Tom Lehmann's NY Style Pizza

[November]

Looking at the labels, the Kosher salt (Morton's coarse) specifies the ingredients as "Salt, Yellow Prussiate of Soda (Anti-caking agent)". The labels for two of the table salts I use, both of which are house brands and which I use mainly for salting water to cook pasta, read "Salt, dextrose, potassium iodide, sodium bicarbonate, yellow prussiate of soda" and "Salt, sodium silicoaluminate, dextrose, potassium iodide and sodium bicarbonate". Comparing the ingredients for the table salts with the Kosher salt, I think I would rather use the Kosher salt rather than the table salts in pizza dough.

Wow.  I would rather use just about any salt other than your table salts.  Even my Morton iodized salt (which I never use) only has "Salt, Calcium silicate, Dextrose, and Potassium iodine."  Sodium bicarbonate?!  It is possible to buy table salt without all those additives, but you probably have to look in a healthier part of the store.  Every kosher salt I have ever used only has salt in it, so even your kosher salt could be improved.

You won't find much information on the matter out there, because using sea salt is typically either a gourmet thing or a third world thing, not a subject for serious analysis.  That's why I said I would have to build calibration tables for laymen testing of sea salt because the data just doesn't exist.  Based on the usual composition of sea salt (which is well studied), one can deduce a theoretical limit to sea salt saltiness, and that's precisely why Evelyne's mention of 2x saltiness jumped out at me.  It's not impossible that it's twice as salty, but the composition of the sea salt with documented compositions doesn't support it.  It would have to be a very unique salt.

Personally, I use just four salts in cooking: Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt, Alessi Fine Mediterranean Sea Salt, McCormick Hickory Smoked Salt, Adobo con Pimienta.  Obviously the last two are used only for special applications.

- red.november

[SLICEofSLOMON]

Hi Pete,

None of Tom's formulations call for using kosher or sea salt. The average pizzeria owner does not use those salts in their dough or in their other dishes. Before sea salt became so widely available, kosher salt was THE salt of choice in most high end restaurant kitchens, and to "gourmet" cooks. The general public knew little-if nothing about sea salt until about 5 years ago when sea salt hit the scene as a gourmet condiment. In fact, health food stores always carried it, and here in the States it was viewed more as a healthy thing. It has been available in bulk for years--and it was also a lot cheaper before it became the darling of salt. Granted, lots of the interest in sea salt has been in the more unusual colored and flavored salts, but the health aspect also influences people in using it.

I've been using fine sea salt in my dough since my very first commercial pizza venture in 1984, simply because I used it at home. Back then, at the restaurant, we used kosher salt in general cooking, but fine sea salt in the dough because it dissolved better and I thought it had better flavor. It was purely a subjective thing. I also used sea salt to produce our house-made fresh mozzarella and in all of my pastries. Now, I use sea salt for everything. When I started developing fresh mozzarella products for Grande Cheese, 17 years ago, I introduced them to the superior qualities of sea salt. If you purchase a tub of any of their Fiori di latte products, you will notice they all contain sea salt. Grande flipped for the sea salt that I used in my formulations. But, I had learned how to use sea salt in cheese making from my mentors: Joe "Mozzarella" Cuomo and Anthony of Joe's Dairy back in NYC.

I have a saltiness factor question for November: Given the fact that sea salt tastes saltier than table salt and one might use less in cooking, does sea salt contain a higher concentration of sodium, or does it contain less than if you used the greater amount of table salt.?

Evelyne

[November]

does sea salt contain a higher concentration of sodium, or does it contain less than if you used the greater amount of table salt.?

Sea salt contains almost 25% less sodium than sodium chloride per gram.

[SLICEofSLOMON]

      "Sea salt contains almost 25% less sodium than sodium chloride per gram."

So does that mean I'm actually using less salt by using sea salt and getting more taste?

Evelyne
 
 

[November]

Evelyne,

It means you're using less sodium chloride.

- red.november

[SLICEofSLOMON]

Whew! I knew I was doing something for my blood pressure! ha ha 

[November]

Whew! I knew I was doing something for my blood pressure! ha ha 

You don't get off that easily.  You only asked about the sodium level, not the possible effects of what replaces the sodium.  Much like in the rest of life, there are tradeoffs.  Here are health advisories on the two most common salts that take the place of sodium chloride in small percentages.

http://ezinearticles.com/?What-You-Should-Know-about-Calcium-Chloride&id=311401
http://health.yahoo.com/drug/d00468a1

I'm not bringing this up in order to scare you away from sea salt, for I use sea salt frequently, but I want you to realize that nothing in life is free.  There is a price to pay for every step forward we take in one direction or another.  These other salts are in such small proportions, that it's unlikely to affect 99.9% of the population, but there are those who are more sensitive to these salts, so they should use with caution.  There are also some sea salts which should never be considered for consumption, such as Dead Sea salt.

- red.november

[PizzaBrasil]

I am always looking forward to see any messages from Evelyne, and lately from November too.
I consider that this thread is one, if not The one, of the most important about pizza techniques and principles.
As big as it is, there is too much salt in it. LOL.
I think that the moderator could create a new ‘salty’ thread where these last comments could have better appreciation of all of us.

Luis

[Pete-zza]

Luis,

The digression into the salt discussion was a quite natural one and especially for me because of the fact that the predominant salt I use for the Lehmann dough is sea salt and at the same rate as table salt. So, Evelyne's comments on the two salts got my attention. The fact that the ensuing discussion took place within the Lehmann thread was not a concern for me since I have always viewed the Lehmann thread as much an instructional thread in which the principles involved are as important and, arguably, more important than the Lehmann dough formulation itself. However, you do make a good point about the value of the salt discussion in a broader sense than the Lehmann application. What I should be able to do is to start a new thread and refer to Evelyne's post on salt and tie that in with the posts on salt that followed.

Peter

[BenLee]

Ive used all kinds of salt in my pizza dough:

Sel Fris
Fleur de Sel
Hawaiian Sea Salt
Kosher Salt
Sicilian Sea Salt
Mediterranean Sea Salt
Smoked Sea Salt

you can notice subtle differences, but in terms of quality, I don't htink it really matters as long as you are using a high quality salt.  I tried the smoked sea salt as an experiment to see if I could get a smoky flavor out of the dough in my gas oven.  Didn't really work to well.  The best result I ever had was by making my own liquid smoke with water, charcoals, and some mesquite wood.  It took hours though and wasn't worth the effort.

[Pauley]

Over the past few days I have tried the same-day recipe using a starter(for the first time!) from post #606 (SLICEofSLOMON) so far with success. Here are the %s I used:
Flour 100%
Water 62%
ADY 1%
Salt 1.5%
Olive Oil 5%
Honey 5.25%

I have also made a couple of strombolis (folded in half-circle style!). Next time I'll have to borrow my daughter's camera for pictures of both the pizzas and stombolis. So far, my family have enjoyed my endeavors with this new "same-day" recipe!

[joe123]

Been lurking on this site for months now and especially this thread.  Have to say the quality of my pizza has improved tremendously thanks to all of the great contributions here.  Last night I finally made a pizza I felt was worthy of posting on this site.  It was a basic Lehmann formulation baked in a residential gas oven using a pizza stone on the bottom rack and pizza tiles on the middle rack.

Using the Lehmann calculator I came up with this formulation for a 16 inch pizza using KASL (with a 1% bowl residue compensation factor):

Flour (100%):    346.71 g  |  12.23 oz | 0.76 lbs
Water* (63%):    218.43 g  |  7.7 oz | 0.48 lbs
ADY (0.3%):    1.04 g | 0.04 oz | 0 lbs | 0.28 tsp | 0.09 tbsp
Salt (1.75%):    6.07 g | 0.21 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.09 tsp | 0.36 tbsp
Oil (1%):    3.47 g | 0.12 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.77 tsp | 0.26 tbsp
Total (166.05%):   575.71 g | 20.31 oz | 1.27 lbs | TF = 0.101
*Room temperature water
Finished dough temperature = 80 degrees F.

I used ADY instead of the more popular IDY since that is what is available in the local supermarkets around here.  I have yet to find a local source for IDY.  The amount of yeast used was at the low end of the range.  The salt was sea salt and the oil was vegetable oil. 

I used a stand mixer and followed the basic dough prep technique detailed by Pete-zza previously on this thread.  Just mixed the ADY into the flour without proofing.  When all ingredients were incorporated I kneaded the dough for about 5 minutes on '1'.  Dough then went into a lightly-oiled, covered plastic container, which went into the fridge for 48 hours.

When 48 hours had elapsed I removed the dough container from the fridge and placed it on the kitchen counter.  After an hour the dough had barely risen at all so I gave it another half hour.  In the last half hour the dough nearly doubled in size and popped the lid off the container.

I had no trouble stretching the dough out to 16 inches.  In fact, in my 15 years of home pizza making I had never had a dough stretch this easily without any twirling, hard pulling or rolling pin help.  One thing I will say is this dough is very wet, so much so that it was difficult to move it without destroying it once it was shaped.  It was so soft and pliable that I was afraid to bake it directly on my tiles so instead I used a 16 inch round perforated disk with PSTK coating.  I gave the disk a liberal spray of canola oil before carefully moving the formed dough onto the disk.

I dressed the dough with homemade sauce, Grande whole milk mozz. plus a little fresh mozz. I had in the fridge, along with anchovies, nicoise olives, capers, fresh oregano from the garden and red pepper flakes (this is not a pizza for the faint of heart!).

I had cranked my oven up to the max which said 550 and preheated it for about an hour.  A separate thermometer I had placed on the middle rack read closer to 525 degrees F (Oh well, I guess that's all she's got in her).  I slid the pizza on the disk onto the middle rack with the tiles and baked it for 4 minutes to set the dough.  After 4 minutes I removed the pizza/disk from the oven and very carefully slid the pizza off the disk onto a peel.  This is the part where I had messed up on previous attempts: hadn't sprayed the disk with oil and when I attempted to move the pizza, parts of it stuck to the disk, tore, and well the results were not pretty.  This time I made the transition successfully, so I slid the pizza off the peel onto the stone on the bottom rack and baked for another 5 minutes.

The photos below show the finished product (hopefully they attached correctly; this is my first post).  I was pretty happy with the results, it was probably the best crust I had ever made, which I attribute to my use of KASL for the first time.  The crust was tasty and had a nice chew yet was not heavy at all, and had the classic NY slice droop.  I was surprised at what a difference stepping up to KASL from KABF made.  The effect of the perforated disk on browning can be seen in the photo below.

To improve the results even more I intend to experiment with lowering the hydration level in an effort to eliminate the need for the perforated disk at all, thus achieving more uniform browning.  I am also going to try to find a source of IDY to see if that makes an overall improvement in the outcome of the crust.

/Joe

[Pete-zza]

Joe,

Congratulations on your recent results.

I agree that you may want to consider lowering the hydration. You can go as low as about 58% if you'd like. The Lehmann dough formulation is one that inherently tends to yield a dough that is highly extensible, especially when you get to around 63% hydration and if you also use water at room temperature or higher (which speeds up the rate of fermentation). However, it is also possible that the results you got were due to the use on non-rehydrated ADY. I have experimented with non-rehydrated ADY, albeit in a different manner than you used, but I normally don't recommend using non-rehydrated ADY. The way I usually recommend using ADY is to rehydrate it in a small amount of the formula water that has been heated to about 105° F. The ADY should be rehydrated in that warm water for about 10-15 minutes. It can then be added to the rest of the formula water (room temperature water in your case). You will often read instructions on yeast packs that say that the ADY can be added to one-half of the flour and other dry ingredients, but in that case you are also instructed to use water (or other liquids) at around 120-130° F. I don't personally use that method since I don't want the finished dough temperature to increase substantially during the preparation of the dough. Water at 120-130° F is bound to lead to a finished dough temperature above 80° F.

You may not realize it, but IDY is often sold in the supermarkets. But not under the "IDY" or "instant dry yeast" terms. IDY is reserved more for professional bakers. However, yeast sold as "bread machine" yeast is really instant dry yeast. Rapid-Rise" (Fleischmann's) and "Quik-Rise" (Red Star) fast acting yeasts are also equivalent to instant dry yeasts, although they may not be exactly the same strains as sold to professional bakers. The SAF Gourmet Perfect Rise yeast is also an instant dry yeast, although I believe SAF is repositioning its retail yeast products and may be phasing the SAF Gourmet Perfect Rise yeast out of supermarkets. As some evidence of this, I have seen that yeast on the shelves of a local "dollar" store, at significantly marked down prices ($0.49 for a three-pack).

If you intend to make a lot of pizzas, you perhaps should consider getting the same IDY as sold to professionals. That form of IDY is commonly available at the big box stores like Sam's, Costco's and BJ's for less than $5 a pound (and in some cases, for a 2-lb. bag). SAF Red is a solid choice, but the Fleischmann's IDY is also a good choice. A one-pound bag will last you for years if you store it in the freezer in a tightly-closed container. You can get a pretty good idea of what the IDY packs look like by doing an Amazon search for yeast, or a search at the King Arthur website.

Your results should be acceptable whether you use ADY or IDY, provided that you properly rehydrate the ADY along the lines mentioned above should you decide to stick with the ADY. IDY is more convenient to the degree that it can be added to the flour without first rehydrating it.

I think a few changes should produce better results for you the next time you repeat the Lehmann dough formulation you posted.

Peter

[joe123]

Hello Peter,

Thank you for your detailed reply to my first post!  The value of your contributions to this forum are tremendous and have certainly helped me take my pizza making skills to the next level and beyond.

I have always traditionally re-hydrated my ADY first, but then I read somewhere around here, maybe Verasano's web site actually, that re-hydrating ADY first is not really necessary because they always rise.  It seemed reasonable to me so I went with that.  But from now on I am going to switch to IDY.

I was wondering if so-called rapid rise yeast was the same thing as IDY.  Coincidentally I recently watched the Pizza episode of Good Eats and Alton Brown said that rapid rise is something distinctly different from IDY, which is what he recommends.  I'm glad you pointed out that bread machine yeast is really IDY, and so I picked up a jar of Fleischmann's Bread Machine Yeast at my local Safeway.

For my next experiment I've lowered the hydration from 63% to 62% and used the IDY.  I was amazed how much less sticky the dough was after kneading with this minor adjustment.  I have high hopes for it and if it turns out better than the last time I will post pics.

/Joe

[Pete-zza]

Joe,

Thank you for the kind remarks.

I’d like to mention that I don’t personally have any objections to using ADY. I have both ADY and IDY on hand so that I can use whichever form a dough recipe calls for. However, ADY is more prone to improper use because users often don’t want to take the time to warm up the water to the recommended rehydration temperature, or they don’t have a thermometer to measure the water temperature. Tom Lehmann says that being off by as little as 5° F on either side of the recommended rehydration temperature can reduce the ADY’s performance by 10%. I have no idea of where he came up with the 10% figure. Some people prefer the ADY because it has a large percentage of dead cells which can be used as food by the live cells during fermentation in case there is no other source of nutrients for the live yeast cells. For the Lehmann dough recipe, I usually use IDY, mainly for its convenience but also because that is what Tom himself usually recommends to pizza operators.

Your question about what Rapid-Rise yeast really is is an interesting question—one that I examined a few years ago, commencing with an email I sent to Fleischmann’s on this issue. In general, Fleischmann’s recommends using the Rapid-Rise yeast as part of the One Rise method, which is one used by many home bakers. That method, along with the relationship of IDY and ADY and the Rapid-Rise yeast, was explained to me in the following email I received from Fleischmann’s:

RapidRise or Active Dry oven recipe)
Instant yeast is fast rising and can be used as a substitute for Rapid Rise or Bread Machine Yeast in equal amounts. One envelope is equivalent to about 2 1/4 teaspoons. If your recipe calls for Active Dry and does not make use of a bread machine, you can use this link for information on converting active dry recipes to the one rise method: http://www.breadworld.com/tipsterms/faq.asp
If your recipe calls for Active Dry in a bread machine, consult your manufacturer's instructions.

Fleischmanns RapidRise and Instant yeast when used the tradional method should be used the One-Rise Method.

One-rise method
1.Set aside 1 cup of flour from the total amount (save for later use in the recipe). Mix remaining flour(s), RapidRise Yeast and all other dry ingredients in a large bowl.

2. Heat fats and all liquids except eggs until very warm (120 to 130F).

3. Stir very warm liquids into dry mixture. Mix in eggs if required. Mix in just enough reserved flour to make dough or batter.

4. Knead (if required) as directed in recipe. Cover dough; let rest 10 minutes. (This rest replaces the first rise.)

5. Shape dough and place in prepared pan(s) as directed in recipe. Cover dough and set dough in a warm (80 to 85F), draft-free place, and let rise until doubled in size.

6. Bake as directed. Remove from pan and cool on wire rack.

Because of the evasiveness of the above reply, or possibly because my question was too technical for the people assigned to reply to emails from consumers, I tried two more times through emails with Fleischmann’s to have them explain the differences between the Rapid-Rise yeast and the IDY sold by Fleischmann’s to professional bakers. I never did get an answer, only a repeat of the previous response. However, a similar question posed to SAF about the relationship between its Quick-Rise yeast and SAF IDY brought forth the following response:

If QuickRise Yeast is not identical to SAF Instant it is so close, you won't be able to tell the difference.

I have learned to avoid the issue altogether by avoiding the Rapid-Rise and Quik-Rise yeasts and using the IDY in the form sold to professionals. Other research I have conducted leads me to believe that the fast acting yeasts and IDY are different strains but safe to use more or less interchangeably. It’s hard to get good information on yeasts because the yeast producers are protective of their trade secrets or else the customer service reps can’t or won’t answer technical questions. I suspect that most yeast producers would rather have home bakers pay the highly inflated price of the Rapid-Rise and Quik-Rise yeasts rather than the much cheaper (on a unit basis) IDY sold by those same producers to professionals.

Peter

[joe123]

I've made significant progress with my latest attempt at the Lehmann dough and it was probably the best pizza I have made to date.  I attribute my success to these three things which I have employed for the first time:

• Reduced my dough hydration level from 63% to 61%
• Applied Jeff Varasano's "Wet-Kneading Technique with Autolyze"
• Used Tom Lehmann's hand forming technique.

(This site won't let me as a new member post links to the above, so if you want to see a video of Lehman using his hand-forming technique it is on the PMQ site, look for the videos, it is called "How To Make Pizza Dough - Part 3")

I think the wet kneading really made a difference in ensuring all the ingredients were uniformly incorporated.  In a nutshell I made the dough as usual except I held back 25% of the flour (and all of the oil) until after the autolyze period.

During the 48 hour cold rest period the dough more than quadrupled in size.  The picture below shows how it looked when I took it out of the fridge.  It almost completely filled up the container.  I had never gotten such a rise from a cold dough before.  The only thing I can attribute it to is the wet kneading & autolyze, which I used for the first time, but I don't know why it produced that effect.

It turns out I had not been hand-forming my dough properly - I would start by thinning the center first and stretching it outward.  This frequently resulted in the center becoming too thin and tearing.  The proper technique is when starting with your dough ball, form the rim first so you have a lump in the center, and then stretch it out.  You can see what I mean that in the video.

To date I found the Lehmann dough impossible to toss, but with the reduced hydration level and the above two techniques I produced a dough that I was actually able to toss a couple of times without any tears.  Forming it into a 16" skin was easy.

The last thing I did differently this time was I decided to use the convection feature of my oven.  Previously I was only able to squeeze 525 degrees F out of my oven, but with the convection fan on this pushed the oven temp up to 600 degrees F!  I guess with the air circulating, heat doesn't build up at the top of the oven so quickly where the temp sensor is, so the burners stay on longer.

The only trouble I had this time was sliding the pizza off the peel.  It stuck a little as I was pulling out the peel so I ended up with a slightly oblong shape.  I've been resisting the urge to use semolina (which I know will work) because it is a pain to clean it out of the oven all the time, but with a pizza this large I may need that ball-bearing effect.

I baked the pizza on my stone on the bottom rack.  I also have tiles on my top rack to simulate the downward radiant heat of a brick oven.  At 600 degrees it cooked in 6 minutes.  I was very happy with the results.  It had the lightest, fluffiest crust I ever produced.  Normally when I buy pizza out I don't eat the crust (the outer rim), but this was so good I actually wanted to eat it.  I may have put too much cheese on this one though!   

 

[Pete-zza]

Joe,

You didn’t indicate whether you used the same dough formulation as you recited in Reply 631, but if you did, together with using Jeff’s autolyse/wet knead method, then I believe there is a plausible explanation why your dough rose so much while in the refrigerator.

First, it is important to note that Jeff does not use a classic autolyse as devised by its originator, Professor Raymond Calvel, which entails combining only flour and water. Jeff does not use oil in his doughs, as you did, but he otherwise combines all of the ingredients together in the mixer bowl but for a part of the total flour. When this is done, and the mixture is allowed to rest for a period of time (20 minutes in Jeff’s case), fermentation begins as the yeast in the mixture starts to be fed and produces carbon dioxide to cause the dough to rise. The dough is later subjected to another fairly long rest period (about 15-20 minutes in Jeff’s case), with further opportunity for the dough to rise some more. So, before the dough is placed in the refrigerator, it has had at least 35-40 minutes of fermentation, and possibly more when other minor intermediate rest periods are all accounted for. Since the fermentation is at room temperature (which can be quite high this time of year), and assuming also that room temperature water was used, the dough can rise quite substantially during that time because of its high temperature. At that point, putting the dough in the refrigerator is unlikely to stop the rate of fermentation enough to restrain volume growth of the dough and the dough can continue to rise even while in the refrigerator.

The Lehmann dough as proposed by Tom Lehmann was intended to be a dough that goes directly into the refrigerator/cooler when finished, without using autolyse or any other forms of rest periods. Consequently, the dough will rise at a much lower rate while in the refrigerator. As a matter of fact, he usually discourages letting the dough rise before going into the refrigerator/cooler because of the potential for the dough to act like an insulator (because of its gassiness) and “blow” while in the refrigerator/cooler. See, for example, his PMQ Think Tank post on this point at http://www.pmq.com/cgi-bin/tt/index.cgi?noframes;read=794.

The above is intended solely as an explanation of why the dough expanded so much while in the refrigerator, not to discourage you from experimenting and improving upon the Lehamnn dough formulation to achieve better results, which you appear to have done judging from your latest photos. When the Lehmann dough formulation was first introduced at the PMQ Recipe Bank in 2002 (I’m sure it was around a lot longer before that), autolyse or variations thereof were not used in pizza dough making by pizza operators. Even today, it is extremely rare and, when it is used, it is primarily by artisan pizza makers. Several of our members have been using autolyse or forms thereof since 2003, and it has become a popular method to use.

To reduce the degree of dough expansion in your case, you could reduce the amount of yeast and/or use colder water. You could also lower the hydration some more to compensate for the effects of all the rest periods on the hydration of the flour. Of course, if you liked your results, I wouldn’t change anything. As Tom himself likes to say, "If it works for you, then it’s probably right for you too."  However, your methods might shorten the useful like of the dough and make it more extensible (stretchy) the longer you keep the dough in the refrigerator before using. I might add that when Tom is asked by a pizza operator for a "safe" dough recipe, he most often suggests a hydration of around 58%, which seems to be a popular number for operators who do hand stretching and tossing. Most of our members seem to prefer around 62-63% for the Lehmann dough formulation, which will result in a dough that is hard to toss.

For those who are interested, the link to the Lehmann dough stretching video (Part 3) is at http://www.pmq.com/pizzatv/dough3.php.

Peter

[joe123]

Hello Peter,

Thanks for your explanation of why I got such a rise out of my dough.  It makes total sense - the yeast gets a head start with all those rest periods.  And reading Tom's posts are always enlightening; I had never heard of over proofing in the cooler before. 

Yes, I used exactly the same formulation as before, just reduced the hydration from 63 to 61.  But I did use both rest periods as Jeff laid out.  Now that you mention it the result was more like an artisan style crust and less so like the classic NY style.  Not that it was bad - I may save this technique for my California style experimentations.

Your post has given me some other ideas to try with the Lehman dough:

• skip the second rest period and put the dough straight into the fridge
• use the classic autolyze instead of what I did
• use the wet kneading but skip the autolyze and second rest period altogether

I really do think that the wet kneading helped in uniformly blending all the ingredients together.  You can tell just by watching it that it is working more of the total dough compared to what the hook can do with the drier, complete dough ball.  I'm sure I could have window paned this one if I had desired.

Oh, and thanks for posting that link for me.  I highly recommend that video for anyone who is having trouble with their hand-forming technique.  It may be an over statement but that video changed my pizza life!

/Joe

[Pete-zza]

Joe,

I now make my Lehmann doughs (and just about all others) using sifted flour and at least two to the three attachments (whisk, paddle and C-hook) that come with my KitchenAid mixer. I have found that this methodology allows me to get more complete hydration of the flour and to actually increase the percentage of hydration. For example, I can easily achieve 65% hydration with most flours, including the KASL and even all-purpose flour, and end up with a dough that doesn't feel wet and also handles well. Yet, interestingly, I have discovered that a high quality dough that is easy to handle and shape and stretch--with good windowpaning--doesn't necessarily produce the best crust. Some of the best crusts I have made, especially from a texture standpoint, have come from doughs that I thought were of relatively poor quality. Most of the time I have no explanation as to why that happened.

I have used autolyse with the Lehmann dough formulation, starting back in late 2004, but found that the finished crust was too breadlike for my tastes. So, I don't usually use autolyse although I think a little bit of it is inherently built into my current dough making method. These days I am more likely to use autolyse for low-hydration doughs, to help improve the hydration of the flour because my mixer is inadequate to the task.

With your last post, I think you reached the number where you should be able to include links in your future posts.

Peter

[creampuff]

The baked minis plus tools and a small pizza made from the scrap dough.

Holly Cannoli Peter - These are gorgeous