Mangia Pizza, sorry if I had confused you, but Scott is right. I wanted to see you only reball 1-2 balls and leave the remainder as is. This is to show you what a reball can do if the dough is too hydrated or enzyme activity too high (basically if the dough balls are becoming pancakes). But there is no harm in reballing all of them. They will be fine and perform well as long as you allow them to at least double in size before baking.
But you are now less than 3 hours from baking? Im sorry I didn't have a better understanding of the time frame of your dough otherwise I wouldn't have suggested a reball so close to baking. I would bake the RD pies after the caputo pies as to let the RD pies ferment a bit more. I typically like to see the balls at least double in volume before baking. Also on the reball, it is a gentle reball, just a few folds of the dough over and then ball. Not like the initially balling where you might ball the dough tight. On a reball, you want to be much gentler. Sorry to throw a wrench in your experiment, but you may find that you like the RD pies better now. We will see what happens. At least you have plenty of flour to redo the experiment if you need to.
Chau,
Are you worried that the RD dough balls will not make it out to another 24 hours of room temperature fermentation without re-balling? If so, would that also apply to the Caputo dough balls?
Peter
Peter, b/c he is using IDY, I'm not concerned about overfermentation as it is very difficult to overferment using commercial yeast b/c it doesn't produce acid (that I can taste anyway) like a natural leaven would. Many times, I have found that with commercial yeast or cake yeast, the dough that I let set out and bake later in the bake continue to get better texture. That is the crumb is lighter and airier. The only thing I worry about the RD dough is if it is fermenting faster b/c of a lower protein content or higher enzyme activity hastening the break down of the gluten matrix. That will cause the balls to become flat not holding co2 from fermentation, increase extensibility causing the balls to open too easily, thinning, and tearing, and just plan difficult to work with or launch. That's why I suggested a gentle reball early in the process of 2nd phase of fermentation. The caputo balls may benefit from a reball, perhaps not. I would have to see how they are progressing throughout the 2nd half of fermentation to say.
Chau
