Help with first natural starter dough

[tmsolek]

Greetings all,

I want to attempt my first naturally leavened pizza dough and am looking for some starting points.  I have an active starter that I keep at 100% hydration.  I have a wood fired cob oven so thats what I will be baking in.  I knead my doughs by hand.  Should I do a room temp rise or attempt a cold rise?  Also what percentage of starter should I use in relation to total dough weight.  Im going for a neopolitan style using 00 flour.  Should I feed my starter the 00 flour or continue feeding it bread flour(Im currently feeding it a organic bread flour from milanaise, a canadian mill).  Any info will help, just looking for some starting points the let the experimentation begin.

Thanks

Todd

[Pete-zza]

Todd,

I think you will find many variations on the theme. Naturally leavened doughs can be fermented at room temperature or in the refrigerator, or even a combination of both. However, the dough formulations are quite likely to be quite different for the different modes of fermentation. Room temperature fermentation is the method used in Naples with respect to doughs using 00 flour. No cold fermentation is used. Cold fermentation is the method that is frequently used in the U.S. by pizza operators because it seems to better fit their particular dough management and inventorying requirements.

I think that you will also find that there are variations in the types of flours used to refresh a starter culture. I have done it both ways, using the same flour as I used to make the culture or a different flour, such as an all-purpose flour. I can't say that one method was any better than the other.

The amount of starter to use will depend on the recipe you plan to use, the nature and behavior of your particular starter, and the composition of your starter in terms of the amount of water and flour used in the starter, by weight. This topic has been discussed at the following thread: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,4996.msg42266.html#msg42266, and more particularly in Reply 2.

The approach that I usually recommend to those venturing into the use of starters and natural preferments is to start with a known dough formulation and preparation instructions that apply to the method of fermentation that has been selected for use. It is also possible to adapt a known dough recipe to use a starter or natural preferment, but for the best results you will want the recipe to be recited in baker's percents or reconstructed to be recited in baker's percents. At that point, the preferment dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/preferment_calculator.html can be used to determine the quantities of all of the ingredients to be used to make the desired dough. For an example of how this can be done, see this thread: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6969.msg59839.html#msg59839.

Good luck.

Peter

[tmsolek]

Thanks Pete,

I have extensive experience with yeasted doughs for pizza.  I am venturing from the realm of naturally leavened bread dough fermentation so the real confusion for me lies in how to ferment a natually leavened pizza dough.  All my experience in pizza doughs rely on cold fermentation.  Any suggestions for cold fermenting a naturally leavened pizza dough?  I keep my starter at 100% hydration  and it is active and ready about 10 hours after refreshing it.  When making bread dough I usually represent the amount of starter as a percentage of prefermented flour.  Examlple:  If the Total formula uses 10 lbs of flour and I want to use 15% prefermented flour I would use 3 lbs of starter in my formula since my starter is 100% hydration(equal parts flour and water)  then i can calculate the amount of water needed to achieve my desired hydration rate for the final dough by subtracting the amount of water contributed by the amount of starter from the total water needed to achieve my desired hydration.  Example: 70% hydration of 10 lbs of flour is 7lbs.  Subtract the 1.5 lbs from the starter and i would need 5.5lbs water in my formula.  This is the way I have always expressed my bread formulas, its quite simple.  Bread doughs usually range from 8-20% prefermented flour when using a natural starter depending on the flours and grains used in the dough, the desired degree of sourness, and if the dough is retarded at any point.  20% prefermented flour is normally the ceiling when using a natural starter as the excess acidity breaks down the gluten.

[tinroofrusted]

This is purely a personal opinion, but one which comes after having made a lot of both sourdough and commercial yeast raised pizzas. My opinion is that pizza is not particularly well suited to sourdough. First, I think the flavor of sourdough does not combine very well with tomato sauce, and that's what I usually use for sauce. Second, sourdough (at least my sourdough) is much looser and tends to stretch more than is needed. I'm sure that's not always true but in my experience the sourdough did not perform as well as regular yeasted dough. 

So while I certainly support you in learning more about sourdough and pizza, for me, t least, sourdough isn't really the best substrate for tomato sauce and cheese.  Regular, well fermented pizza dough beats sourdough, at least in my book.

Regards..

Jim S.

[Pete-zza]

Any suggestions for cold fermenting a naturally leavened pizza dough? 

Todd,

Much of the work that I did using natural starters and preferments occurred some time ago, and much of that was in respect of room temperature fermentations. However, I did some experiments with cold fermentation. An example is the Lehmann preferment dough formulation at Reply 151 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.msg11774.html#msg11774. I subsequently played around for a while with natural preferments in a cold fermentation environment but in an "old dough" format as reported, for example, in the DeLorenzo clone thread starting at Reply 73 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7841.msg44522.html#msg44522. See also the companion post at Reply 86 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7841.msg44598.html#msg44598 and following Replies 83, 101 and 110. My most recent use of a natural preferment in a cold fermentation environment was to make a Papa John's clone dough, as described in Reply 38 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6758.msg60892.html#msg60892. In the case of the Lehmann naturally leavened dough, I did not use the preferment dough calculating tool only because it did not then exist. I did use the tool, however, for the DeLorenzo clone doughs and the Papa John's clone dough.

For your information, a natural starter/preferment can be used for just about any style of pizza. I have used them for the NY style, NJ/DeLorenzo style (mentioned above), American style (also mentioned above), Neapolitan style, and even in places where it is unexpected and almost unheard of, including the Chicago deep-dish style and the cracker style. When I get around to the Sicilian style, maybe I will try a natural preferment there also. I know it will work because it is really an extension of the NY style.

Peter