Lack of gluten development and gluten film formation

[pizzasf]

The more pizza I make, the more I realize how terrible my dough making skills are!

I have followed a Lehman 56% hydration dough recipe. (without adding the salt and oil, just using yeast, water and san felice 00 flour because it was just a practice dough, I am not eating it).

Basic steps are:

1. Put 2.5 grams IDY in the KA bowl

2. Add 430 grams of water at 80 degrees, and stir the yeast in.

3. Add 768 grams San Felice flour

4. Use a spoon, to combine the ingredients for about 20 seconds so that there is no loose flour.

5. I am using the KA600 PRo with the spiral dough hook, and kneaded for an initial 8 mins using the spiral dough hook, and then removed a chicken egg sized piece of the dough, balled it, and pressed between my thumbs and fingers into a 1/2 inch high circle to see if the gluten film would rip. It did. According to Lehman, one reason that this might happen is because more kneading time is required.

6. Repeated the KA kneading and testing process at 2 min intervals until the total mixing time got to 18 mins, and the dough was ripping less, but was still ripping. Tried to windowpane it, and got it quite thin but then it ripped way before going transparent and certainly no where near Varasano's dough which was so thin that he could read a menu through it.

I realise that the San Felice 00 flour is probably closer to 11% protein than the 14% of KASL, but I am sure that I have seen people hand spinning dough out of 00 Italian flour before....

When I have been in good pizzeria's and seen the guys hand tossing and stretching the dough, it seems like it has a virtually limitless extensibility, and I have seen them stretch a piece out to 16" and then spin on a finger without ripping the dough. How do they achieve this amazing texture to the dough?

What is going wrong here?

[Pete-zza]

pizzasf,

In my experience, 00 doughs coming out of the mixer bowl do not perform the gluten window test as well as higher protein, higher gluten doughs. Also, my recollection is that Jeff V's windowpane test was performed after the fermentation of his doughs, not out of the bowl. That is also when Tom Lehmann does the windowpane test with attendees at his clinics and courses on dough making. As you may know, he is not a believer of windowpane tests at the dough making stage. In your case, you should look for the final, desired condition of the dough (smooth and slightly underkneaded). It shouldn't take 18 minutes to achieve that condition.

Peter

[Bryan S]

In my experience, with making pizza dough, I have never did the window pane test and all my pies have turned out just fine. 

[PizzaBrasil]

I agree with both of them, Peter and Bryan S.
If you see any video of somebody stretching pizza dough; that you are seeing is a big windowpane test.
It is normally ok after fermentation (or rest) of the dough.
The dough will let the mixer bowl when you feel it as a babe skin (or, as the Italians like to said, as a younger breast) and is satiny and of creamy color.

Luis