How to Make a Long (20-24 Hour), Room-Temperature Fermented Dough

[UnConundrum]

I would have laid odds against you guys, but the proof is in the pictures (pun intended).  I have to think there is enough yeast in the air of your kitchens that that is what is causing the expansion.  I know the containers are tightly covered, but they weren't when you mixed the dough.  I think that's much more feasible than it coming from the bag of flour...

[Pete-zza]

After 24 hours of room temperature fermentation, the spacing of the poppy seeds suggests an expansion so far of 42.4%. Outdoor temperatures reached 97 degrees F today so my kitchen was quite warm all day.

Peter

[widespreadpizza]

So,  after a nice pizza session the results are in.   It actually does work.  here are some pictures,  the doughs approached 100% expansion about 7:00 tonight.  So 21 hours of total fermentation at an average of about 87 degrees.  Two things happened which I would change if and when I do this again.  I would have made the pizza slightly earlier,  about 75% expansion.  Also I realized that the dough was so warm,  much warmer than I am used to that I had to chill it last minute to be able to work with it.  Next time I would just begin retarding the fermentation at about 60% expansion and use it when I am ready.  So all in all,  the flavor and texture of the crust are very good and I am coming away from this experiment with an unexpected lesson that will impact all of my future dough making adventures.  I will be trying to absorb all of what this means for a while.  In the meantime,  I may try to nurture the dough ball I have left into a starter.  NO offense to anyone,  but I believe that 99.9% of this yeast is in the flour itself.  Not the air. I opened a brand new bag of flour to conduct this test moments before making my dough in a sanitized stand mixer.  The fact that peters dough is behaving in a similar manner,  adds to my belief.  Also I have successfully cultivated starters before from rye flour and water alone into a strong starter that easily raises bread.   Also,  there was salt in this formula,  which would work against any minuscule amount of airborne yeast that may have gotten into this dough.  All I can tell you is try it yourself,  or maybe I try it again with flour that has been heated gently to 140 or so degrees make sure all the yeast was killed off.  I assure you the results would be different.  Peter,  I am looking forward to your thoughts on this test.  I also made a bunch of other pizzas after this one which were based on the recent Caputo website recipe.  A couple personal revelations there,  but in comparison nothing to write home about.  the most intriguing part of that was the lower hydration and very early division of bulk fermenting dough.  I may comment more on that in that thread.  Back to this for a second.  the pie in these pictures was cooked at about 650 -700 for 2.5-3 minutes,  the cheese is pretty brown as it is grande ps/prov blend.  The three in attendance thought it was very good.  Let me know what you think -marc

[Pete-zza]

Marc,

Thank you for the nice report. I am glad that we have run these tests. I already have learned a lot for them that will also influence my thinking in the future on room-temperature fermented doughs, including naturally leavened ones using the Italian and similar starter cultures. I don't know the source of the wild yeast but, whatever it is, the amount of the wild yeast is very small. It perhaps has the greatest significance for long room-temperature fermentations of a day or more, and especially those at elevated temperatures. For normal dough recipes using normal amounts of yeast, the added wild yeast that we have thought very little about in the past will be so minuscule as to be lost in the noise.

I wouldn't be surprised if my latest dough doubles by tomorrow morning. If so, on an IDY equivalency basis we might be talking somewhere between 1/256 teaspoon and 1/512 teaspoon. This is for a dough ball weight of 14.62 ounces. Your dough expanded faster than mine because of the considerably higher room temperature and possibly because your flour was fresher than mine. I continue to be impressed with how powerful a force temperature is. In colder weather, we may discover that long room-temperature fermented doughs of a day or more will be tougher to pull off without adding commercial yeast. Or else a unit such as the ThermoKool MR-138 unit may be needed to get the proper fermentation temperature.

Can you comment on the crust flavors? We haven't talked about the role of bacteria, but they are directly implicated in the byproducts of fermentation and pH levels that contribute to final crust flavor. Unfortunately, bacteria do not perform all that well at high temperatures, much as yeast and enzymes don't perform optimally once you take them outside of their temperature comfort zones so to speak. I wonder whether we sacrificed crust flavor by using the high fermentation temperatures. The crust of my last pizza had good flavor but it was not extraordinary.

Peter

[Pete-zza]

As I suspected, the most recent dough (without any added IDY) doubled in volume by the time I woke up this morning. If I had to estimate, I would say that the dough doubled in volume after about 30 hours of room temperature fermentation, at around 82 degrees F. Despite the warm weather, I decided to crank up my oven and make a pizza out of the dough. After all of the unexpected surprises and developments, I really wanted to see what kind of results I would get. However, I wasn’t quite ready to make the pizza at around 6 AM. So I put the dough, still in its lidded container, into the refrigerator for about 5 hours. I then brought the dough back out to room temperature to warm up for about an hour as I preheated my pizza stone. When time came to shape and stretch the dough ball out to the desired size (14”), I found the dough to be very extensible, especially toward the end of the one-hour warm-up period. However, I was very careful in handling the dough and, as a result, did not have any problems stretching it out to size, mostly by pressing, stretching and pulling the dough skin on my work surface. To minimize the risk of the dough skin sticking to my peel, I dusted both my work surface and peel with semolina flour.

For the record, the dough formulation that I used was as follows, using the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html:

King Arthur Bread Flour (100%): Water (57%): Salt (1.50%): Total (158.5%):

265.5 g  |  9.36 oz | 0.59 lbs 151.33 g  |  5.34 oz | 0.33 lbs 3.98 g | 0.14 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.71 tsp | 0.24 tbsp 420.81 g | 14.84 oz | 0.93 lbs | TF = 0.096425

Note: Nominal thickness factor = 0.095; for 14” pizza; bowl residue compensation = 1.5%

The dough in accordance with the above dough formulation was prepared in the same manner as the previous one (at Reply 58 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7225.msg78689.html#msg78689) but with no IDY. The pizza was baked in the same manner as the previous ones that I described in the course of this thread.

The photos below show the finished pizza. Overall, I thought that the pizza turned out extremely well. The crust was chewy and crispy with very good flavor and decent color. I actually liked the crust flavor of this pizza better than the last one. Maybe it was the advanced stage of fermentation and the lack of competition from the IDY that were responsible for the better flavor. Maybe the period of cold fermentation also helped.

It will take me a while to contemplate the significance of the doughs that widespreadpizza (Marc) and I made, and what they portend in the way of making practical pizzas in the future using the methods described in this thread, but I believe that the results are significant. No doubt, I will have more to say on the matter in future posts.

Peter

[Pete-zza]

And slice pics...

Peter

[widespreadpizza]

Peter,  glad to see that your crust turned out well too.  I didn't want there to be a large discrepancy in the experiments.  I am still very surprised by the results of the experiment.  I did detect a nice flavor in my crust and in fact one of my guests said they liked it better than the Caputo/ADY dough I cooked after.  I don't know what to make of the results entirely,  but as someone who has been making many room temp. naturally leavened doughs over the last few years in the 70-75 degree range,  I am starting to understand why sometimes even as little as 1% starter can make me overshoot my target in only 24 hours.  I am curious what Caputo may or may not do if i were to repeat the test,  and maybe even under cooler temps.  In around 48 hours.   All in all I am glad we did the test.  Certainly it is an unpredictable method of doughmaking at this point and may not yield better results than traditional methods,  but it sure is interesting.  Also,  I have 49 pounds of this flour left.  That may be enough to make it predictable.  In thinking about why this worked, I wonder if the b vitamins that are added to the flour contribute to the yeast count?  -Marc

[Pete-zza]

Marc,

One of the compelling features of the experiments we conducted is that the dough is so easy to make. Just combine flour, water and salt to form a dough ball, lightly oil it and put it into a sealed container, and place the container on a countertop for about a day. There are no unorthodox components, like using very high hydration values that might trip someone up. I don't know how to make it any easier. Of course, you need a high enough room temperature--about 80 degrees F or higher--to have the dough ready in about a day. I plan to repeat the experiment when winter comes to see what changes might be required. For example, I may have to use some commercial yeast to offset my cool kitchen. I will perhaps use November's equations at Reply 6 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5028.msg42572.html#msg42572 to spare me excessive experimentation.

I thought that it was cool that you were making the dough in the Northeast while I was making mine essentially contemporaneously in Texas--you with your New England wild yeast and me with my Texas wild yeast--and got comparable results, although your oven yielded better results than my home oven. I felt like I was in an Iron Chef matchup trying to beat the clock . Your warmer dough beat me to the finish line.

No doubt, there are dough formulations that can produce better overall results. But, in my experience, they tend to involve using natural starters, cold fermentation times in excess of 15 days, or the use of preferments. But these are much more involved and complicated.

Peter

[Pete-zza]

In thinking about why this worked, I wonder if the b vitamins that are added to the flour contributie to the yeast count? 

Marc,

I don't think the B vitamins contribute any yeast components to the flour. I believe that the addition of B vitamins to flour is required by law, although there may be some nonenriched unmalted flours that are excepted from that requirement. As you know, milling strips away a lot of the nutritional value of grains.

Peter

[widespreadpizza]

Peter,  the reason I brought that up,  is because I think that yeast is used to manufacture b vitamins for supplements and foods.  Brewers yeast is a supplement in itself.  It also a great reason to drink unfiltered beer.  -marc

[Pete-zza]

Peter,  the reason I brought that up,  is because I think that yeast is used to manufacture b vitamins for supplements and foods.  Brewers yeast is a supplement in itself.

Marc,

That is something I did not know. But, based on the information at http://www.growco.us/gc_protocolyeast.html, you might have a point. On the other hand, I looked at a bottle of B-complex vitamins to see if yeast, which some people are allergic to, was listed. There was a statement that said that there was NO (in caps) yeast (as well as several other excluded items). I also looked at the bag of KABF and it is silent as to the presence of yeast.

Since you have the Caputo flour, which I believe is unenriched, you might make a dough and subject it to room temperature for about a day and see if it behaves like your KABF dough under the same conditions. As you know, Bob's Red Mill and Hodgson Mill also sell nonenriched flours that could be used for such a test.

You perhaps could heat some KABF at around 145 degrees F to kill any yeast cells, as you suggested earlier, but I would be concerned that the enzymes, which are proteins, might be denatured and rendered less effective and, as result, negatively affect dough performance.

Peter

[ThunderStik]

Wow, this is really cool guys. I have been thinking about something similar in which I made the ball and set it out side in a container covered with gauze or cheese cloth to see if it would be leavened with natural yeast...you guys beat me to the punch in a big way.

Great thread.

[pcampbell]

How much kneading are you doing on the 24 hour recipes?  Is it not necessary to knead as much?  And how did you like 57 vs 55% hydration?

[Pete-zza]

Patrick,

In my case, the basic kneading for all the doughs was done in my basic KitchenAid stand mixer. However, in the case of the original dough (the one described in the opening post at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7225.0.html), I re-kneaded the dough ball at hour 20 (out of 24), and in the case of the Spangler clone dough at Reply 17 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7225.msg76431.html#msg76431, I used a series of three stretch and folds. I thought that these techniques helped strengthen the gluten structure and may even have helped reduce some of the wetness of the dough by redistributing everything uniformly within the dough balls. In the case of the last two doughs --the one described at Reply 58 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7225.msg78689.html#msg78689 and the one described at Reply 84 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7225.msg78779.html#msg78779 --I did not touch the dough balls once they went into their storage containers. I wanted to see if I could escape having to do any re-kneading or stretch and folds.

With respect to the two hydration values, 55% and 57%, both of these values were specifically selected to be 5% below the rated absorption values for the KAAP and KABF flours, respectively. I came to this protocol based on earlier experiments that I had conducted on hydration values. I also thought that using lower hydration values might make it easier to work with the final doughs and reduce the risk of the shaped dough skins sticking to the peel, which is a problem I have experienced with high-hydration doughs fermented for long times at room temperature, especially at elevated room temperatures. However, I should point out that Marc (widespreadpizza) used the normal hydration value for the KABF, which is 62%, and apparently did not experience any problems with that value. Also, Saad (s00da), in his last experiment, as described at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9053.0.html, used a hydration value of almost 64%, which is a couple percent or so above the rated absorption value of the Gold Medal Better for Bread flour (formerly the Harvest King flour) that he used.

I believe that the 24-hour room-temperature fermented doughs in general can tolerate a fair amount of re-kneading and punch and folds. However, it is perhaps wise to allow sufficient time for the doughs to recover and resume their proof. Also, as previously noted, the doughs can also tolerate a period of cold fermentation, which should be a useful feature. Moreover, based on Marc"s and Saad's experiments, it also looks like the doughs have pretty good hydration tolerance.

Peter

[s00da]

Due to lack of supply of bread flour, I was unable to follow-up with you guys on these experiments 

Nonetheless, I had some Caputo flour and attempted my previous recipe with little modifications.

Flour (100%): Water (60%): IDY (0.0236%): Salt (1.75%): Total (161.7736%): Single Ball:

388.95 g  |  13.72 oz | 0.86 lbs 233.37 g  |  8.23 oz | 0.51 lbs 0.09 g | 0 oz | 0 lbs | 0.03 tsp | 0.01 tbsp 6.81 g | 0.24 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2 tsp | 0.67 tbsp 629.22 g | 22.19 oz | 1.39 lbs | TF = 0.089 314.61 g | 11.1 oz | 0.69 lbs

The % of IDY used is the same for my Gold Medal Bread Flour recipe, targeting 24 hours fermentation at 75 F. I have also adjusted the hydration because the Caputo flour always gave me trouble in mixing, so I went with 60% and that produced a nicely kneaded dough unlike when I used the Caputo with 62% hydration and more.

19 hours through and the dough rose nicely but not as much as the GMBF and that was consistent with my previous attempts with Caputo/Ischia as compared with Local AP/Inschia. Caputo flour always needed more fermentation it seems. I punched the dough down and divided it into two balls.

At the 24th hour the oven was heated to 700 F, I wanted to bake it like I baked my 18" GMBF recipe. The dough handled very easily but not as easy as the GMBF dough. The extensibility/elasticity were nicely balanced but the dough lacked air inside it. For some reason, I'm unable to achieve a soft feather pillow-like dough with the Caputo, I wonder if that's the way it is! Probably due to the lower hydration of 60% along with Caputo's need for more fermentation; will probably adjust that in future attempts. The pies took around 2:30 minutes to bake. The second pie (pepperoni) was actually baked at 830 F.

The pies tasted ok but did not have that bread flour aroma. The crust was really crispy which I really liked followed by a dense fluff. It was actually chewier that the GMBF which I would assume again because of the lower hydration and the need for extra fermentation. The second pie (baked at 830 F) had more oven spring but that's not showing much in the images. The crust was also able to support the toppings without sagging but I doubt it can do that with higher hydration and a higher bake temperature.

What was really interesting though is the coloration of the crust. I was prepared to eat a white crust when I threw the pizza in at 700 F but as you can see it turned out well browned. Comparing it with other Caputo doughs I made at 62% hydration and baked at 900 F, they had more blistering, leoparding and amber color but not this browning.

One thing I learned this time is to better protect the cheese from browning. I used to apply the cheese first and then apply the sauce so it's protected from upper heat but this did not protect it from cooking caused by the lower heat. What I did here is apply a thin layer for sauce first, lay the cheese and then apply the rest of the sauce.

Saad

[Pete-zza]

Saad,

Because the Caputo 00 flour is unmalted and has less starch damage than most of the flours used in the U.S., it is possible that the enzymes that work on the damaged starch to produce natural sugars are producing less sugar. Hence, there will be less sugar for the yeast to consume. That might translate into a longer fermentation time to get to the same point as other flours that have more starch damage, especially if the flours are malted. An interesting experiment would be to add some diastatic malt to the Caputo flour to see if that coaxes more sugar out of the damaged starch.

Peter

[Pete-zza]

A couple of days ago, I discovered that I had a bag of Caputo Extra Blu 00 flour, which is a lower protein Caputo flour than the Caputo 00 Pizzeria flour, in an out-of-sight part of my pantry. However, it was old and had a stale and musty odor and perhaps not suitable to use to make a pizza. However, I thought that it might be suitable to make a test dough, without commercial yeast, and to ferment the dough at an elevated room temperature (about 82 degrees F in my case) until the dough reached a particular threshold, specifically, a doubling in volume. I thought that this test might be a useful one since the Caputo Extra Blu flour, like all Caputo 00 flours, is unbleached, nonenriched and unmalted. Such a test would rule out any potential effects of bleaches (natural or chemical), vitamins and other enrichments, and malting. Maybe the age and condition of the flour would be a factor but not the other ones.

For purposes of the test, I decided to use the same dough formulation as I used the last time, as discussed at Reply 84 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7225.msg78779.html#msg78779. Using the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html, the dough formulation I used was as follows:

Old and Stale and Musty Caputo Extra Blu 00 Flour (100%): Water (57%): Salt (1.50%): Total (158.5%):

265.5 g  |  9.36 oz | 0.59 lbs 151.33 g  |  5.34 oz | 0.33 lbs 3.98 g | 0.14 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.71 tsp | 0.24 tbsp 420.81 g | 14.84 oz | 0.93 lbs | TF = 0.096425

Note: Nominal thickness factor = 0.095; for a 14” dough skin; bowl residue compensation factor = 1.5%

I prepared the dough in the same manner as the last couple of doughs discussed in this thread, with the only difference being that the water temperature I used for the latest test was 46.9 degrees F. The finished dough temperature was 80 degrees F. To monitor the volume expansion of the dough during its fermentation, I used the poppy seed trick as described at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6914.0.html.

Based on the increase in the spacing of the poppy seeds as the dough ball fermented, the dough ball increased by about 55% after 24 hours. The rate of expansion accelerated at that point, and reached 81% after 27 hours, and 100% (a doubling) after 28 hours. I should mention that there is nothing magic about the doubling point. Although it is a common and convenient point to use a dough, I find it a convenient threshold in case I need to make adjustments to the dough formulation or methodology in future efforts. I might also add that one member, Robin, who has a pizza business in the UK and uses a long, room-temperature fermentation (a total of about 25-26 hours by my calculation, with a final proof of 5-6 hours after dividing the bulk dough), along with commercial yeast (IDY at 0.026%), prefers to use the dough when it has expanded by 60-70%. For those who are interested, a discussion of his procedures, which I found quite useful in my research, can be found at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5826.msg49588.html#msg49588.

Although I decided not to use the test dough to make a pizza, I did shape and stretch it out to size (14” in my case). The dough coming out of the storage bowl was very gassy—more so than my last couple of doughs—and also sticky. In fact, some of the dough stuck to the sides of the storage bowl as I tried to remove the dough ball from the bowl. I simply scraped the stuck dough and added it back to the rest of the dough. The stickiness diminished significantly as I dipped the dough ball into some bench flour before trying to work with it. The dough was quite extensible but I did not have any problem shaping and stretching it out to size. The photo below shows the skin as I prepared it and placed it on my peel to see if would stick to the peel. It did not.

Before discarding the dough, I performed an additional test. I gathered up the skin and reformed it into a new ball and kneaded it until smooth. As I expected, that dramatically increased the elasticity of the dough. After about an hour proofing at room temperature, I tried forming another skin with the dough just to see if it would handle better after such a re-working. It did. I don’t know how it would have handled had I left the dough proof for several hours rather than one hour, as I did with the original dough discussed in the opening post of this thread.

What seems to be clear from the latest experiment is that it is possible to ferment a 00 dough at an elevated room temperature for 24 hours or so. The numbers using a fresh 00 flour might be different than mine using the stale and musty 00 flour, but the principles should be the same. There may also be variations unique to using the Caputo 00 Pizzeria flour rather than the Caputo Extra Blu 00 flour. The two flours have different deformation energy values "W" and have different tolerances to room temperature fermentation. For those who are interested in the arcana of W values, see Reply 12 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5496.msg46487/topicseen.html#msg46487, and also the link embedded therein at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,4986.msg42545.html#msg42545 (Reply 15)

Peter

[s00da]

Saad,

Because the Caputo 00 flour is unmalted and has less starch damage than most of the flours used in the U.S., it is possible that the enzymes that work on the damaged starch to produce natural sugars are producing less sugar. Hence, there will be less sugar for the yeast to consume. That might translate into a longer fermentation time to get to the same point as other flours that have more starch damage, especially if the flours are malted. An interesting experiment would be to add some diastatic malt to the Caputo flour to see if that coaxes more sugar out of the damaged starch.

Peter

What would be more interesting is how I can find it here  I'm already short on bread flour and waiting for the store to restock it. Until then, I will be just watching 

[widespreadpizza]

Peter,  I am glad you were curious enough to perform the Caputo test.  I would have gotten to it,  but it seems that the results are already in.  I suspected it would be a similar outcome.  On a related note,  the dough I used to measure expansion on the last go around was stored covered in the fridge for a few days,  where it continued to rise slowly to my surprise.  Today I transfered it into a large glass "crock" broke it down into water and fed it with more of the same flour.  Now it is closer to room temp,  like 75,  and its already about time to feed it again.  The old dough smelled both acidic and yeasty and smells good right now too.  Maybe its worth keeping.  Who knows.  -Marc

[Pete-zza]

Saad,

There is actually an alternative to using diastatic malt and that is to increase the starch damage of the Caputo 00 flour so that more damaged starch is available to the alpha-amlyase enzymes to yield more natural sugars. One way that I attempted to do that before was to gradually pour the Caputo 00 flour down the chute of my food processor while it was operating at maximum speed (with the metal blade). In a post that I once entered at the PMQ Think Tank on this subject, Tom Lehmann said that he thought that my method would work. Unfortunately, when PMQ changed their forum software, the old posts were lost and I could no longer find the post in which Tom addressed this issue. But I am pretty sure that Tom said that another way to increase the starch damage was to mix some of the flour into boiling water. I never tried that but I did experiment with a combination of damaged Caputo 00 starch (using my Cuisinart food processor) and diastatic malt. My results were discussed at Reply 93 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,986.msg14039.html#msg14039. In that experiment, I used only 0.2% dried diastatic malt. However, subsequently, I have read and been told (by the largest U.S. malt producer) that more can be used, possibly up to 1% of the flour weight. Too much diastatic malt, however, can lead to a wet and slack dough with poor fermentation performance. There is a very good article about malt in general at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,8308.msg71658.html#msg71658.

You might also be interested in knowing that you can make your own diastatic malt. Usually barley is used, mainly because of its origins in beer making but also because it is cheaper than other grains, but wheat berries can also be used to make diastatic malt. You can read how to do this at http://www.radicalfrugality.info/homemade-diastatic-malt.html . Isn't science wonderful ?

Peter