Wine cooler Pizza

[Pizza3.14]

After trying to get a starter and a preferment incorporated into a dough I have been through several steps.  A sourdough starter from local yeast which did not get much flavor to Ischia starter that resulted in a flavorful pizza but the color was pale. 

After reading quite a bit my next step is to try using the Ischia starter as a preferment and giving it a warm fermentation, 60 degrees F exactly.  I found a used wine cooler that ranges from 45-63!  It's not big but can easily hold 6 dough balls in individual containers. 

I'm going to keep everything about the recipe the same from my original post except for the steady temp which is ~15 degrees cooler than the house temp.  I hope that this will slow down the yeast and allow for better browning. (where it is a normal oven I can't count on char for browning)  If this does not work I will start playing with the times, then possible look into either limiting the amount of preferment or natural sugars. 

 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,17458.0.html


My goal is to make a flavorful dough that browns up nice in a 585 oven made with starter. 
(maybe something like a Regina's or a PICCO in Boston. 
Where this isn't quite NY nor am I baking in 90sec so I put it in general pizza making. 

[Pizza3.14]

In order to make my preferment the same hydration level as the final dough I used:

A starter at 50/50 35.41%
Flour 43.63%
water 20.96%

For my two dough balls to be to be at .9TF and 14" round I needed 97.63g of preferment to get me 20% of the total weight of the flour.

below is the picture of the starter, flour, and water mixed to form the preferment. 

[atom]

That is a clever way to store you're dough balls. Glad to see you aren't making pizza with Smirnoff's like I originally thought when reading your title...

[Meatballs]

Ditto,  after reading the beer thread in Dough Doctor I thought somebody was taking the next illogical step and Champale was next, especially after reading the first line or so where the color was a problem.  I call them wine fridges and have 3, use them to age wine, beer, cheese but never tried dough... interesting.

Ron

[Pizza3.14]

I'm glad that you both were pleasantly surprised when I was not making pizza dough with wine coolers.  In hind sight, wine fridge, would have been far more appropriate a title.  I even had to laugh at myself a little after that one, especially because I did not intentionally want to create the confusion.     oh well wine cooler pizza it is. 

[Pizza3.14]

After my first attempt with the new set up I found that I might have swung the penjilum back the other way.  I had ok browning (a bit patchy) but the oven spring was lacking and the crumb tightened.  The flavor that I had on the last pizza was missing. 
 
I mixed the starter and let it set at 63-68 for ~6 hours (instead of 9)

Then I incorporated the preferment with the dough and mixed it, with a final dough temp of 85.  I then put it in the WINE FRIDGE for 8 hours at 63F.  I then weighed and balled the dough and let them set by the wood stove for 2 hours @ 68-71F. 

Again, I used 20% preferment to the weight of the flour.  KABF
The starter was very active before I used it, gaining 2"+ in 2 hours. 

I think I will have to lengthen the bulk ferment to gain more flavor and dough/crumb structure.  The only thing is I don't want to go back to no browning. 

1. bulk rise at 63F after the first 6 hours
2.  pie out of the oven
3. under side of pie (patchy browning)
4. crumb (pretty dense, taking on the gummy bread texture)

[Meatballs]

I add 0.25% sugar to my pizza dough recipe to improve the browning, I started at 0.5%, wife said I got too much and then backed it off to 0.25% and everybody was happy.  Might consider trying the same.  You'll have to individualize it for your oven and temps, it worked well for me and I use an unusual oven.

Ron

[dmcavanagh]

Ditto,  after reading the beer thread in Dough Doctor I thought somebody was taking the next illogical step and Champale was next, especially after reading the first line or so where the color was a problem.  I call them wine fridges and have 3, use them to age wine, beer, cheese but never tried dough... interesting.

Ron

You had me scarred also, I thought someone was hydrating their dough with bottled wine coolers!

[Pizza3.14]

I will be on hiatus for the next 6 weeks.  No pizza making/eating for lent (only primary producers).  I plan on reading quite a bit and focusing on a more specific plan of attack upon my return.