Author Topic: My Neapolitan Progress (Read 17885 times)

dellavecchia · « **Reply #80 on:** January 12, 2012, 06:13:45 AM »

Jordan - Great documentation and experiment. Side B does not look as smooth as it should after an autolyse and two stretch and fold sessions separated by about 15 minutes each. And your initial mix might have been more thorough to make the mass homogenous - it was crumbly, and not fully incorporated. But I am really interested to see your results. I bet you are having fun!

John

chrisgraff · « **Reply #81 on:** January 12, 2012, 09:49:39 AM »

Quote from: TXCraig1 on January 10, 2012, 07:38:31 PM

I can get Frantoia locally, and it is also excellent - not quite as good as the San Daminao (IMHO) - but excellent nonetheless.

CL

Here are two other fantastic olive oils:

Piano Grillo - buttery texture, mild olive flavor. This Sicilian family takes pride in their work!

http://www.pianogrillo.it/

California Olive Ranch Limited Reserve - lighter in texture, strong pepper finish. I like this one A LOT.

http://shop.californiaoliveranch.com/

PS I'll have to try the San Damiano

etheil · « **Reply #82 on:** January 12, 2012, 10:54:17 AM »

As far as oil goes, I second the California Olive Ranch choice. I use the Arbequina oil which has a floral/fruity aroma and a peppery finish. One thing you have to look out for is how the oil smells/tastes when you heat it. I was shown a method by the Pizzaiola at Antica Pizzeria where he poured a small amount of oil in the palm of his hand then rubbed his hands together to create friction and heat the oil (rub hands together for about 10-15 seconds.) We did it with the oil for both the pizzas and salads (both extra virgin.) Both oils had a very good flavor when at room temperature, but the pizza oil became fruitier and much more intense, while the salad oil had a strange smell, pungent and sharp.

Eric

Jordan · « **Reply #83 on:** January 15, 2012, 02:40:22 AM »

Thanks John. So.. As for my experiment. I have the data, but unfortunately my pizza stone cracked and I need to save money up for my WFO I plan to get in early march. So I need to cut back on my spending money and I will start selling some useless stuff in my house to get some extra cash in my pockets. Basically, I will just explain my experiment and Im sure most of you will understand. So.. For 500g of flour I used .5g of fresh yeast. A Bulk ferment of about 23 hours and a balled ferment of 4 hours. It seemed to be good timing and the temperature in my house was steady the whole time. The dough was 62% hydration which is the highest I ever worked with and it was very difficult for me..

So I am wondering if I should keep working with dough that has this much hydration, or should I cut back? My plans arent to be cooking many pizzas, since my stone cracked Im just focusing on practicing making dough. I have read that Da Michele is rumored to use 64.5% hydration, which is quite high in terms of what I have worked with. I will work on a 60% hydration batch soon and see how that feels. Ive worked with 59% hydration a couple times, so Im sure it wont feel much different for 60%. I noticed that even using a small amount of yeast (.5g = 1%) my dough was still filled with bubbles when I went to push it out. Actually some huge bubbles. When I pushed out my dough to make the cornicione, the bubbles were really visible and when I did the slap and stretch the bubbles got even bigger around the edges.. I didnt understant. My cornicione had nice crumb and it was very airy, but the bubbles were way too big, and when you see guys push out the dough, it barely looks like they make a rim around the pizza, it just looks completely flat and the areas that dont have sauce puff up.. I am somewhat confused about this and I will investigate further. From this experiment, I am thinking that this amount of ferment time is good because my dough was super soft. I am not sure if that had to deal with the high hydration or how I kneaded it or the ambient temperature, but it was nice, besides the huge air bubbles.

I will make a batch of dough tomorrow as follows.

500g Caputo 00 Pizza Farina
300g (60%) H20 (Tap between 68-72f)
14g Salt (2.8%)
.20g Fresh Yeast

The 500g datum point gives me 3 balls around 250-270g each, so I like this number for tests. I will be using 60% hydration for reasons I stated above. I am bringing my salt percentage up a little because I read it controls yeast activity, and thats something Im having a little issue with. And I am going down from .50g to .20g of fresh yeast to see the differences it makes with the same ambient temperature and fermentation times. I like the 20-24 hour bulk fermentation time, and I like the short balled time because it works for me in terms of the bake. I can make the dough and around the same time next day ball it up and it will be ready in time for dinner a couple hours later. As for my differences in the 4 hour balled dough to the 16 hour balled dough, it was very unnoticeable besides maybe the longer balled dough was easier to push out. But, even being 40 hours of fermentation, it was not over fermented and didnt have any huge bubbles popping out of the balls of dough like my last batch that had 3g of fresh yeast and even my batch with 1g of fresh yeast reacted in a similar way when it hit that fermentation time.

I stumbled upon a really interesting video of Enzo Coccia making dough, its a different technique then I usually see. But, its interesting indeed. Here's the link.

Here's a website that has his method in text. And Im pretty sure it matches up with the one he uses in the video.

http://www.woodstone-corp.com/cooking_naples_style_dough.htm

The recipe.

Water (Semi-warm 75-80°F)     1 liter 34 oz    53%
Yeast    (Compressed Cake)     5g     0.2 oz    0.3%
Sea Salt          50g     1.8 oz    2.8%
Caputo Flour (High quality protein)    1.8 kg 4 lbs    100%

Yields: 14 Dough Balls / 200g / 7 oz

He uses a lot of yeast. Doesnt have a bulk fermentation, basically he balls right after he finishes kneading and his dough is ready in 4-8 hours. And watching his kneading technique, it doesnt seem as if he is trapping any air into his dough (Im aware videos and pictures are deceiving) but he is very rough with his dough, even in the instructions he says to slam the dough against the table and even in the video you can see him doing this at the 5 min mark. It seems as if he is doing a bunch of things I normally have not seen; like dissolving the yeast into the salt water before adding flour, which I know wont do a whole lot especially to commercial cake yeast, but still.. Not something I normally see.

So how do you guys feel about Enzo's dough video and how he prepares it? What comments do you have towards it; negative or positive?
Have any of you ate pizza Enzo has made? Why is his technique so different from everyone else's?

I am interested in giving some of what he does a try, but it will be something i would love to hear from you guys first before I do so!

I will post some pictures of the end of my experiment, but as I said, the pizza stone broke, so no bakes for me $:-\$

The first picture is my new Sicilian Sea Salt, then the bulk dough in different stages, balled, and then my dough before dressing!

Enjoy!

dellavecchia · « **Reply #84 on:** January 15, 2012, 08:30:05 AM »

Jordan - dissolving the yeast in the brine is the standard way of making Neapolitan dough. Enzo's dough is standard across the board. Try it out and see what it tastes like.

John

Jordan · « **Reply #85 on:** January 16, 2012, 09:10:52 AM »

Any ideas why I got so many huge air bubbles in my cornicione when I pushed out my dough? If you look at my pictures above, my crust was all air, which is what the cornicione is supposed to be, but when I see the popular guys in Naples do it the crust looks paper thin all around. Any idea as to why this happened?

And if you didn't see my recipe, I used..

500g Caputo 00 farina
310g h20 (62% hydration)
13.5g salt (2.7%)
.5g levito fresco

Feedback would be appreciated, thanks

dellavecchia · « **Reply #86 on:** January 16, 2012, 09:34:48 AM »

Quote from: Jordan on January 16, 2012, 09:10:52 AM

Any ideas why I got so many huge air bubbles in my cornicione when I pushed out my dough?

Jordan - If you want less air bubbles, then use the dough earlier. At .1% yeast, at your room temp, and after 27 hours, that is what your dough was in terms of fermentation state. Or you can reduce the amount of yeast, which you stated you would do.

If you want to do the standard commercial workflow they do in Naples to get what you visually see as flat skins, then you would use a mixer to mix the dough to a moderate level, use more yeast, and use the dough the same day (around 7-8 hours fermentation time).

Doing a long fermentation dough with small amounts of yeast really takes practice and know-how. I would stick with the recipe you are using, but cut the bulk down to 12 hours and ball for 8 or so. But I do not know what your room temp is, so the exact number of fermentation hours will have to assessed from visual inspection of the dough.

John

Jordan · « **Reply #87 on:** January 16, 2012, 11:56:36 PM »

Quote from: dellavecchia on January 16, 2012, 09:34:48 AM

Jordan - If you want less air bubbles, then use the dough earlier. At .1% yeast, at your room temp, and after 27 hours, that is what your dough was in terms of fermentation state. Or you can reduce the amount of yeast, which you stated you would do.

If you want to do the standard commercial workflow they do in Naples to get what you visually see as flat skins, then you would use a mixer to mix the dough to a moderate level, use more yeast, and use the dough the same day (around 7-8 hours fermentation time).

Doing a long fermentation dough with small amounts of yeast really takes practice and know-how. I would stick with the recipe you are using, but cut the bulk down to 12 hours and ball for 8 or so. But I do not know what your room temp is, so the exact number of fermentation hours will have to assessed from visual inspection of the dough.

John

Thanks John, as always you have helpful things to offer. I wanted to learn to work with longer fermentations because I do not work at a pizzeria and have read that the caputo flour needs some time to "do its thing" in order to get good results; and I took your advice from things you stated on your earlier posts in my thread about longer bulk fermentation times and short balled times. After reading through Omids thread completely i saw he was using really small amounts of yeast in his early post, sometimes only .20g in a batch with almost 900g of flour.. And he was doing a fermentation around a day or so from what I remember, but of course I will read through again to confirm..

My house has a room temperature between 69-71f most days.

Jackie Tran · « **Reply #88 on:** January 17, 2012, 12:06:16 AM »

Jordan, just some thoughts. I know you want to try to stay as authentic as possible. But until you get that wfo, I'd probably save the Sicilian sea salt for when you get the dough down. Regular sea salt from Trader Joes for $1.50 a bottle will work just fine.

As for the WFO on ebay made in Portugal, one of our members Mathew has one and he makes really outstanding looking pies in it. I will try to find the thread for you. For home use the oven will be just fine. Member Larry (Thezaman) was also working on an inexpensive small wfo as well. That might be worth looking at.

John is right about decreasing your yeast and using your dough earlier. Another thing that will give you more airbubbles in the dough is doing a long bulk and short ball. Versus doing a short bulk, and long ball like Omid does. The reason is that when you ball late, you are adding more strength to the dough and that stronger gluten matrix will tent up the air bubbles better. You will get a puffier more aerated rim versus a dough that has a short bulk.

Chau

Jackie Tran · « **Reply #89 on:** January 17, 2012, 12:19:46 AM »

Here are the links...

Matt's Portuguese oven
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,8340.0.html

Some of his awesome pies from that oven
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,14038.0.html

Larry's Portable WFO
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,15712.0.html
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,16262.0.html

You should probably contact those members to get more info if you are interested.

Chau

Jordan · « **Reply #90 on:** January 18, 2012, 02:38:51 AM »

Thanks Chau! I actually got this salt because the company was offering free shipping, for my test dough now I use morton sea salt from spain.

Thanks for the links to the oven. I think I am set on the Forno Piccalo though, its a beautiful looking oven and I have more trust in a 3rd generation Sicilian Oven builder than, ya know... The other "guys"..

I was wondering why my cornicione was so airy and now it makes a lot of sense! I do like the way the dough feels when its balled late rather early. If I make dough and let it bulk for 1-2 hours its not as supple (for me) then a long bulk fermentation, but Im so new to this, I must experiment more. I should do another test of making 2 small batches of dough the same way but with a short 1-2 hour bulk ferment and one with a day long fermentation and bake em at the same time. Could be a lesson learned for sure!

Does anyone have any links to posts explaining how the dough should look or feel when its done being kneaded (hand kneaded preferably) I keep watching the Pasqual Makishima and Enzo Coccia dough making videos, but it seems like they dont handle the dough as slow and with as much finesse as a slow RPM fork or diving arms mixer. If I knew how the dough should feel then it would make everything a lot easier for me to understand what I should be looking for. Although this is probably a nearly impossible thing to capture in words, any bit of information could help! Thanks!

Jordan · « **Reply #91 on:** January 20, 2012, 02:08:08 PM »

So my last batch of dough was baked up and I had some pretty great results. Im not sure if I mentioned earlier what was going on with my baking, but the pizza stone I purchased cracked in half and not I have to bake on a pizza pan.. I have a really small stone on the highest rack of my oven, but its not big enough for me to slide a pizza on to it. So my method is, preheat oven to 550 with stone in for about an hour, broiler on for 20 min, slap out dough, put it on the pizza pan, dress it, and slide it under the broiler on top of the small stone. Bakes were done in about 2 min 30 sec. Not bad.. But im just trying to make pies with what I got.. Heres my latest dough recipe / "technique".

500g Flour
300g h2o (60% hy)
14g Salt (2.8%)
.20g Fresh Yeast

Dissolve salt in water, dissolve yeast in salt water, slowly mix in flour from a thin batter to a thick batter until dough forms, rest 5 min before kneading, knead for 2-3 min, rest 2 min, knead 2-3 min, bulk ferment for 21 hours.
Balled for 5 hours for first bake, and I will be doing another bake in a little that had a balled ferment of 22 hours (which is long, but I fell asleep and woke up late.. Oh well) So... The fermentation times are.

First batch Fermentation 21+5 = 26 hours fermentation
Second batch Fermentation 21 + 22 = 43 hours fermentation (this could be interesting...)

I used very little yeast though, and my dough was not as pancake like before I baked last night, so the only thing I really changed was lowering my yeast from .5g to .2g and I used the same fermentation time as the first bake. The dough had a little more give to it, but the bake results were so much more pleasing (even though its hard to judge in a home oven..)

Here's some pictures of the dough ball, and then I will post some pics of the pie! Im excited because you guys never seen my pies because I never post pictures. And just to let you know as a warning, my pies didnt charr on the bottom due to the set up I have with the pizza pan unfortunately.. But, it was a great tasting pie! Thats what counts!

Oh, and heres a video! Make sure to watch in HD!

As I said, bottom wasnt charred due to the pizza pan set up!

Jordan · « **Reply #92 on:** January 20, 2012, 02:09:15 PM »

Continued!

My friend enjoying the crumb as much as I did!

dellavecchia · « **Reply #93 on:** January 20, 2012, 02:18:36 PM »

Fantastic job Jordan! You really got some great results - the pie looked very soft and the crumb was definitely open. You also got some nice leoparding on one side of the pie. Try rotating it so you get an even bake. You are well on your way to making that Da Michele clone. Keep posting your results.

John

scott123 · « **Reply #94 on:** January 20, 2012, 03:50:42 PM »

Jordan, I think you've been blessed with a half decent broiler.

What's your vertical space between the small stone and broiler?

Also, did the broiler stay on during the entire bake?

Lastly, are you certain that this is Caputo pizzeria (blue or red bag) flour? It looks a little softer than the traditional Caputo.

TXCraig1 · « **Reply #95 on:** January 20, 2012, 05:01:02 PM »

Jordan, looking REALLY good. Great cornice structure and color on top!

Craig

bakeshack · « **Reply #96 on:** January 20, 2012, 05:25:41 PM »

I like the "leoparding" on half of the cornicione. Turning it once or twice during the bake will even it up. The crumb is excellent. Great job for someone without much NP pizza hours in his belt! It will only get better from here.

Marlon

Pizza Napoletana · « **Reply #97 on:** January 20, 2012, 05:33:38 PM »

Resplendent!

Jordan · « **Reply #98 on:** January 22, 2012, 10:12:45 PM »

Quote from: dellavecchia on January 20, 2012, 02:18:36 PM

Fantastic job Jordan! You really got some great results - the pie looked very soft and the crumb was definitely open. You also got some nice leoparding on one side of the pie. Try rotating it so you get an even bake. You are well on your way to making that Da Michele clone. Keep posting your results.

Thanks so much John! I really wish my old pizza stone didnt crack, it would of gave me some bottom charr, and the turn in the oven is def something I will work on in my next bake. Thank you so much for the kind words, and I appreciate the amount of help you have offered me with all my questions along this journey.

Quote from: scott123 on January 20, 2012, 03:50:42 PM

Jordan, I think you've been blessed with a half decent broiler.

What's your vertical space between the small stone and broiler?

Also, did the broiler stay on during the entire bake?

Lastly, are you certain that this is Caputo pizzeria (blue or red bag) flour? It looks a little softer than the traditional Caputo.

Hey Scott, the broiler is good, but I dont have a good stone unfortunately. And no mods done to my oven at all. The rack that the stone is on is the top one thats closest to the broiler, probably 3in or less from the broiler, but I will measure for you the next time I go to bake. The broiler was on through the whole bake, bake was done in about 2 min 30 sec and from what I remember I think the stone read a temp of about 730f. I bought a "repack" of 20 Ibs of Antimo Caputo 00 Pizzeria Flour (Blue Bag) featured here..

http://store.brickovenbaker.com/ingredients/antimo-caputo-00-pizzeria-flour-blue-bag-20-lbs?cPath=31_35

Does that mean the "softer" comment could be turned into a compliment? Hehe

Quote from: TXCraig1 on January 20, 2012, 05:01:02 PM

Jordan, looking REALLY good. Great cornice structure and color on top!

Thanks Craig! I really wish I would of waited another day to make dough using your tips and excellent information. The funny thing is I read all of Chau's WFO thread in the NY section and all of your thread here after I made this dough and I felt dumb for not checking those threads out sooner.. I learned so much from reading from them to apply to my own pasta. Thanks for the kind words! My next batch will be made with the technique we talked about! Thanks for all the help!

Quote from: bakeshack on January 20, 2012, 05:25:41 PM

I like the "leoparding" on half of the cornicione. Turning it once or twice during the bake will even it up. The crumb is excellent. Great job for someone without much NP pizza hours in his belt! It will only get better from here.

I appreciate that Marlon. I will turn, and work on my baking technique for sure. The crumb looks way better in the video; not sure if you watched that yet, but check it out and let me know how you feel about it!

Quote from: Pizza Napoletana on January 20, 2012, 05:33:38 PM

Resplendent!

Omid, this made my week.. Thank you so much for this picture, it truly inspires me to continue to work on my passion. Ive always enjoyed Nietzsche's work. I thank you the most for you have helped me so much with countless hours of teaching me not only about pizza napoletana, but about the philosophy behind it and it as an art form. Reading through your thread is always a joy and I always refer back to it for it is like a text book for Neapolitan Pizza. One day I will take a collection of posts you have made and patch them together to make a training tool I could apply in use for others. Thanks for helping me. And one day we shall make pizzas together and have a guitar jam! Sounds like a good time, eh?

Thanks to everyone for such nice things to say, you all help me. And I will continue to work on this and post my results, especially videos because they really capture the true essence some pictures cannot. I will be working on a batch tomorrow and I will post shortly after it goes for its bulk fermentation.

Here's an incredible video I found, not sure if you guys have seen this one yet, but its definitely a must see!

Documentario sulla pizza a Napoli - 1974

!

Enjoy!

andreguidon · « **Reply #99 on:** January 23, 2012, 06:15:17 AM »

Jordan, Thanks for that link, what an amazing part of History you have found!!