My next attempt using your help

[Gags]

Hi Gang,

In my previous thread, I asked for your help with dough.  I was using a 10.3% Double-zero flour and was getting very little browning / taste in my crust.

Using your help Pete, John, Essen, & Burnt, I am now working with different flour blends.  I am now mixing 20% (by mass) KASL and 80% KABF.  If my calculations are correct, I should be sitting about 13% protein.  I moved my 550F pizza stone from 2nd to top rack to bottom rack, to give the crust more time to brown. 

This batch started with the Jerry Mac / Pete-zza pre-ferment (about 4.5 - 5 hours), was punched down twice, and had a 2-day cold ferment.  I really like how workable this is!  My previous doughs would tear easily and I couldn't toss it.  This dough likes to fly! 

I really like the dough flavor now and it balances everything nicely.  It also browns well and I even have those "micro-blisters" that were discussed recently in another thread.  Unfortunately, I think I worked out bigger air pockets so I never got any major blistering.

Next steps:
- I've been trying to find the quarry tiles so I can experiment with a stone oven "enclosure" in my oven. 
- And I will maybe try to increase the protein level more, just to see what happens.
- I'll also try a 4-day cold ferment.

Thanks again for the help!  This is fun!

[Pete-zza]

Gags,

I'm not sure that you should try to extend the fermentation window further. The purpose of using the poolish preferment in the first place is to speed up things so that the dough can be used within a short period of time, about eight hours with JerryMac's dough recipe. As it is, your combination of room temperature prefermentation of the poolish (4 1/2-5 hours) and the two days of cold fermentation is perhaps equivalent to over five or six days of cold fermentation, and possibly even more. If you push the window out further, by going to three days of cold fermentation rather than two days, you run the risk of running out of residual sugars to contribute to final crust coloration. In fact, I think you are already low on residual sugars due to the way that the poolish, with a lot of yeast, gobbles up the simple sugars in the dough as soon as they are available.

I believe it is possible to make a cold fermented dough using a poolish but I think it would be necessary to reconstruct JerryMac's recipe to do that. You could perhaps add some diastatic malt as part of the final mix, but I have tried that in a preferment based dough and it did not help all that much. I think the recipe has to be reconstructed. Off the top of my head, I am thinking that you will have to use a more traditional poolish method with a very small amount of yeast in relation to the poolish flour weight and a long (several hours) room temperature prefermentation before proceeding to the final mix. Even then, I might consider using some diastatic malt.

You might try the longer cold fermentation if only to teach you some of the principles involved in using preferments in conjunction with cold fermentation of the dough. If you do proceed along those lines, I hope you will post photos of your results.

Peter

[Gags]

Thanks for the guidance Peter! 
You're like the patron saint of pizza, always helping us rookies along - much appreciated!

I didn't know that I was already at the limit of time with a 2-day ferment.  But it makes complete sense!  Here's a pic of Friday night's attempt (I wasn't happy with how it looked.) But you can see that the crust was a lot more pronounced and it looks like there was a lot more activity with a 1 day batch (shown below) versus the 2-day batch.  So maybe my yeast was already dying on the 2-day batch shown above?

I'll just stay within 1-2 day window and futher experiment with my oven set-up & protein levels.

I'll post pix again tomorrow or Monday. 
I was so stoked by the results of this new flour blend that I made another batch this afternoon.   

Ryan

[Pete-zza]

Ryan,

I agree that it looks like there was more activity with the one-day dough than the two-day dough. And, from the photo, it looks to me that you got better crust coloration with the one-day dough. You need adequate sugars in the dough to get good oven spring, along with the proper pH, so its possible that your dough was running out of sugar after the first day and that there was maybe too much acid, resulting in a reduced oven spring and less crust color. This analysis assumes that the two dough balls came from the same original batch and that the two pizzas were baked in essentially the same manner. Otherwise, there may be too many variables to do a meaningful comparison. My guess is that you got good crust flavors with both pizzas.

Peter

[Gags]

Peter,

Yes, your assumption is correct - this was a single dough batch, divided into 2, and cooked in almost exactly the same manner.  I made one pie for Friday dinner and another Saturday lunch. The difference between them is that for the Friday pie, I left a bit of a raised edge, which certainly contributed to the big crust.  The Saturday one was uniformly flat across the entire surface.   But it looks like those 18 hours made a big difference in terms of yeast activity.

And you're right about the taste - both tasted really good, but the Friday crust had great texture.  It was crispy outside and really nice and chewy inside.  The Saturday crust had good taste but was almost boring by comparison, at least as far as texture goes...

Thanks again!
Ryan

[JConk007]

Gags,
Great work!! fun isn't it when its way better than the local joint? sure looks it anyway. What kind of cheese you have on that bad boy? package shedded mozz. whole milk? After you get this hones in go for some other great pies Cracker, deep dish....
you are on the way for sure
John

[Gags]

fun isn't it when its way better than the local joint? ...What kind of cheese you have on that bad boy? package shedded mozz. whole milk?

Absolutely, John!  Living in Southern California now, most local joints are pretty bad! 
So trying to get a good NY pie has been a bit of a survival quest for some time!
Funny how I took it for granted growing up that you could walk into most local NYC places, drip off some grease and have a great slice...

I'm just using a part-skim, low moisture mozz from the supermarket.  I haven't turned my attention to cheese yet, as I am still trying to get the dough sorted.  I have a decent sweet sauce I make for the pie, so once I get consistent on the dough, I should look a bit more closely at my cheese choices.

I'm also tinkering with the idea of doing a spinach calzone using the dough...

[JConk007]

Gags,
Here's a spinach pizza and spinach calzone I did earlier. I love spinach and its a great filling. Make sure to get most of the moisture out its very wet depending if you pre cook or not
go for it!
J

[Gags]

Wow - they look great!

How did you prep the spinach for the calzone?

I was thinking of doing a quick saute of spinach, garlic and butter.  Then strain it and use it and some mozzarella as filling.  And I was going to cook it just as I do the pizza - 550F on a stone...

Did you cook the same temp as pizza or did you have to change anything?  I imagine cook time will be around 10 minutes or so...

[JConk007]

Gags,
I sauteed it also be pressed it dry in a strainer to remove excess moisture there was enough on the cheese. I have done them indoors and out the pie was in the WFO the calzone in the home oven. Try mixing the Mozz with Ricotta that works well but I allways throw on some extra mozz. on top of the mixture. My filling is Mozz, Ricotta, spices, and fresh grated Reggio Parmesan. I found if I did not add something to the mixture beside the cheese, it was a bit bland. But I am getting it. Another house favorite is the pepperoni roll. Roll out the dough to a full pizza circle then 1/4 it fill the wide edge with all the goodie and roll toward the point. Bursting with ricotta YUM! This is leftover dough cooked light for reheat puposes, my stomach was bursting as well

[Gags]

Those things look crazy good!  Thanks for the advice on the calzone filling!

On the pizza dough corrections, Peter was right on the money.

Here's a dough that started with a 4 - 5 hour poolish, was cold fermented for 20 hours, then room temp for about 4 hours to rise.  The dough was great to work with, tasted great and must have had enough sugar content to brown well.  I like that it gave both micro-blisters and the big ones!  And I was happy with how the bottom browned...
Thanks again for all the help!

[Matthew]

Gags,
Here's a spinach pizza and spinach calzone I did earlier. I love spinach and its a great filling. Make sure to get most of the moisture out its very wet depending if you pre cook or not
go for it!
J

J,

Very nice!  Being Sicilian, I grew up on something similar; we call them "votavota".  It's a Sicilian slang term for turn turn (one of those words that gets lost in translation).  I visit my parents every weekend & as soon as I open the front door I can smell them baking away.  They are made on a larger scale, almost like a very big calzone.  The traditional fillings are:Ricotta, potatoes & green onions; Spinach, sundried tomato, garlic & Olives (black ripe); Sausage & Broccoli.  My favorite is Ricotta, Potato & green onion, give it a shot you'll love it.

Matt

[Pizza_Not_War]

My favorite is Ricotta, Potato & green onion, give it a shot you'll love it.

Matt,

That sounds great, how about a recipe for that! Is it equal potato/cheese?

Thanks

PNW

[JConk007]

Yes Gags,
Peter has been known to help many a user here with anything from dough to disk. Very accurate and descriptive. A true Master of Art.
You can see hes over 8100 posts VERY Knowledgable and VERY Helpful on the entire pizza process
Keep putting out those great pies
Is that you on the bike?

[Gags]

Peter has been known to help many a user here with anything from dough to disk. Very accurate and descriptive. A true Master of Art.
You can see hes over 8100 posts VERY Knowledgable and VERY Helpful on the entire pizza process
Keep putting out those great pies
Is that you on the bike?

Hi John,

I was reading other posts from Peter on this site.  Unbelievable dedication to this pursuit!  My friends think I'm nuts for the endless quest to make the perfect pie, but with only a few posts and pies under my belt, I've got a long way to go!  LOL!  I'm still such a rookie that I get a lot of variation from pie to pie!  Oh well, I guess I keep trying! 

Yah, motorcycle racing is my other hobby.  I went at it like crazy from 2006 - mid'08, got burned-out and had a few crashes.  I'm planning on doing a few select races this season in the promotion of my race instruction business. 

Thanks for the encouragement...I'll keep at it, but I will take a break for a few days...too much pizza this weekend!

Hi Matt,

Yah, would you have a recipe for the potato / cheese filling?  That sounds fantastic!

[JConk007]

Gags
I also rode a lot when I lived in New Hampshire Honda V65 Sabre pretty strong bike/rocket
I did Crash on dirt bike too! broke up the leg ankle pretty good. Too dangerous here on the Jersey roads. So Now I race Mountain Bikes, in the woods, in the old man class, but still very competitive and fun like this pizza hobby. Allways looking for the right line through a section or ferment times for the amount of yeast used in recipe. Seeems to keep me out of trouble for now. 
I was going to take the weekend  off from Pizza making too, but... now we have company coming Sat. Night and guess what "can you make your Pizza PLEASE!" OK I guess so. 
back to forum searching  I like trying new stuff so maybe Canadave? Jerry mac? Back to Deep dish? My new pans have arrived too, so I can do a large DKM Cracker. Jeff V or Sourdough Sicilian? spin the pizza wheel and see where it stops?
Thats the  problem with this forum. Its like going to Benjamin Moore and looking at paint swatches! So many colors and flavors with just a slight variation its hard to pick one, and until you put it on the wall or in your stomach you are forced to keep trying. ( so its really not a problem!)
Be safe
John