Author Topic: leoparding (Read 18039 times)

widespreadpizza · « **Reply #20 on:** March 29, 2008, 09:06:13 PM »

So , as promised here are a couple of the other ones. This dough went about 2 days longer under refridgeration that last weeks doughs, and to be honest didn't handle as well, so I will cut it back to the original 2 days, and may even see what it is like same day. Same parameters 68% 90 second bake, 75 on the second one (onion). loving it. And no the first pic is not from last week

whadaya think? Marco? anyone? I'll try the same day next week.

pizzanapoletana · « **Reply #21 on:** March 29, 2008, 09:10:19 PM »

Ok,

This is even worse as it becomes a whole mass with everything... No distiction with the other ingredients.

Ciao

widespreadpizza · « **Reply #22 on:** March 29, 2008, 10:27:39 PM »

Marco, When I first read your response, I was a little offended. This just illustrates your dedication and passion for your craft. The key is that in each of your posts there is something to learn. In this one I learned that 1) I never explained exactly what I was shooting for with my choice of toppings and 2) that you a surely footed in the fresh cheese camp. The cheese on these two pies is just a simple 2 cheese mix of dry whole milk mozz. and some DOP romano. I have a hard time finding great fresh mozzerella where I live, so I have gotten in a rut of keeping my regular cheese on hand and using that along with whatever hard cheese I have on hand. I did though just recently have a breakthrough on that front. Otherwise it was a matter of driving 40 minutes round trip to get a pound of cheese. I tried to make it myself a couple times but have not found the right source for milk. When I fire the oven next week, I will use some of the fior di latte that I just found, I think it is calabro. Anyways my point is I would like your opinion on a margherita, not one of my shredded cheese pizzas. Next week everything except the cheese will be organic, including the san marzanos. thanks for the feedback -marc

Pizza_Not_War · « **Reply #23 on:** March 29, 2008, 10:50:27 PM »

Widespread:

They look awesome, especially the first one.

PNW

pizzanapoletana · « **Reply #24 on:** March 30, 2008, 06:14:59 AM »

Quote from: widespreadpizza on March 29, 2008, 10:27:39 PM

Marco, When I first read your response, I was a little offended. This just illustrates your dedication and passion for your craft. The key is that in each of your posts there is something to learn. In this one I learned that 1) I never explained exactly what I was shooting for with my choice of toppings and 2) that you a surely footed in the fresh cheese camp. The cheese on these two pies is just a simple 2 cheese mix of dry whole milk mozz. and some DOP romano. I have a hard time finding great fresh mozzerella where I live, so I have gotten in a rut of keeping my regular cheese on hand and using that along with whatever hard cheese I have on hand. I did though just recently have a breakthrough on that front. Otherwise it was a matter of driving 40 minutes round trip to get a pound of cheese. I tried to make it myself a couple times but have not found the right source for milk. When I fire the oven next week, I will use some of the fior di latte that I just found, I think it is calabro. Anyways my point is I would like your opinion on a margherita, not one of my shredded cheese pizzas. Next week everything except the cheese will be organic, including the san marzanos. thanks for the feedback -marc

Marc,

There was no intention at all to offend you as we have started a conversation about bad cheese on the other thread and I thought you had asked me to check how bad the cheese was.

I thnk your pizza looks good, probably baked at a lower temperature that myself would have liked, but having said that, concentrating on the base and excluding the topping, yours seams the best and with the lesser defects that any other pizza posted on this forum in the past few months.

Well done indeed and apologies for the misunderstanding.

Ciao

widespreadpizza · « **Reply #25 on:** April 01, 2008, 09:50:17 PM »

Marco, your response here made me realize you were talking about the cheese here and not my pizza as a whole. I take your closing statement here with great pride as i never thought that I would deserve such a compliment from you, or anyone else for that matter. I held off on responding for a little bit and just enjoyed the moment. (read a couple days) Certainly I know that there are others out there doing their thing as well as they have been doing it for some time, just no longer posting many results. Anyhow, after thinking it over and wondering what to do next, I am wondering what defects I have left in the apperance of my crusts. I ask this because I know you see some. At the same time i ask, I am not asking you to tell me how to correct them, just identify. I will soon go back to my caputo and see what I can achieve with that flour. Will they ever begin to produce an organic flour? Two final questions. what is your ideal bake time? and does it matter which side of your dough ball, top or bottom, hits the oven floor? thanks-marc

scott r · « **Reply #26 on:** April 02, 2008, 12:26:19 AM »

I love aged cheese too, and of course it matters (in varying degrees depending on your proofing box humidity)! Way to go widespread........Sorry to interrupt.

fabio · « **Reply #27 on:** April 02, 2008, 04:07:58 AM »

Marc,

I'm actually really surprised that no one mentioned this earlier, but using a natural yeast -- such as camaldoli -- instead of commercial "brewers" yeast will probably have a huge effect on leoparding. It sounds like you have much more experience than me and yet I get leopard spots on my pizze on a consistent basis, without trying much. From the parameters you gave, sounds like the yeast is the only difference compared to my dough. Its also interesting to note that BillSFNM and Marco use natural yeast as well, and they seam to have no problem with leopard-spotting.

Hope that helps and buone pizze.

widespreadpizza · « **Reply #28 on:** April 02, 2008, 09:22:21 AM »

Fabio, that is the thing i forgot to mention, I have had the italian cultures from marco/sourdough int for the last 2 years and something caused them to go south on me, me I am sure. One about a year ago,the camoldi, and then the island. I thought I had a viable backup for that one but I didn't. So I had been using them with very good success, and may be reordering them. In the meantime, I still have my carls oregon trail starter, and will bust that out of the fridge and see if I can get him ready for the weekend. Anyhow, I have also been planning on trying to capture a native yeast this spring. Thanks for the reminder on the starters.
Scott, could you explain exactly what you mean about the proofing box humidity level? thanks -marc

scott r · « **Reply #29 on:** April 02, 2008, 10:24:55 AM »

Well, I would love to hear marco's take, but what I am getting at is this. If you were to put your dough in a sealed plastic container you wouldn't notice as much of a difference as if you used a large plastic dough box with some small holes in it (as is common practice in many better pizzerias), or even an old school wooden dough box.

pizzanapoletana · « **Reply #30 on:** April 02, 2008, 12:24:40 PM »

Quote from: fabio on April 02, 2008, 04:07:58 AM

Marc,

I'm actually really surprised that no one mentioned this earlier, but using a natural yeast -- such as camaldoli -- instead of commercial "brewers" yeast will probably have a huge effect on leoparding. It sounds like you have much more experience than me and yet I get leopard spots on my pizze on a consistent basis, without trying much. From the parameters you gave, sounds like the yeast is the only difference compared to my dough. Its also interesting to note that BillSFNM and Marco use natural yeast as well, and they seam to have no problem with leopard-spotting.

Hope that helps and buone pizze.

This is as much I am ready to say:

A Starter may impact on the colour but the leapording is obtain by a combination of factors that are independednt from the starter (llok at the many pizza in Naples made without starters.

Ciao

s00da · « **Reply #31 on:** January 04, 2009, 05:23:33 PM »

I know this thread is a little old but I just want to share my experience regarding this subject. I hope it will help others.

I'm attaching 2 pizza images of the same composition.

As you can see, the first one has an over all darker crust with few spots. This was a result of baking the pie at around 750 degrees and waiting for the spots to appear, it took around 120 seconds. Obviously while few spots did appear, it gave the pie lots of time to develop a darker colored crust. Actually the spots appeared fairly at the end of the bake time.

The second pie was baked at 800+. The spots appeared around the first 20 seconds and started darkening until charred by the end of the bake time. It took 70 seconds. As you can see, the rest of the crust remained much lighter in color.

Regarding the spots size, I believe they will vary mainly with the strength of the dough at the time of bake. It might have to do with how weak or strong the dough is in trapping the air inside it while high heat is causing a rapid oven-rise effect.

Thanks guys, your ideas helped a lot and I think high heat is the main key here.

artigiano · « **Reply #32 on:** January 06, 2009, 12:26:48 AM »

I think Sooda hit it bang on.

andreguidon · « **Reply #33 on:** January 06, 2009, 08:25:17 AM »

what kind of flour ?

because Ive tried two different kind... and only the Italian flour X AP had leoparding.... both baked at 850F....

pizzaboyfan · « **Reply #34 on:** January 06, 2009, 12:42:32 PM »

Here's my 2 cents.
I've been making pies for over 1 year and I caught this thread on leoparding a few weeks back.
Low and behold, my last 2 batches showed exactly the leoparding in the pics.
It's not the heat, because I have cooked a variety of doughs , the heat would be a constant....same oven, same preheating until the dome is white..same 60 second pizza's.
I've used caputo with a 66 % hydration, and the same yeast and same kneading.
What I varied in my 2 batches was the fermentation time .
I went from 24 hour cold to 48 hour cold and then froze the dough balls.
My money is on the fermantation.

JConk007 · « **Reply #35 on:** January 06, 2009, 12:58:34 PM »

I am on board with that, I am thinking the fermentation time is the trick here also, Most of the 2 stone/LBE guys (who's pies look completely amazing BTW) do use a very high heat that comes up around the edge of kettle so those results I would think are different from my 800 degree all around and more by fire woodfired oven right? Also did you all just read Pete's post on the 12 Day dough that got some blisters?
Interesting

anyway leoparding is pretty cool and I try for that look outside.
John

s00da · « **Reply #36 on:** January 06, 2009, 03:40:25 PM »

andreguidon, I'm using 50:50 bread flour:AP flour.

pizzaboyfan, in another thread, Pete stated that an increase in fermentation time reduces the amount of sugar in the dough. Thus resulting in less browning in the final crust. This I believe will give more contrast between the spots and the rest of the crust and achieving the leoparding effect. I haven't tried to bake a 24 hour retarded dough but according to you and Pete, it should produce less leoparding effect but I cannot judge to what extent as I need to try that myself.

It seems that almost all images I've seen for Neapolitan pizzas coming from a commercial setting have leoparding effect where the dough is made the same day it's baked. Would that mean that the shorter time room temperature dough rise consumes as much sugar as if it was cold fermented for 48 hours?

JConk007, the oven I use is pretty different so I will speak out of my observations. One of Bill/SFNM's posts showed this video

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNqqoSyeoww" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNqqoSyeoww</a>

where I can see that the leoparding is occurring at the coal side of the oven where it could hotter than the air directly above of the pie. (needs confirmation from woodfired oven users). I believe this is the reason why I see some woodfired oven users finish-up they pie by raising it up toward the dome, to get a more uniform leoparding effect by charring the top of the pie. For 2 stone, I can see something similar in this video

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oAwsqevZJo" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oAwsqevZJo</a>

where the resulting pie at the end was undercooked from the top and had leoparding only on the sides which was due to the high heat at the edges.

I'm not an expert on the subject but these are things I observed and experienced throughout my learning process on this forum.

s00da

JConk007 · « **Reply #37 on:** January 06, 2009, 03:47:48 PM »

sOOda,
I am on board with that. I think that shorter warmer would be the case . you are Absolutely correct the fire side cooks quickest hence the 1 or 2 spins every 20-30 sec. is a must or you will be eating only a 1/2 of a pie. I have recently started lifting up to dome to finish as I caught that on some video somewhere, works great.
JOhn

Pete-zza · « **Reply #38 on:** January 06, 2009, 06:37:06 PM »

Saad,

I don't have a very high temperature oven so I can't speak to the matter of leoparding, but as pizzanapoletana (Marco) mentioned at Reply 13 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1261.msg11336/topicseen.html#msg11336, enzymes work better at room temperature. Also, yeast works better at room temperature. So the combination of enzymes and yeast in a room temperature dough fermentation setting will produce results in a shorter period of time than it would take in a cold fermentation setting. I discovered this phenomenon myself when I attempted to make a 20-24 hour room temperature fermented dough using commercial yeast (see http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7225.msg62332/topicseen.html#msg62332). To get the equivalent results in a cold fermentation environment would have taken several days. If yeast and enzymes work faster at room temperature, the risk of sugar depletion may increase although I didn't see a noticeable lack of crust coloration when I made the pizzas from the 20-24 hour room temperature dough.

Successful long room temperature fermented doughs usually use a small amount of yeast (natural starter or commercial yeast) so the sugars that are released during the room temperature fermentation to feed the yeast are not all used by the yeast, leaving more residual sugar at the time of baking to contribute to crust coloration. In my case, I used a bit more than half of a 1/64 teaspoon of yeast (IDY), in the context of a room temperature setting of around 80-82 degrees F. If I had used more yeast and a shorter fermentation time, say, 8-10 hours, a lack of sufficient residual sugar might have been a problem because of less sugar in the dough because of reduced enzyme performance (it takes several hours to release natural sugar from the dough) and the greater nutritional need for sugar of the yeast. How this all plays out in a very high temperature oven as opposed to my standard kitchen oven in relation to leoparding is something I have not had to consider. The other members with the high temperature ovens should be able to better speak to the issue of residual sugar and its effect, if any, on leoparding.

Peter

s00da · « **Reply #39 on:** January 07, 2009, 02:07:28 AM »

Pete,

I believe then that the best way to compare the effect of different fermentation period on leoparding effect is by baking a 24 hours cold fermented dough and see how different the results are from my usual 72 hours fermented dough. In terms of leoparding that is.

I shall post again my findings here.

s00da