dough was TOO easy to open

[Tman1]

I'm wondering about an 'issue' I had last weekend. I did a small bake in my oven for a wedding tasting and the dough was actually worked well.. too well in my opinion. While I'm decent at open in a pizza, it opened almost too fast creating, IMO, a center that was too thin.

Dough specs:

100% flour (75% 00, 25% AP)
61% cold water (directly out of tap)
2.5% salt
1% olive oil
0.075 yeast

I mixed this in my KA (which I'm beginning to dislike more and more) for about 5-7 minutes. I did notice the dough seemed to climb the s-hook rather fast, and I stopped the machine twice to scrape the dough down. I let it sit on the counter for 90 minutes, then into the fridge til the next morning (14 hours?)... divide & ball... back into the fridge for 6 hours, then out for 2.5 hours until we used them.

When I picked up the balls they were very loose and extremely easy to manipulate.

Ideas? Comments?

[pjt]

same thing happened to me easily, it was so easy to open that it was hard to handle

i blamed it on two things: hotter than normal room temp, due to hoter tempatures, and higher humidity

i could be wrong id like to see what others have to say

[dellavecchia]

Your dough may have been slack due to little gluten building or structure from lack of fermentation. Cold water, combined with cold fermentation and small amounts of yeast may not be optimum for sufficient fermentation.

John

[Pete-zza]

Tman1,

Can you tell us what kind of yeast you used? And did the dough rise normally and otherwise seem OK?

Peter

[TXCraig1]

A couple more questions:

Do you always use a large % of 00?
Do you always add oil?
Was the dough stickier or tackier than normal too?
Did it feel different from normal when you took it out of the mixer or when you balled it? Or just when opening?

[Tman1]

Pete:
I used Red Star ADY yeast. Except for it crawling up the dough hook early in the mixing bowl, everything else seemed to be fine.

TX:
Yes, I like to mix flours as I feel the finished look is more appealing to the masses and less chance of having explain excessive leoparding. (and to be truthful it gives some grace to the oven man.
I don't always but a local guy who makes darn good pizza encouraged me to use it.
It was stickier, yes.
I would say it didn't seem different than usual.

I would say that I now make most of my dough in the bakeries Hobart, so I'm usually using a bigger mixer and way more dough. I needed to make just a few (8 pies) for a wedding tasting and used the KA. I don't have to solve the problem necessarily, but I am interested in understanding the possible cause.

[The Gizz]

Tman

Do you notice any differences between using the KA and the Hobart? Do you need to adjust your mixing time with the Hobart?


thanks
Tee

[Pete-zza]

Tman1,

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe you meant to say that you used 0.75% ADY, not 0.075%. I mention this since eight 210-gram dough balls would use only 2/10th of a teaspoon (1/5th teaspoon) of ADY (or 3/100th of a teaspoon for a single dough ball), as shown below:

00/AP Flour Blend (100%): Water (61%): ADY (0.075%): Salt (2.5%): Olive Oil (1%): Total (164.575%): Single Ball:

1020.81 g  |  36.01 oz | 2.25 lbs 622.69 g  |  21.96 oz | 1.37 lbs 0.77 g | 0.03 oz | 0 lbs | 0.2 tsp | 0.07 tbsp 25.52 g | 0.9 oz | 0.06 lbs | 4.57 tsp | 1.52 tbsp 10.21 g | 0.36 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2.27 tsp | 0.76 tbsp 1680 g | 59.26 oz | 3.7 lbs | TF = N/A 210 g | 7.41 oz | 0.46 lbs

The above formulation suggests that with 0.075% ADY, you could not have achieved the fermentation results you achieved.

So, assuming 0.75% ADY, here is a possible explanation for the overextensible dough you experienced. First, the large amount of ADY (0.75%) and the high hydration value you used in relation to the two flours you used (61%), along with the 90 minutes of warmup time before refrigerating, may have resulted in a dough that was overproofed by the time you used it. The Caputo 00 Pizzeria flour has a rated absorption value of only 55-57% (Reply 17 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,2951.msg25328.html#msg25328). A basic all-purpose flour, such as the King Arthur all-purpose flour, has a rated absorption value of around 60%. However, with a 75/25 blend of 00 and all-purpose flour, the hydration is skewed much more closely to the 00 rated absorption value (FYI, from a protein standpoint, the blend has a value of 11.925%, which is close to the midpoint protein value of the Caputo 00 flour). When you add in the wetting effect of the 1% olive oil, the "effective" hydration of your dough was closer to 62%. If you had chosen to skip the 90-minute warmup time before refrigerating, I think you might have sidestepped the overproofing of the dough, even with the roughly 62% effective hydration value. Alternatively, if you had used less than 0.75% ADY but kept the 90-minute warmup time, or if you had used a lower effective hydration value while staying with 0.75% ADY and the 90-minute warmup time, you might also have sidestepped the overproofing of the dough.

It is also possible that your dough was underkneaded to begin with. Caputo flour requires a fair amount of kneading to develop the small amount of its gluten. However, I assign a lower probability to this scenario. I would assign a higher probability to an overfermentation/overproofing scenario as discussed above. I think with a few more experiments, you should be able to achieve a less extensible dough.

Peter

[TXCraig1]

My guess is underkneading. Probably the dough climed the hook and a good bit of the time in the mixer was not accomplishing anything.

CL

[Tman1]

Gizz- I can't tell if that's a serious question.     There is a world of difference between the 2 and it does require different mixing times, yes.

Pete- Your assumptions pertaining to amount of yeast are correct. Our house is not very warm.. in fact it takes 3 times as much time for something to 'rise' in this house. I only kept the dough out since I was trying to get it moving. I used flour out of the freezer, and water out of the tap so the dough temp would have been fairly low. How warm would you expect it would need to be within in the house to cause over-proofing that fast? The thermostat says 70, but that part of the house is a little cooler.. again why I thought I could leave it out for a small jump start.
 
TX (& Pete): Truly, this (underkneading) seems more likely.. due to the fact it climbed the hook and didn't seem to really 'knead'. As Pete stated, if Caputo needs more knead time, I just don't think it got a lot. As mentioned earlier, I stopped the KA to scrape it down and try to re-start some proper kneading but it just clung to the hook. I even tried cranking it up in speed to create some movement. 

I'm still interested if you have anything else to share. This info, along with the real life experience is excellent training. I did purchase a Bosch mixer on eBay and will sell the KA. I was so happy when I got it, but now it seems.. wrong.

[Pete-zza]

Tman1,

You didn't give any specific ingredient quantities but you did say that you had to make eight dough balls. I got the 210-gram dough ball size from another thread in which you discussed a similar dough recipe. If the number and weights of dough balls mentioned above are correct, then that would mean about 3.7 pounds of dough. Although your knead time seemed short for such a dough batch size, you indicated that you did the division and reballed after an estimated 14 hours of cold fermentation, which was then followed by six more hours of cold fermentation, and finally a temper period of 2 1/2 hours. And while you you indicated that the dough was sticky, which I would have expected given the hydration value you used, you said that the dough otherwise didn't seem different than usual. That is why I leaned more on the overproofing theory than the underkneading one. Also, 90 minutes at room temperature, followed by about 20 hours of cold fermentation and another 2 1/2 hours of tempering at room temperature seemed to me to give the dough a lot of opportunity for biochemical gluten development. I knew from your opening post that you used cold tap water, but did not know until your last post that you used the flour right from the freezer. It would have been helpful to know the finished dough temperature of your dough but I have worked before with flour from the freezer and cold water and found that they did not materially lower the finished dough temperature. Part of the reason is that cold doughs are harder to knead and can take more knead time as a result, with a concomitant rise in the finished dough temperature. That might have been a factor in your case. Since using cold flour and water and using a warm-up period thereafter operate at cross purposes, you might ultimately just use flour and water at normal temperatures. 

As far as an ideal room temperature is concerned, I would personally be happy with about 70 degrees F. At that temperature, a temper time of about 1 1/2-2 hours is good for me. As you might expect, that temper time can be extended or shortened depending on the time of year.

It would be easy for you to rule out the kneading issue by repeating your dough making exercise but give the dough more kneading time. You might note the finished dough temperature in case that becomes material or useful for further diagnosis.

Peter

[Tman1]

You're a good egg, ya' know that?

I just so happened to have the perfect amount of flour in the bag which was in the freezer. I didn't really give it a lot of thought (to be truthful) on how that might affect the dough kneading process or the final temperature prior to putting in the fridge. I just new I didn't have as long a period of time in the fridge as I would've liked prior to balling so I thought I'd let it sit on the counter to help it along.  Generally I am using room temp flour.

[Pete-zza]

Tman1,

I do a lot of creation of dough formulations but in many respects diagnosing and fixing existing dough formulations is more intellectually stimulating and challenging. So, I hope you will let us know what changes get you to the promised land.

Peter