the larger mixers provide, so you are safe to hedge your bets by suspending the yeast, be it instant dry yeast, active dry yeast, compressed yeast, or instant rise yeast in a small portion of water (95 to 100F), leaving the remainder of the water at a lower (calculated)  temperature to adjust your finished dough temperature.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

I ended up needing four tablespoons of 100 degree water to suspend the yeast. I assume I should then subtract four tablespoons from the remainder in order to keep the proper water-to-flour ratio?

[The Dough Doctor]

Paul;
That is correct. Some might argue that some of that water is needed to meet the hydration requirements of the yeast, and that is correct. About 70% of the weight of the yeast is required to fully hydrate it. My feeling is that in a home made pizza or bread setting, we're now splitting hairs and making things more complex than they really need to be, so I just simplify things by saying to subtract the same amount from the dough water that you used to hydrate/suspend the dry yeast in. In short, if you used 4 tablespoons of water to hydrate/suspend the yeast, just remove 4 tablespoons of water from the dough water to keep everything in correct balance and it will be close enough for making dough. If we were making rocket fuel, well, that might be another matter.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor