Villa Roma, thanks for this thread-- trying this has been a blast... After many hours spent reading
& experimenting with caputo, KASL, preferments, & even modifying an oven to bake on the clean cycle, working with WWF is a refreshing change.
The pics are only my 2nd attempt with your technique.. for the first try, I used 100% hydration & found I had to add flour 2/3 of the way through the 24 hr ferment to make the dough workable. the pies were fine, but this attempt was MUCH better.
I adhered to your 3 points:
high hydration; long ferment; high temp oven
What's great about this method is that it's essentially a version of the no-knead bread recipe, which I use often for bread baking.
Here's what i did to get 2 dough balls:
KA wwf 300gr
H2O 256 gr
sugar 6gr
salt 6gr
EVOO 6gr
pinch of IDY (no measurement)
pinch of vitamin C (i opened a packet of emergen C)
I followed your method of "dump and stir", then gave a the dough a stir every few hours. This hydration (just over 85%) proved to
be perfect for being able to handle the dough from the start. I was able to pick the dough up & knead it a bit without alot of stickiness, & without adding more flour.
At 12 hrs room temp the dough had almost doubled in volume.
I punched down gently, divided into 2 balls, & put in sep containers.
By around 22 hrs, the dough had again almost doubled in volume- I probably could have used even less yeast...
I used a small amount of regular flour on the bench, on the peel & stretched by hand. I was impressed by the extensibility-- no tears, &
stretched to around 12" with no problem. I was able to dress the pies without rushing, & had no sticking issues.
I baked in a bare-bones RCA gas unit that we have in the basement-- with the fibrament stone on the oven floor & heat turned to broil I get over 650.... then used the broiler to finish the top.
the total bake time was less than 5 mins.
The result was a crust that was very puffy and remarkably light. very cool!
the thing about WWF is of course the intense flavor-- but i think it will be much like getting used to whole wheat pasta when you first switch from regular... it just takes some time. I think with WWF you need to adjust the toppings to get more assertive flavors. For cheese I used Feta, & a blend of Sargento that has some asiago- plus some sausage & a black garlic that has an intense, smoky flavor, all of which stood up well to the intense flavor of the WWF.
clay