Jonas,
A lot of people mistakingly think that this forum is a recipe forum, or should be--with recipes that are standalone, completely self contained and complete in every detail as one might find in a cookbook. That perception is fully understandable since there are literally hundreds of dough recipes and formulations on this forum. That said, it would be nice and convenient to have recipes and formulations that are like those that might be found in cookbooks but that is not the mission of this forum. A lot of the work and the recipes and formulations on this forum represents original work and has an evolutionary aspect. That is one of the reasons you will find many versions and forms of many of the recipes.
Now, turning to the recipe you cited, I have taken the liberty of using the expanded dough calculating tool at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html to come up with a baker's percent version of the recipe. It is as follows:
King Arthur Organic All-Purpose Flour (100%):
Water (75%):
IDY (1.5061%):
Sea Salt (2.5%):
Total (179.0061%):
| 1200 g | 42.33 oz | 2.65 lbs
900 g | 31.75 oz | 1.98 lbs
18.07 g | 0.64 oz | 0.04 lbs | 6 tsp | 2 tbsp
30 g | 1.06 oz | 0.07 lbs | 5.37 tsp | 1.79 tbsp
2148.07 g | 75.77 oz | 4.74 lbs | TF = N/A
|
Note: Dough is for seven dough balls, each weighing 300 grams (10.58 ounces); no bowl residue compensation
One of the pieces of information that would have been useful but that I could not find in the two articles referenced is the size of pizzas that are to be made from the 300-gram dough balls. Maybe I missed it, but to me that is an important piece of information to be included in the instructions for making the pizzas. If I knew the pizza size, I would have been able to calculate the thickness factor for the pizzas.
I also note that the recipe is intended to use IDY in lieu of a starter. In the background article you referenced, it says that Jeff Mahin uses a natural starter in his restaurant, maybe in the form of a natural poolish, biga, or some other form of natural preferment. You are correct that the amount of IDY is high. In fact, I estimate that if one were to convert the roughly 1.5% IDY to a natural preferment, it would take roughly 2.56 cups of natural preferment. Whether that is the amount of preferment that Jeff uses in his restaurant is hard to say since the articles do not say. But, by my estimation, 2.56 cups of a typical poolish or sponge preferment would be equal to over 54% of the formula flour or around 73% of the formula water. Both of those values are high values. That makes it difficult to say whether an IDY version is equivalent to what Jeff produces in his restaurant. In my experience, professionals are reluctant to disclose what they do in their own establishments. As a result, they suggest something different for home pizza makers. Invariably, the recipes for the home pizza makers come up short and might even be seriously flawed.
In situations like this, the best thing to do is to try out the recipe and see how it works out for you. If you do decide to try it out, please come back and tell us how things worked out.
Peter
