Author Topic: Preferment for Lehmann NY Style Pizza (Read 98163 times)

briterian · « **Reply #280 on:** February 27, 2010, 08:22:17 AM »

Hi Pete,
It just seemed to have too many big bubbles during the cooking process. I had to poke them about half way through. Not a big deal but if the yeast could be adjusted some to avoid, I'm willing to give it a shot. Just so you know I had it warm for about 3 hrs before baking.

Update: I used the final 2 dough balls last night - this would be day 5 and WOW! Best yet. See pics below and compare to my earlier posts which show day 1 and day 2. This one had the best overall color, taste, structure, airiness, and blistering. The whole family really enjoyed it. This was my first time comparing the effect of fridge fermentation has on dough. We'll stick with this recipe and a 5 day fridge.

See pics below from last night. Pete, let me know if you think I should adjust the yeast. I have a pizza party coming up for 15 kids and will be using this recipe.

Cheers, briterian

Pete-zza · « **Reply #281 on:** February 27, 2010, 09:28:21 AM »

Brian,

Your latest results indicate a nice improvement over your earlier pies, with good characteristics all around. Norma will perhaps find your results interesting because of the long fermentation time (5 days) you used.

I have not personally tried the recipe I gave to Norma but for a normal Lehmann NY style (without a preferment) I tend to use around 0.40% IDY in the winter and around 0.25% IDY in the summer. That is in Texas where I live. I have not experienced the type of bubbling you mentioned at either yeast level (and for other yeast values as well). Also, my oven is a very basic oven that cannot deliver temperatures such as your Bakers Pride countertop oven, which I assume you used to make the latest pizzas. I don't normally dock NY style dough skins but you might try that on one of your skins to see if that helps minimize the bubbling. I'm afraid to advise you to lower the yeast, or to lower it too much, if it is cool where you are. When I have done that, I have usually ended up with a dough that takes too long to ferment and has a subdued rise. As noted above, I have not experienced unusual bubbling in the finished crust when using lower amounts of yeast. It is more likely that good fermentation and gas development, a well hydrated dough, a long warm-up time, and especially high oven temperatures are the cause of the large bubbles rather than yeast quantity. If you look at the links given in Reply 4 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,10122.msg88410/topicseen.html#msg88410, you will see many examples of pizza crusts with large bubbles but without large amounts of yeast. Most of the time, members want those large bubbles and beg for advice on how to get them.

Peter

norma427 · « **Reply #282 on:** February 27, 2010, 10:18:27 AM »

Brian and Peter,

I do find Brians results interesting, because of the longer fermentation time and also with the great results Brian achieved in the pictures of his pies. Brian, your pies do really look delicious.

I really like the airy crust you achieved with this poolish preferment of the Lehmann dough. Did you achieve the crunchy crust you were looking for with this longer fermentation time? How long was your warm up time with this current dough and about what ambient temperature was your room? I found at six days cold fermenting at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9908.msg90829.html#msg90829, I also like the results of the longer ferment.
I didn’t find any bubbling in my home oven or my Baker’s Pride. Maybe as Peter has suggested it was your higher bake temperature.
I have found in my home environment and the market setting, I can get different results. My home oven and the market oven are very different. Even changing my market oven by 25 degrees F, can change how my pies bake. My scale here at home which doesn’t measure as accurately as my market scale can also make a difference. Each variable you put into a pie can make a difference, which I am learning over time.

Thanks for sharing your results and pictures of your longer fermentation times,

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #283 on:** February 27, 2010, 11:38:37 AM »

Peter and whoever might be following this thread,

I haven’t been able to get the Hatco Unit to market this week, because my daughter was in New York and the unit is about 90 lbs. in weight. I needed her to help me lift it into the van and also to unload it at market. It is very sharp on the bottom and although I am able to easily lift 50 lb., I didn’t want to take a chance and try to lift this unit. We are going to take it to market Monday, so hopefully this coming week, I will be able to try the larger batch of the poolish.

I do have another experiment that I am going to try with the regular Lehmann dough this week. I wanted to try out the myth or theory about New York City water.

So far in my opinion, I really don’t think their water makes that much of difference, but will try an experiment with two 15 batches of Lehmann dough. One with the New York City tap water, that my daughter brought back from Queens, NY and one from the filtered water I normally use for the Lehmann dough. It will be interesting to see if there is any difference in how the dough behaves or if the baked pizza tastes any different.

Here are the papers that tell how the water is filtered that I used each week for all my doughs. This water is bought at our local grocery store and you just take your gallon containers and fill them for .25.

Norma

briterian · « **Reply #284 on:** February 27, 2010, 01:37:28 PM »

Hey Pete and Norma,
Thanks for the awesome feedback, compliments and suggestions. If I could buy you both a beer I would. I have to say I'm REALLY happy with the 'za from last night. I've been attacking this dough monster for quite some time and I honestly think I've hit on something pretty special. We heated up the leftovers from last night in a 450 degree 'normal' oven for about 5-6 minutes and it was as good as last night and oh so crunchy, which as you know was one characteristic I was after. Here are some other points based on your two previous posts.

1. Docking - good idea. I need to get a docking roller or can I just use a fork? I don't think I'm going to mess with the recipe and drop the yeast at this stage. Things are going too good. I might also reduce the out of fridge dough warm up time to about 2 hrs vs 3 hrs. I like your comment about how members want bubbles which shows me that I' hitting the nit picking stage.

2. Details on bake. I baked it on the top deck of my backers pride m02t. I have a fibrament square stone that I use and I let it preheat for like 2 hrs as far as the dial on the oven can go. I used my infrared temp gauge and got about 670 degrees. I bet I baked it around 6 minutes with a rotation for even cooking at around the 4 min mark. I've got blista's on my pizza (beatles reference

) is something totally new for me and most welcome surprise.

Norma - since we share almost the same oven - I'd love to see you try this method out and report back results.

3. With regards to crunch - it definitely had it and was even better today on reheat. Check out a couple better pics of the bottom of crust today.

Cheers,
Briterian

Pete-zza · « **Reply #285 on:** February 27, 2010, 02:09:04 PM »

Brian,

For starters, you might try a fork to see if that works. If so, you can then consider buying a dough docker. The advantage of a dough docker is that it doesn't completely penetrate the skin, as a fork can. A dough docker sort of "staples" the top and bottom surfaces together.

You did indeed get a lot of blistering. There appears to be many things that can cause a dough to blister but long fermentation is perhaps the most common one.

Peter

norma427 · « **Reply #286 on:** February 27, 2010, 03:47:02 PM »

Brian,

Great to hear you were really happy with the pizza last night.

I also think this dough is special. Thanks for all the details on how you baked the pizza. The pizzas I make at market take about 5 minutes to bake between 525-550 degrees F. I bake most of my pies on the bottom stone. I did use my infrared temp gun different times and I also have a flat puck thermometer, but don’t know how accurate either of them are. Sometimes my infrared temp gun says the temperature is about 575 degrees F, but then the flat puck type thermometer says 550 degrees F. I really don’t know which is right.
I might take you up on trying the highest temperature I can get the next time I make the poolish preferment for the Lehmann dough. It would be at the end of the night that I would try this dough and higher temperature.

Thanks again for posting your pictures and your results,

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #287 on:** March 01, 2010, 05:47:52 PM »

My daughter and I finally got the Hatco Unit to market today. I will try the larger batch of poolish this Friday. I had plugged the unit in today to test the temperature again to make sure the temperature would stay at 80 degrees F. I had tested the unit before in my tool shed and I don’t know if it was the coldness of the tool shed or what might have happened, but the temperature did stay at 80 degrees F there. When I tested the Hatco Unit at market today the temperature went to 90 degrees F at the lowest setting. I then fooled around with it trying different things. I found by letting one of the doors a little open, the temperature did stay right around 80 degrees F for an hour. I didn’t have more time to try it today, but will on Friday.
I also made two batches of regular Lehmann dough today to test the water I usually get and the water from Queens, NY. Both 15 lb. finished dough batches had the same temperatires. I tasted each raw dough about 5 times to see if I could taste a difference in the dough. In my opinion the Queens, NY dough tasted a lot saltier. I’ll see tomorrow if I can taste any difference in the finished pizza. I also will get some of my pizza testers to taste the pizza. Both doughs looked the same.
These are pictures of the Hatco Unit under the pizza oven on a shelf, my water, Queens, NY water, dough from NY water, and pictures of the kinds of cheese I use on my pizzas.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #288 on:** March 01, 2010, 05:48:37 PM »

last two pictures

Norma

Pete-zza · « **Reply #289 on:** March 01, 2010, 06:19:20 PM »

Norma,

To avoid conscious or subconscious bias, you might want to conduct a blind test with the two different doughs. For example, your daughter (or someone else) would know the difference between two doughs but you wouldn't at the time you make pizzas with the two doughs. You could do similarly with the pizza testers. You would know which dough is which when they taste the pizzas but they wouldn't. Ideally, you would make all of the pizzas as closely to each other as possible so as to eliminate or minimize variables that might affect the results of the eating tests. You could even just bake crusts without anything on them. However, this might require aggressive docking to keep the crusts from ballooning up.

Peter

norma427 · « **Reply #290 on:** March 01, 2010, 06:33:15 PM »

Peter,

That's a good idea.

I will also get the stand holders near me to taste two small slices and have the paper plates marked A and B on the same plate for the two different doughs. Only I will know with dough is A or B. I really want to taste the two different doughs. I couldn't believe today when I tasted the dough how much difference there was it the saltiness. I also have some 5 oz. dough balls made from both doughs. I will bake up each one without any toppings.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #291 on:** March 02, 2010, 09:12:28 PM »

Today I tried the dough experiment with the Queens, NY water and the regular water. I first aggressively docked the 5 oz. dough balls and baked only the crust. I had 13 taste testers. I gave each one a piece of each baked dough and only told them it was my regular dough, but something was different with each one. I asked them to give me their opinions on which dough they thought was best, or if they thought they tasted the same. Out of the 13 taste testers only one picked the dough that I made from my regular water. The other 12 all said the dough tasted better and had more flavor from the water I used from Queens, NY. One of my taste testers was from Long Island and said he has never tasted any good pizza from around here and he believed that the water from NY had everything to do with the taste of the dough.

Now the interesting part. I made pizzas with only sauce and cheese. I had the same taste testers taste each pizza. With the added sauce and cheese they couldn’t tell the difference in the pizzas. Even my daughter and I couldn’t taste any difference in the pizza crust after the sauce and cheese was added.

The first picture is of the finished crusts. A being the Queens, NY, water. B being the regular water. The next three pictures of the pizzas were from the Queens, NY water. The last three pictures were from the regular water.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #292 on:** March 02, 2010, 09:13:46 PM »

last 3 pictures of regular water.

Norma

Pete-zza · « **Reply #293 on:** March 02, 2010, 09:25:33 PM »

Norma,

I was looking forward to the test results. My eyes lit up when I saw you were posting.

The pizzas look great. Were you able to detect any other differences between the two sets of pizzas, such as different crust color, texture or anything else?

Peter

norma427 · « **Reply #294 on:** March 02, 2010, 09:48:33 PM »

Quote from: Pete-zza on March 02, 2010, 09:25:33 PM

Norma,

I was looking forward to the test results. My eyes lit up when I saw you were posting.

The pizzas look great. Were you able to detect any other differences between the two sets of pizzas, such as different crust color, texture or anything else?

Peter

Peter,

I wish I could say there was a difference in the finished pizzas in some way, but I couldn't detect any difference. I can say that the taste of just the baked crust did have a lot more flavor and I liked it better, as did the taste testers. Hard to say what this experiment accomplished. I did save 1 dough ball from each and now they are frozen. I will try the same test again with the frozen dough balls. Fred of Fred's Music was at market today and I gave him a dough ball made from the New York water to try at home. I didn't tell him it was the dough made from the New York water. Will see if he notices any difference.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #295 on:** March 03, 2010, 07:08:06 AM »

The last 3 pictures I posted of the regular water in the finished pizza, were when I had turned up the oven to 600 degrees F. I had wanted to see if the regular Lehmann dough would be okay at that high temperature, before I tried the poolish preferment of the Lehmann dough. Since briterian had posted about using higher temperatures and getting good results with the poolish preferment, I will have to try even higher temperatures this coming week, if I find time. The crust was crisper when using these higher temperatures and the crust seemed to brown more.
This picture is of the regular Lehmann dough using the regular water at my normal oven temperatures. yesterday.

I also wanted to say I enjoyed talking to Fred and his wife about his trip to pizza school in California.

Norma

briterian · « **Reply #296 on:** March 05, 2010, 08:36:24 AM »

Hi Pete,
I saw your recipe here: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9908.msg90900.html#msg90900 for making a single 14" pie. Did you just take the recipe you had at 149 and basically divide everything by 5? It doesn't look that way and that is why I am asking. I am making 20 pizza's next week for a big party and I just took the recipe at 149 and multiply everything by 4 - to turn the 5 pizza's into 20. Will that be Ok? I made the poolish last night and it is in the fridge so I am going to be mixing the final dough tonight and would love to know if I am on the right path. Thanks in advance.

Brian

norma427 · « **Reply #297 on:** March 05, 2010, 08:57:45 AM »

briterian,

You could combine the formula for 15 lb. of dough with the fomula for 10 lb. of dough and probably get about 20 dough balls.

This formula at reply 273 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9908.msg91181.html#msg91181 usually gives me 13 dough balls with a little left over. I use a thickness factor of 0.08932. If you used this amount along with reply 275 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9908.msg91188.html#msg91188, it should give you about 20 dough balls if you thickness factor is the same.
I will let it up to Peter that knows the math more than I do if this would work.

Norma

Pete-zza · « **Reply #298 on:** March 05, 2010, 09:16:56 AM »

Brian,

The recipe I posted at Reply 252 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9908.msg90900.html#msg90900 was for a different dough formulation that I used to conduct a few tests. Also, it was for a 14" pizza, not a 16" pizza such as Norma has been making. That is mainly why your calculation did not work. If you want to make 20 dough balls (for twenty 16" pizzas) such as Norma has been making, I think the easiest approach is to take the numbers given in Reply 149 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9908.msg88687.html#msg88687 and multiply them by four, just as you said. There are other ways to do it if you want a precise set of numbers but you would have to go through the whole set of tedious calculations that I did. You could also follow Norma's suggestion of combining the 10 and 15 pound dough batches but you would end up nominally with a total dough batch weight of 25.38 pounds, as opposed to 22.4 pounds that you would get by scaling up the dough formulation at Reply 149 by a factor of four. So, you would end up with 2.98 pounds of extra dough, or enough dough for a couple extra pizzas.

I look forward to your results since I believe you will be making the largest dough batch to date using the poolish-based Lehmann NY style dough formulation that Norma has been using. Your results should also help Norma when she ratches up her dough batch size using the same recipe. So, please let us know how things turn out.

Peter

briterian · « **Reply #299 on:** March 05, 2010, 10:27:15 AM »

Thanks guys! Very prompt replies. I'll keep moving forward with reply 149 multiplied by 4. My electrolux mixer will be getting a workout. It can't handle 5 dough mix just a 4 dough mix so I am going to figure out how 5 batches look and then get me a nice india pale ale to help me pass the time.

Did I mention that this pizza is for 15 kids under the age of 13 all headed to the ohio state swim meet! They will need their carbs and I'll get a review if it's better than the pizza monopoly here in Cincinnati called LaRosas.

brian