madpizzaman,
Thank you for the additional information.
There is nothing wrong
per se with the formulation that is posted on the Recipe page. It was changes that you made to the recipe that may have been the source of your problem, including substituting ADY for IDY and doubling the amount of oil. I suspect you also used the ADY improperly. Rather than discuss the ingredients one by one, I will instead tell you how I think you should use the recipe.
First, I would start by weighing the flour and setting it aside. I would then weigh the water. I don't think that the water was the source of the problem you experienced since 9 ounces of water by weight is quite close to 9 ounces by volume. However, since you have the scale on hand you might as well use it and eliminate the possibility of incorrectly eyeballing the water in your measuring cup.
Next, I would take about 1/4 cup of the water, warm it to around 110 degreef F, and proof the ADY in the warm water for about 10 minutes. The rest of the water should be cool. In fact, since your San Diego kitchen is likely to be a bit warmer than most parts of the country this time of year, I would suggest using cool water right out of the tap, or even a bit cooler. That water should be put into the bowl of your KitchenAid stand mixer. Then add the salt and stir with a whisk or spoon until dissolved, about 30 seconds to a minute. Once the salt is completely dissolved in the water, it is safe to add the proofed ADY and stir that in. That can be followed by the addition of the flour. My practice is to add the flour gradually and not dump it into the water all at one time. By so doing, I think you get better hydration of the flour.
The rest of the procedures should be as you followed before. However, this time I would like to suggest that you use only 1 tablespoon of oil as called for by the recipe. Using double that amount will increase the oil to over 6% (by weight of flour), which is almost double the typical amount of oil for a NY style. At 6%, you will get increased extensibility (stretchiness) in the dough and that may have been partly a cause of the problems you experienced. Many NY style doughs use as little as 1% oil, so you can imagine what might happen by going to 6%.
I would also like to suggest that you knead the dough only until it reaches a smooth consistency with a small amount of tackiness to the finished dough. For the dough batch size that the recipe produces, that may be around 8 minutes. However, if you decide that you prefer the results from a longer knead time, you may want to use even cooler water to compensate for the added heat that will be imparted to the dough by the frictional heat contributed by the longer knead time of the mixer. In fact, if you have a thermometer I would like you to take the temperature of the finished dough so that we have that information on hand in the event your problems are not solved by the procedures I am now reciting. Ideally, for a NY style dough that is to be cold fermented, the finished dough temperarature should be around 75 degrees F if you will be cold fermenting the finished dough in a home refrigerator.
You indicated that you are using the dough to make two 15-inch pizzas. By my calculation, the thickness factor would be 0.076 (13.5/3.14 x 7.5 x 7.5 = 0.076). A typical NY thin style has a thickness factor of 0.10-0.105, and a thicker NY style can be around 0.11-0.13. If you would like to get closer to the typical NY style, you can do this in your case by making two 12-inch pizzas instead of two 15-inch pizzas. Of course, that is all up to you. It's your pizzas and if you want them really thin (like an elite Patsy's NY style), then you should continue to do as you have been doing.
As you are shaping and stretching the dough balls into skins, you may find that you don't need 1 to 1.5 hours of counter warm-up time. If your kitchen is warm, it could be less. A good way to tell is to actually take the temperature of the dough. Once it reaches around 60 degrees F, you should be in reasonably good shape. The reason I mention this point is that if the dough warms up too much, then it will be more extensible and harder to shape and stretch into a skin because of increased stretchiness, especially one that goes out to 15 inches using 13.5 ounces of dough. From what you have said, I think that your dough temperature at the time the dough went into the refrigerator may have been too high and, possibly along with the higher oil levels, contributed to the excessive extensibility of the dough. I am fairly confident that if you follow all of the steps outlined above, your results should be better. If not, feel free to come back with more questions.
Since you posted in the Newbie Topics section, I would also like to suggest that you take a look at the Pizza Glossary section, at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/pizza_glossary.html. Also, you may want to take a look at the following thread that evolved to address the needs of beginning pizza makers interested in making a NY style dough:
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,2223.0.html.
Good luck.
Peter
