Culture Club....by George!!!

[Villa Roma]

Sorry to disappoint all you Boy George fans out there but I'm not refering to that type of culture club so put away the feminine apparel and let's get cooking. Besides that, I said by George not Boy George!!!

So what's this really about? Well I noticed that most of the sourdough starter recipes tell you to toss out a certain amount of the starter every now and again and to me that's just plain wastful so what I do is take this discarded starter and mix it with some flour to get a nice firm consistency and then divide this into 25 grams balls and then freeze them. Whenever I want to make sourdough anything I just whip out my balls (parden the pun). This way I can be cooking pronto instead of monkeying around with some finicky starter.

As a matter of fact I just made a batch of pizza with a pineapple juice starter. The rest of the dough was GM all purpose flour, water and salt. I also used 10% whole wheat flour with a 48 hour rise in the refer.

Check out the pics and welcome to the club!

        Villa Roma

[Pete-zza]

Villa Roma,

Very nice.

How do you prep the frozen sourdough dough balls to use them in the final dough formulation? And what method are you using to bake the pizzas?

Peter

[mikeintj]

those pizzas look fantastic mate

[Villa Roma]

Villa Roma,

Very nice.

How do you prep the frozen sourdough dough balls to use them in the final dough formulation? And what method are you using to bake the pizzas?

Peter

Hi all...and thanks....I make a preferment the night before by taking one (or 2 if I'm feeling really ballsy) of the sourdough balls and 100 grams of water combined with 125 grams of flour. Stir it up and let this sit at room temp overnight and then use it in your regular pizza recipe. Of course it's best to allow the sourdough ball to thaw first, takes about 15 minutes.

For this pizza I used:

Preferment:
100 gm water
1 sourdough ball
125 gm GM unbleached all purpose flour

Dough: 65% Hydration
Preferment from above
550 gm GM unbleached all purpose flour
75 gm Hodgsons mills whole wheat graham flour
388 gm water
15 gm salt (2%)

I cooked these pizzas in my indoor electric oven on a 13" OSO pizza stone about 5" from the top element. My oven only has a top element but it also has a convection fan. The hottest setting is 250 C which is about 475 F but I first let the oven heat up normally and then leave the oven door cracked open to keep the oven heating. When the stone gets to 530 F I make pizza. These pizzas took about 4-5 minutes to cook and I had to let the stone reheat for about 6 minutes between pizzas. Otherwise the bottom won't brown well.

I normally would have cooked them on my gas fired Weber kettle grill (Little Black Egg http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,4753.0.html) but the weather was bad so I went with the indoor oven. The LBE gets a lot hotter and I normally let it heat the stone to 650 F before making pizza and it can take pizza in rapid fire succession with no breaks between pizzas.

This recipe makes great no boil "beagles" with a damp, cave-like cool interior. Super for sandwiches! (I call them beagles instead of bagels because they're so dog gone good!)

Here's a shot of a mini loaf of bread made with the same dough. I bogarted the whole loaf with the help of some cream cheese and apricot preserves! The devil made me do it!

Villa Roma

[Pete-zza]

Villa Roma,

Thank you. That is a clever use of starter material.

I neglected to ask you earlier what size pizza (I assume not more than 13") and what amount of dough you use for each pizza.

Peter

[Villa Roma]

Villa Roma,

Thank you. That is a clever use of starter material.

I neglected to ask you earlier what size pizza (I assume not more than 13") and what amount of dough you use for each pizza.

Peter

I usually make 6 or more pizzas at a time and then freeze them. I take them to work and have my way with them for lunch a couple times a week so I make the pizzas so they conveniently fit on a paper plate or about 9". 185 grams is what I used for this batch. If you look close you can see the paper plate in the pictures.

Villa Roma

[PizzaPolice]

Villa Roma:

This never occurred to me.  My happy septic system seems to be getting the lion's share of the starter.  I will have to try this.  I think the folks over at FB are right.  You are a crazy pizza genius.

Thanks
PizzaPolice.

[Villa Roma]

Villa Roma:

This never occurred to me.  My happy septic system seems to be getting the lion's share of the starter.  I will have to try this.  I think the folks over at FB are right.  You are a crazy pizza genius.

Thanks
PizzaPolice.

PizzaPolice....Yea, I was doing the same thing, then this idea hit me like a softball size sourdough hail ball! It's probably good for the septic but I'd rather be making something with the starter. It all ends up in the septic system eventually anyway. Another alternative is to dry the starter but that's a lot more hassle and takes days.

Villa Roma