I made another attempt with a variation on Villa Roma's recipe just now, but it's still not coming out quite right. I used the following ingredients from the 14" pizza recipe, but instead of prefermenting part, I combined them all at once around 7 PM last night:
Preferment:
40 gm Gold Medal WW flour
33 gm water (82%)
1/128 tsp IDY (use half of the 1/64 tsp measure)
Main dough:
Preferment from above
160 gm Gold Medal WW flour
131 gm water (82%)
3 gm sea salt (1.4%)
2 gm olive oil (1%)
1/32 tsp IDY
(Note: IDY measurements estimated as best I could with a scale that only has 1g sensitivity)
I put all the ingredients in the KitchenAid mixer bowl and stirred until combined. After 45 min or so, I mixed on lowest setting with the dough hook for about 1 minute, then covered and let sit overnight. By 9:00 AM this morning, the dough had about doubled in size. I mixed it on low with the hook for another minute, then covered and set aside again. It doubled again, by about 2 PM, so I mixed it one last time for a minute on low with the hook, then set it aside covered until about 6 PM. At that point, it had gotten bigger again, but not quite doubled, and still was very sticky.
I had to put a lot of flour on the peel and on my hands and on the dough to be able to work with it without it coming apart from sticking to any surfaces. Like last time, the dough was very easy to stretch, but it didn't have any resilience. When I stretched it, it would not pull back but rather would just remain slack. If anything, it had a tendency to overstretch. Just picking up one side in anticipation of stretching it would result in it stretching a few inches more. I have a 14" round pizza stone in my oven, so I was careful to stretch the dough into a pie about 13" across. But when I put my toppings on it and went to slide the pizza onto the stone, it stretched a couple more inches and ended up hanging of the edges of the stone!
After cooking the pizza for 10-12 minutes in the 550 degree oven (pre-heated over an hour with the stone), the toppings were well cooked, so I pulled it out. The finished product again seemed a little raw and completely un-risen everywhere except the thicker crust around the edge. Picking up the small slices required two hands, because the crust was completely limp everywhere except for the edge.
Does anyone have any thoughts on why my dough is coming out completely un-resilient and not rising or crisping up much when cooked? I've got a few (un-educated) guesses:
- too much hydration
- too much/not enough mixing/stretching/folding
- consequence of using sprouted wheat flour (lower gluten content?)
My next steps will be to try to experiment on the factors I've identified above. I'd be glad to take a shortcut through this process if anyone can offer some insight, though!
Thanks,
Luke