First post, not my first pizza

[aggy]

First of all let me say thanks to those who put up this site and keep it going. I love it and it's been a great help.

Ok long time lurker here with a few pizza's under his belt and I have what I think are some really basic questions that I am stumped with.

First off let me start by explaining the recipe and ingredients I am using.

364 grams of Bread Flour from Smart And Final (some house brand they have)
180 grams of bottled water, room temp between 78-80 degrees
3 tsp of sugar
1 tsp of SAF Instant Yeast
1/2 tsp of Mortons non iodized salt
1 tsp of Olive Oil

I am mixing this in a KitchenAid stand mixer with the paddle and then switching to the dough hook when it all comes together (Usually about a minute to 1 and 1/2 minutes).

My first problem is that the dough seems to get hung up on the hook and its just being spun around in a circle with some small part of the dough being slapped against the bowl. I'm guessing that this process doesn't count for kneading time and it should be stopped, but how? I have been stopping the mixer, pulling the dough off and forming it back into a ball and then starting the mixer again. Is this normal? Is there a better way?

My second question is refridgerator temperature for cold rising dough. What temp should I be shooting for?

Thanks.

[anton-luigi]

I guess my suggestion would be to utilize the wet-kneading technique of kneading 75% of your flour and all of your water for the majority of your knead time,  and then add the remaining flour in the last couple of minutes.  This should help keep the dough wet enough to help with the climbing.  As far as fridge temps for the cold rise,  are you talking about the fridge temp itself? 

I would also just use the hook myself. 

actually,  trying to reverse engineer your recipe with the dough tool,  shows your hydration level is somewhere near 50%,  that is very dry.(I didnt add in all the other ingredients,  just the flour and water,  so my number is not totally accurate))

[PizzaHog]

Ah yes, the POS kitchen aid dough hook...
IMHO both you and luigi are correct.  By holding back 25% or so of the flour, your dough should have a wet enough consistency to actually be kneaded by the hook.  You are looking for the hook to work thru the dough so it needs to be wet enough to even stick to the sides of the bowl some.  This is where the actual kneading takes place. 
Then as you add the remainder of the flour the dough will begin to climb the hook and begin its tilt-a-whirl ride.  At this point, and as I continue to add flour, the ball climbing the hook will appear wetter on the top than at the bottom.  So I remove the ball, turn it upside down, then continue adding flour.  This ball removal and reversal may have to be repeated half a dozen times or more before the last of the flour is incorporated and the dough is smooth and an even consistency.
Whatever you do, do not increase the mixer speed in an attempt to fling the dough ball (or portion thereof) off the hook.  This is way too rough handling and will result in a most tough and chewy crust.  Been there, done that.
At least this is the best method I have found.  If there is a better way short of buying a new mixer I would love to know how.

[aggy]

Thanks a bunch. I didn't realize that the dough should be wetter than what it was when I was kneading it before. I will give this a try tonight.

As for the temp for the cold rise, yes I am looking for the temp of the fridge I guess. I'm not sure what has happened in the past. I put the dough balls into tupperware like containers with lids and some of the dough will rise and the other dough will just sit there and do nothing.

[Pete-zza]

aggy,

As I noted earlier tonight at Reply 2 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9049.msg78232.html#msg78232, a typical dough ball stored in a home refrigerator is subjected to different forces than dough balls stored in a commercial cooler. It also depends where you store your dough balls in your home refrigerator. In my case, I have found that the best spot (the coolest spot) for my dough balls is against the back wall, away from the door and away from perturbations from multiple openings of the door. You didn't indicate but if you are making dough balls from different dough recipes calling for different amounts of yeast, or the dough balls are not of the same size, the dough balls may not rise at the same rate and extent. Using different containers made of different materials can also affect the dough's performance while in the refrigerator.

Some members avoid a lot of problems with home refrigerators by having a second refrigerator dedicated only to the storage of dough balls--and beer, of course.

Peter

[Tbombs34]

I have a newer KA stand mixer that came with a spiral dough hook rather than the C hook that is so bemoaned on this forum.  While the dough still climbs the spiral hook a little, it is not so bad that it interferes with kneading.  I'm not sure if the spiral dough hook will fit on older KA mixers, but this may be an option. 

Also, make sure that, if your mixer came with more than one size bowl, you are using the correct size based on the volume of ingredients used.  I once mixed up enough dough for two dough balls in the larger bowl and watched as the mixed dough just flew around in a circle not touching the sides of the too large bowl.   

[ThunderStik]

Yes the spiral hook is much better than the old C-hook.

The spiral hook will fit in most other mixers but is not supposed to be used. The ones designed for the spiral hook have a retaining thrust washer on the main shaft that takes the brunt of the upward force and places it directly on the shaft. Those without this design feature place the vertical loads directly on the gears and can end up shredding the planetary gear set. So use at your own risk.


As TBombs also eluded to, I also always make enough pies to get a good quantity in my bowl (4@14", 3@16", 4@16"). While less is certainly possible, I think the lower limit would be 1@16" or 2@12" but I have no data to back that up. This gives us plenty for dinner and some snacks later or lunch the next day (I have 3 adults and 2 children in the family).  But it also gives the chance to get my hands on alot of dough, which is a good thing. This is with a KA600 Pro bowl lift.

[aggy]

I don't know why but I have been leery of the really wet doughs for so long I was short changing the amount of water I was putting into the dough. Today I went ahead and made a ball at 364g of bread flour and 199g of water (Roughly 54.6%) . I was pleased with the resulting dough ball and now hope that this will make a difference in the final products.

Pete as for the varying results of the dough balls placed in the fridge yes there was a variation in the flours that I was using, methods of mixing and temperatures of water. So I wasn't very scientific in my approach and will attempt to do more so in the future.

Thanks for the help and suggestions, will keep you posted once I get my digital camera some batteries.