Bob,
I know that you posted recently about some MM clone doughs at the Mellow Mushroom thread. Is your concern over the MM dough balls that you discussed starting at Reply 973 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3940.msg166995.html#msg166995? If so, it sounds like you were given dough balls that were either frozen or defrosted but still cold. If the dough balls were frozen when you got them, it would take several hours at room temperature to defrost, warm up and start to rise. If the dough balls were defrosted when you got them, but still cold and in ball form, they would look dense and without a lot of volume. It would take about an hour to two hours at normal room temperature for such dough balls to warm up and expand. Depending on the amount of yeast used in the dough, the dough balls might be quite gassy with signs of bubbling in the dough, especially as you start to open up the dough balls to form skins. Commercially produced frozen dough balls contain more yeast than fresh doughs with essentially the same overall formulation and they can ferment pretty fast. However, I think you would have to go a long time, perhaps several hours at room temperature, for the dough balls to overferment. To slow down that fermentation, you would have to put the dough balls back in the refrigerator. I think you could also refreeze them. As far as flavor is concerned, doughs that have been fermented for a long time will have more byproducts of fermentation. Those are good because they contribute to the taste and flavor of the finished crust as well as to the texture of the crust.
If your question was respect to some other dough, please let me know and I will try to give you a more generic response. In fact, I see that Craig already did so.
Peter
