Dough Difference

[juniorballoon]

The other week I made a dough from http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/07/basic-neapolitan-pizza-dough-recipe.html that used these measurements -

Flour - 20oz
Salt .4oz (About 4 tsp)
Yeast .3oz (about 2 tsp)
Water 13oz

I used the weight measure for the flour and the water, but did use the volume measurements for the salt and yeast. The yeast turned out to be about 1 1/2 packets of ADY, each packet being .25oz. At the time I thought that was very little yeast and it did not rise much, 8 hours later it had not yet doubled in size, but made a great dough/pizza.

Yesterday I mixed up another batch, but this time I converted all the oz measurements to grams using the Win7 Calculator. These are the amounts it gave me -

Flour - 567g (KABF)
Salt 11g (Kosher)
Yeast 8.5g (Fleischman's ADY)
Water 368g

As I measured out the yeast I knew that it was more than I'd used before. I checked on it after 4 hours on the counter and it had more than doubled. I decided it was developing faster than I wanted/expected so I punched it down and moved it to the fridge. This morning I took it out and it had doubled again. I punched it down, gave it a short knead, balled it up, put them in Tupperware and back in the fridge.

My question is, did I mess up the math or did I use way less yeast the first time than the recipe calls for? If so, what kind of dough/pizza do you think this mix will make? I really liked the pizza that the lower yeast mix made.

Thanks,
jb

[Pete-zza]

jb,

I used the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html and converted your recipe to baker's percent format as noted below. In so doing, I assumed that the salt called for by the recipe is the Diamond Crystal Kosher salt, as Kenji noted in the comments section of the recipe.

Bread or 00 Flour (100%): Water (65%): IDY (1.5%): Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt (2%): Total (168.5%):

567 g  |  20 oz | 1.25 lbs 368.55 g  |  13 oz | 0.81 lbs 8.51 g | 0.3 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2.82 tsp | 0.94 tbsp 11.34 g | 0.4 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.34 tsp | 1.11 tbsp 955.4 g | 33.7 oz | 2.11 lbs | TF = N/A

Unless you were in an igloo in the Arctic region of the world when you made your original dough, at 1.5% IDY you should have seen the dough double within an hour or so. So, if your dough did not double after eight hours at room temperature, something was clearly wrong. 

I notice that you switched to active dry yeast (ADY) in your followup dough. Did you rehydrate the ADY in a small amount of the formula water at around 105 degrees F for about ten minutes before adding it to the rest of the formula water or did you use the ADY dry?

Using grams instead of ounces would not explain the results you got.

Peter

[juniorballoon]

There were two difference with the yeast. For the original dough I used some older packets of ADY from my cupboard and mixed it with the flour before adding water. With this dough, I used some bulk Flieschman's ADY that I'd purchased recently and mixed it with the water for a few minutes before adding the flour. Normally when I've made dough I add the yeast to some warm water and let it sit for a while, but Kenji's recipe just called for mixing it with the flour and other dry ingredients. So perhaps my yeast was old or didn't get activated properly?

All in all very interesting as that first dough made some good pizza. I look forward to seing what this new batch makes.

Thanks,
jb

[buceriasdon]

Kenji's formula calls out for IDY, not ADY. Instant Yeast.
Don

[bfguilford]

There were two difference with the yeast. For the original dough I used some older packets of ADY from my cupboard and mixed it with the flour before adding water. With this dough, I used some bulk Flieschman's ADY that I'd purchased recently and mixed it with the water for a few minutes before adding the flour. Normally when I've made dough I add the yeast to some warm water and let it sit for a while, but Kenji's recipe just called for mixing it with the flour and other dry ingredients. So perhaps my yeast was old or didn't get activated properly?

All in all very interesting as that first dough made some good pizza. I look forward to seeing what this new batch makes.

Thanks,
jb

Don is right. From my experience as a bread baker, that's what made the difference. ADY is meant to be activated in water before mixing it in with the flour, while IDY can be mixed directly with the flour, with the water added to that mixture.

Barry

[juniorballoon]

Kenji's formula calls out for IDY, not ADY. Instant Yeast.
Don

A quick google of IDY vs ADy comes up with this thread. http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9925.0 Of course it's right here.

So it looks like you need to use a bit more ADY than IDY and it needs to be proofed, or rather works better when it is. Which means that the recipe still calls for more yeast than what I've added. Is that right?

EDIT: I see Barry's post slipped in while I was typing. I'm also pretty sure I used less of the ADY in my previous batch. Mystery solved, more to come.

Thanks,
jb

[Pete-zza]

Barry,

As explained at http://m.redstaryeast.com/lessons-yeast-baking/yeast-types-usage/active-dry-yeast, ADY can be added directly to the flour if the water temperature is about 120-130 degrees F. jb hasn't indicated what water temperature he used. If he used the ADY dry and the water was significantly below the above range, that might have explained the results he got with the original dough. In due course it is likely that the original dough would have risen but it could taken days for that to happen. And it might have been necessary to temper the dough at room temperature for several hours before using to make a pizza.

I see that in my last post I assumed that jb used IDY in the original dough, as called for in the recipe. In retreading jb's original post, I now see that he actually used ADY. The above explanation deals with that matter.

Peter

[Pete-zza]

So it looks like you need to use a bit more ADY than IDY and it needs to be proofed, or rather works better when it is. Which means that the recipe still calls for more yeast than what I've added. Is that right?

jb,

If you want to replace the IDY called for by the recipe with ADY, you should increase the weight of IDY by about a third, or to 0.4 ounces in this case. That is 2% by weight of flour.

Peter

[bfguilford]

Peter is right on both counts - amount of yeast (1/3 more ADY than IDY and better to proof it) and water temp (I made the assumption that the water you used was around room temp or cooler, which is what I always use, and I realize that's not necessarily a valid assumption).

Peter... thanks for setting things straight.

Barry

[juniorballoon]

Used the dough this weekend to make pizza. It was as workable as the previous, but had less taste. Was more like very plain bread. Not sure if that was because it had one less day of cold fermentation, or the extra rise from the yeast or??? Calls for more experiments. The biggest issue I ran into was my grill not being hot enough and how long it took to cook each pizza. It only got 400, for some reason I just couldn't push it higher. My oven in the house will do 550, but I want more heat. I need a WFO, but that goes in a different forum.

Thanks,
jb