Salt suggestions

[anton-luigi]

I have recently started following Varasano's spreadsheet numbers from his website,  I am using King Arthur bread flour, IDY, Camaldoli starter at a 50/50 poolish,  the salt I have been using is Tone's sea salt and parsley,  It is difficult to do, but you can almost eliminate the parsley from the scoop if you work at it.  But I made a batch of dough night before last,  following the percentages for 3 pies.

water-  330g
Flour- 510g
Salt- 18g
starter-45g
IDY-1.5g

I pulled out a single ball last night,  and my daughter and I made a pizza.  eek'd out a crappy sauce from a can of puree I had in the cupboard,  just to test the skin.  First thing I noticed is that the crust seems to be quite salty.  Is my salt a problem,  and if so,  who has a good suggestion as to what salt I should be using?

One other thing I should mention is that I am cooking in a home electric oven at 550,  I am cooking on a pampered chef stone on the bottom rack,  giving it about a half hour post preheat to get the stone up to temp.  I do not have an IR thermometer,  so I cannot comment on exact temps. Obviously the formulation from the Varasano spreadsheet is geared for 825 cooking,  and I probably should be making some adjustments for my lower temp cooking.

[Bill/SFNM]

That's a little more salt than I prefer. You are using 3.5% and I use 2.5-3%. The salt content of the toppings should be taken into consideration. After trying all kinds of cheap and exotic salt, I have been unable to detect the difference in the crust. I sometimes put Italian sea salt into the dough just for authenticity claims, but as long as you go by weight, I don't think it makes any difference. Additional seasonings such as parsley in the salt is altogether another matter.

[anton-luigi]

The saltiness I only "really" noticed when I got to the rim of the slice,  so it is definitely within the crust that Im getting it from.  Im going to do some shopping around today and see what kind of sea salt I can come up with,  and will make some adjustments to the formula accordingly.  Thanks Bill.

[Pete-zza]

anton-luigi,

I ran your numbers through the preferment dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/preferment_calculator.html and, if I interpreted your numbers correctly, I got the following:

Total Formula: Flour (100%): Water (66.1972%): Salt (3.38028%): IDY (0.28169%): Total (169.85917%): Preferment: Flour: Water: Total: Final Dough: Flour: Water: Salt: IDY: Preferment: Total:

532.5 g  |  18.78 oz | 1.17 lbs 352.5 g  |  12.43 oz | 0.78 lbs 18 g | 0.63 oz | 0.04 lbs | 3.22 tsp | 1.07 tbsp 1.5 g | 0.05 oz | 0 lbs | 0.5 tsp | 0.17 tbsp 904.5 g | 31.9 oz | 1.99 lbs | TF = N/A     22.5 g | 0.79 oz | 0.05 lbs 22.5 g | 0.79 oz | 0.05 lbs 45 g | 1.59 oz | 0.1 lbs   510 g | 17.99 oz | 1.12 lbs 330 g | 11.64 oz | 0.73 lbs 18 g | 0.63 oz | 0.04 lbs | 3.22 tsp | 1.07 tbsp 1.5 g | 0.05 oz | 0 lbs | 0.5 tsp | 0.17 tbsp 45 g | 1.59 oz | 0.1 lbs 904.5 g | 31.9 oz | 1.99 lbs  | TF = N/A

Note: Preferment = 4.97512% of total dough weight of 904.5 g.

As you can see, your salt level (3.38%) is still high even when accounting for the flour in the poolish. In fact, it is not that far below the amount of salt that one might use to make an acrobatic dough (see, for example, Reply 5 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1399.msg13697.html#msg13697). There are several reasons--apart from taste--for using high salt levels in Neapolitan style doughs that are to be fermented at room temperature, as noted, for example, by Marco (pizzanapoletana) at Reply 21 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1298.msg11838/topicseen.html#msg11838, but for doughs that are to be cold fermented, if that is what you did, I personally do not see much reason for going above 1.75-2% unless it is for taste purposes.

Peter

[anton-luigi]

Thank you Pete,  your help is invaluable here.  I just bought some Sicilian large crystal sea salt,  a jar of french sea salt crystals,  and some fine ground Sicilian sea salt.  At least we will start with some pure sea salt to begin with,  and then cut down the percentage per your suggestion. 

[anton-luigi]

oh,  and actually,  I can see your point about the acrobatic dough,  it did seem to be quite sturdy.

[Pete-zza]

I just bought some Sicilian large crystal sea salt,  a jar of french sea salt crystals,  and some fine ground Sicilian sea salt.

anton-luigi,

Marco deems the Sicilian sea salt to be the best for pizza dough, because of its particular hygroscopicity, as noted at Reply 11 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1531.msg14363.html#msg14363 (see also related Reply 13). If you decide to use the large crystal sea salt, you may want to either grind it to a smaller particle size or dissolve it in the water.

Peter