My 2.5 hour pizza...

[DavePZ]

So, last night, my lovely wife decided she wanted one of my pizzas.
The problem was, I had no dough in the fridge.
So I decided to give a ‘quick dough’ a shot.
I had 2-1/2 hours to make it.
So, I read the thread on Emergency Dough’s, to get ideas, and decided to sort-of experiment…

I have to say that the crust flavor was not great (sort-of bland, which was expected), but the crust looked and felt awesome. Texture was great, nice and crisp on bottom, rim had perfect consistency and crisp (for me), etc.
I would love to have any ideas on how to improve upon the flavor for a quick dough like this…using a starter.
 
So here is how I did it.
I have a nice sour dough starter, which has been on the counter for a few days, and I have been feeding every day.

I did the following:
- Mix starter into itself, and then pour 1 cup starter into a glass bowl. (starter has been fed with AP flour)
- Add 1 cup room temp water
- Mix for 20 seconds.
- Add 2 cups KABF (sifted), 2 TBSP of IDY, 1 TBSP of White Sugar, 0.5 tsp salt, 2 TBSP of VWG.
- Mixed till incorporated
- Let rest 10 minutes
- Kept adding KABF until got a consistency I wanted, which was something I would estimate as 70% Hydration (based on my limited experience)
- Add 2 TBSP of Olive Oil (fairly strong flavor oil), and kneed into dough.
- Kneed for about 6 minutes.
- Broke dough into 2 balls, and put both in bowls, and set on counter.
- Air temp in room was about 72F.
- Let rise for 2 hours. They seems to rise about 50%.
- Punched down, and fold over.
- Rise for an additional 30 minutes. Rose nicely in 30 minutes.

- I had preheated oven for an hour at 550F. The oven I have is one of those split ovens, so the top oven is only about 9 inches tall, and has heating elements on both top and bottom. I preheated the small oven with pizza stone for 1 hour.
- Stretched skin onto pizza screen.
- topped with Mozz and Mild Provolone cheese. Dabbled sauce on top.
- Cooked for few  minutes till I could slide off screen onto stone
- Switched to broil for 2 minutes, and then back to bake.
- not sure of exact bake time.

The pizza was one of my best ever (although that is not say much, since I am inexperienced), but funny how my best so far, was a quick dough.

Here are the photos, and I would love any one to critique the method. Did I do anything that does not make sense, and may have hurt me? (like adding VWG, Too little salt, not enough kneeding, etc, etc.)

Just trying to figure out how I can improve.

Thanks!!
Dave

[TXCraig1]

You are not going to develop much, if any, flavor in 2.5 hours. Whatever flavor you have is going to come in with your culture. You might try feeding it a few times over a couple days without discarding any to get some good mature flavor.

Where did your culture come from?

[DavePZ]

I ordered the "Italian" one from sourdo dot com.
I forget the exact name.
Thanks!

[TXCraig1]

Neither of the Italian cultures from sourdo will give you much "sour" flavor unless you really give them a lot of time (3+ days) under optimal conditions for developing sour flavor. I don't think this is a bad thing. I don't want "sour" in my pizza. I use the Ischia culture (one of the two from sourdo), and it will develop loads of flavor - just not "sour." I've found the key to this culture to use a small amount (about 1.5-2% of your flour weight) and ferment 48 hours at about 63-65F.

I think for a very short rise like 2.5 hours, your best bet is to let your culture get very mature. Feed it a couple times without discarding any, and then let it rise up and fall down before using it (but don't wait too long after it falls all the way down - you still want it to be fully active). Develop as much flavor as you can in the culture and carry that flavor over to the dough.

[DavePZ]

That makes sense. Im going to give that a try, and see how it differs from this first one.
Thanks much!
Dave