Canotto with sponge

[Duje]

Hi everyone!!

I recently discovered this method on the internet. I think Marco Cappiotti wrote about it. Does anyone have experience with this method? What about flavour of pizza, I read one comment that says pizza tastes more like bread, but it was only one comment, other were excelent. This method requires malt, just like biga above 50%, but can malt be replaced with honey and if can, in what percentage?

[Wario]

I personally have never heard of this method but it sounds like fun, can you elaborate a little about it?

[Duje]

Sponge is a solid pre ferment made by flour, water,  yeast and optionally salt. Sponge started in England and is currently used to make baguette and brioche, is made with strong flour and does not  have fixed specification but has certain ranges: 55-70% hydration, 0.8-1% fresh yeast and if salt is used is about 1%. The resting time and temperature are not fixed, while is possible to ferment the sponge at room temperature for around 8-12h is often fermented in the fridge for 12-24h. How is it different from other pre fements?
Sponge has some characteristic that are in between biga poolish (hydration and yeast) but more towards the biga but some other characteristic are different (resting time and temperature)
Being solid the sponge looks a bit more like biga once it is mixed but is just enough kneaded and hydrated to rise, in fact sponge generally double or triple during the fermentation and iit creates a lot more air pockets than biga once is fermented, it looks like a sponge when is ready!
What kind of results should we expect from it and how to do it?
The sponge, if used in large amounts tends to give those big puffs and open crumbs, almost as impressive as biga, the fermentation flavours are present but depending upon the fermentation time and temperature might be distinct or more subdole.
Being adjustable is very versatile, for example we can decide to mix a sponge with 60% hydration for neapolitan pizza (since we might want to reach 65-70% dough hydration) or mix 70% hydration sponge for making pizza al taglio or pizza alla pala (since we might want to reach 75-80% dough hydration) this way the dough mixing is a lot easier and faster. Sponge dough also works well for bread.

These arent my words. This is written by Marco Cappiotti in his fb group!!!!

[DoouBall]

I'm a friend of Marco's and a member of his group. I've tried the sponge method and it works very well.

A few years ago, many Italian pizza makers started using biga as their preferment for contemporary Neapolitan pizza, something that was not previously done. However, biga is a low hydration (45% typically) preferment and requires a temperature controlled unit such as a wine fridge to ferment 18h at 18C. Not everyone has one of those, and so the sponge is gaining popularity among as an alternative to biga.

Sponge is halfway between biga and poolish in hydration and has a middle ground between the characteristics of both. It's also very easy to mix, and can ferment for couple hours at room temp followed by overnight in the fridge. Because it ferments in the fridge, it starts out cold when you're ready to mix your final dough, so it is very easy to mix the dough without overheating it, even in the heat of summer.

My own experiments showed that sponges have a tendency to create a pretty sticky dough and the final result is neither as puffy as a dough made with biga, nor as tangy and pleasant as a dough made with poolish. It is a bit hard to know when the sponge is perfectly ready for use, and if you go too far, the final dough really suffers. For that reason, I typically prefer either poolish or biga to sponge. But please do experiment with it - it may be perfect for you.

[jhx]

Do you know what happened with his YouTube channel?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAZufMJr63G2VDtyf6JpRxg/videos:

"This account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy on nudity or sexual content."

[DoouBall]

Do you know what happened with his YouTube channel?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAZufMJr63G2VDtyf6JpRxg/videos:

Yeah I do, YouTube for some reason decided that there was inappropriate content on his channel and terminated the entire thing. It was really weird, there was no explanation why. I can't think of any inappropriate content he posted. However, many of his videos are resurfacing on his Facebook group.

[jhx]

I'm going to try to and use my YouTube contacts to see if we can get the channel back.   

[DoouBall]

I'm going to try to and use my YouTube contacts to see if we can get the channel back.

Marco will really appreciate if you do