Latest attempt of "pizza in teglia" roman style

[musiq]

I've been playing around for a while trying to replicate this kind of pizza. The two major problems are its high hydration and the fact that i'm doing all by hand, having just a food processor, that proved for me to be of  little help in kneading doughs.
After some partially unsuccesful trials with very wet doughs (70 to 91%) , i decided that i had to stick on the safe side , and find a different way of mixing, possibly something that allowed me to handle the dough as little as possible.

This is what i came up with

1300g bread flour
1000g cold water
30g salt
40g oil
3g IDY

I mixed water and flour in a bowl just as long as there where no visible lumps.
Left to rest for 10-15 minutes (autolyse)
Oiled just a little the work surface and my hands,to avoid sticking, scraped the dough on there, added the yeast , and hand mixed for 10-15 seconds, stopping before the dough started to absorb the oil. I lightly oiled another bowl and put the dough there to rest for 10 minutes, covered.

Same as before, this time adding the salt, 15 sec mixing, and leaving for other 10 minutes.

Same as before, adding the oil, 15 sec mixing.

After this last time i left the dough on the worktop and let it rest for 20 minutes covered with a bowl(i was using a small amount of dough, for bigger ones i would cover it with a casually oiled cling film)

I gently gave the dough a rectangular shape, stretched it on the sides to double its lenght, and folded the two sides on themselves, like you would do with a letter.Turned the dough by 90 degrees, and did the same. I then turned the dough upside down to leave the smooth side on top, and left to rest covered for other 20 minutes
I did this procedure a total of 5 times, after which i put the dough back in the oiled bowl, and put it in the fridge, covered, for 24 hours.

I took out the dough ,put it on a lightly oiled surface, divided it in portions (for a 40 by 30cm pan you need 600-700g of dough) to form balls, and left them to rise , covered with cling film , for 2-3 hours.

I lightly floured the pans , and transfered the dough there, turning it upside down , to have the smooth side on the bottom. I gently stretched it to fill the pan , put some oil and salt on top and cooked it at 250C for 8 minutes.

Result: it was very, very good! My best so far. The tecnique i used to knead it i learned it from dan lepard, an english baker, and it was what really changed everything for me , giving me surely a sticky dough (hydration was around 77%) but manageable too, unlike my previuos ones.

[Pete-zza]

Carlo,

You might want to look into what is often called a baker's bench knife or bench scraper such as shown here: http://shop.bakerscatalogue.com/items/Baker_s_Bench_Knife.html. When I am making very high hydration doughs, I use such a bench knife to manipulate the dough and hardly use my hands at all and very little added dough. In fact, if you have two bench knives, one for each hand, handling the dough is made even easier. I personally prefer the bench knives that have a good sized handle such as shown at the site referenced above because they are easier to handle.

Peter

[musiq]

I went shopping for those 2 days ago
I couldn't seem to find them in normal kitchen shop, i'm surely gonna order them on the internet when i'm back from holidays. In the meantime i was able to use a normal spatula for the purpouse, as the amount of dough i was dealing with was minimal.Thank you for the advice though!

In my next experiment I'll probably try a higher hydration (around 83%) , a two fase mixing ( keeping 20% of the water to add it in a later stage), and a longer cold fermentation. Or maybe a poolish, who knows?

[ojuice]

Hey, I tried your Foccacia last week.  It turned out pretty well even though I didn't have enough time to knead it the way you suggested (mixed the dough the 'standard' way).  I topped it with olive oil and Garlic Bread Spread.

[nepa-pizza-snob]

I did not try your recipe just yet, but I did whip one up last night using a 70% recipe with ample sugar, oil and IDY. I combined Fl and H2o did a 25 min auto. then kneaded for 15 min.
I let rest on the counter for an hour and then pressed into a pan and allowed to proof another hour or so (had hungry company waiting) It turned out well and tasted good (only syuck to my under seasoned pan a little) BUT - It did not have the huge voids as demonstrated in your picture above. It had larger than average uniform smaller bubbles. I crave BIG AIRY VOIDS!
Is the refrig the secrect like it is for pizza dough? or is it the kneading technique you used? Any suggestions?