Too long of a rise?

[thomasshawn]

OK, I've been making pizzas and dough now for about 2.5 years in a wood burning oven (reaches 700+ degrees).

I have had some good success using Peter Reinhart's recipes. Yesterday I made a batch of his "Pizza Americana" dough  with KA Bread Flour but I supplemented the dough with Bob's Vital Wheat Gluten Flour  per this http://tools.foodsim.com/ calculator to  16% goal.

Anyway, all went well, dough seemed to come out perfect and I was letting it rise for a couple of hours (room temp here was only about 68F)  so I was going to let it rise for a few hours before putting it in the fridge overnight. I woke up this morning and realized I had forgotten about the dough and it sat at room temp for close to 10 hours.

Do I assume I overdid it and make another quick batch for this afternoon and loose the benefit of the overnight in the fridge. Will the dough be usable?

How long is too long and how do you tell.

Thanks

Shawn

[Pete-zza]

Shawn,

Welcome back. I remember very well you prior efforts with the Reinhart NY style dough recipe.

The Reinhart Pizza Americana dough recipe you used most recently calls for 1 1/4 teaspoon of instant dry yeast (IDY) for 20 1/4 ounces of flour. That represents a baker's percent of about 0.66%. That is high for a room temperature fermentation but at a room temperature of around 68 degrees F, I think your dough should still be usable. After 10 hours (or whatever it now is), I suspect that the dough had expanded substantially. If so, I would either use it as is (pressing it down gently and then shaping and stretching it) or punch it down and let it rise again for as many hours as it takes to double. This will both strengthen the gluten structure and allow it to relax so that the dough is workable and not overly elastic. If the dough doesn't double, I would use it once the rise peaks. After that, the dough performance will suffer and you will not get the best results.

Please let us know how things turn out.

Peter

[thomasshawn]

Well I remade a fresh batch of dough for lunch. I placed the others in the fridge earlt this morning and took them out an hour before I planned on possibly using them. The ones I used of the "overnight" doughs actually had a very yeasty but good flavor. I used them as they were and did not punch them down. I did punch down the remaining ones just to see if they would rise again. After a few hours we were still making pies and I made another (in that time the dough had risen substantially from the punched down state) This one actually had a good texture, but tore easily when stretched and was a little sour after cooking. So the overnight actually helped the flavor but shortened the window I could use them dramatically.

In the future I may go for a happy medium and let it rise for 2 or 3 hours before putting in the fridge. The flavor was nice, but I don't like how short my window was. we typically pull dough out an hour before (usually as I am firing the oven). We will cook 6-8 pies over a 3-4 hour period without any problems.


Thanks for the response.

Shawn

[Pete-zza]

Shawn,

The recipe you used contemplates using the dough the same day after a few hours, or the next day after cold fermentation. As between the two, the overnight cold fermentation is more likely to produce the better crust from the standpoint of texture and flavor. However, it is possible to modify the Reinhart recipe to produce a dough that is fermented over a period of several hours entirely at room temperature and get results that are comparable, and perhaps even better, than the Reinhart overnight cold fermented dough. To do this, the amount of yeast would have to be reduced drastically. To give you some idea of what I am talking about, you might want to take a look at a couple of dough formulations that I used to make American style pizzas--in my case, Papa John clone pizzas--at Reply 24 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6758.msg59357.html#msg59357 and at Reply 30 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6758.msg59762.html#msg59762. In my case, room temperature was quite high, at around 80 degrees F. At a lower room temperature, I would have to increase the amount of yeast or use warmer water, or possibly a combination of both. But, with some experimenting, it is possible to make quality room temperature fermented versions of the Reinhart dough over a period of several hours.

Peter

[thomasshawn]

I've been of the if it aint broke don't fix it mentality for the dough. It has worked and always is a crowd pleaser but I may try some new ones now that I am more comfortable with the dough I have and know what to expect as far as too dry/too wet, too warm, too cold etc.

I'll try your suggestions next time and see how they compare

thanks for the info

Shawn