Hi, I’ve become a bit stuck, still a bit new on the journey and need a little bit of help problem solving.
I was initially making pizzas like this:
Caputo 00 red
60% hydration
3% salt
0.1% IDY
Mixing and kneading, letting rest in a big mass for 2hr at room temp before balling and going in the 4deg celcius (39F), thawing for about 3 hrs at RT, before baking them in a gozney roccbox at about 400 degrees celcius (750F), infra-red thermometer stone plate temperature. I weigh the flour and water out on scales accurate to the 1g, and weigh the yeast and salt out on scales accurate to 0.01g.
Photo 1 and Photo 2 were the typical net result (forgive the type of cheese, this was an experiment that went wrong).
The cornicioni and the dough tasted nice, probably because of the flour, but the cornicioni not as airy as I want. I could never get it to puff up any more. When I open the dough balls into the pizza, the cornicioni size is similar to what it is after it’s baked (it doesn’t rise much during the cook).
I was relatively happy with them for a beginners pizza but I’m striving for more. My first question is, any advice on where to go from there, or how could I improve that? I experimented with hydration up to 65% and salt down to 2%, and varying amount of days in the fridge and settled on 60% and 3% and 4days respectively. 65% is easier to open as it doesn’t try and relax/shrink back as much once i’ve opened it but requires a lot of care or I accidentally tear it, whereas 60% I can do the cheesy ‘throw above my head’ trick to impress guests who don’t know any better, and the 60% consistently slides off the launcher without getting stuck, with any 65% dough, I feel like if I waste any time at all between making the pizza and launching it, it will stick to the peel.
3% salt seems to be more forgiving in the handling when opening up, so I think i’ll stay with 60% and 3% unless somebody gives me a convincing reason to alter.
My second question, which I’ll get to: I wanted to get to a RT ferment for several reasons, mostly to try and get more flavours to come out of the fermenting, and thats what they do in Naples, plus it’s hard to plan 4 days in advance, so cook-wise: I’ve used CraigTX’s chart for a 24hr RT ferment
60% hydration, 3% salt, 0.05% at about 17 degrees celcius RT (I also did a batch at 65% hydration).
At 24hrs, very underfermented, the dough felt tight, didn’t open up nicely, had too much memory kept trying to shrink when I opened it up. I had planned to eat a 65% and a 60%. I didn’t take any photos of this but the cornicioni was very gummy internally, not that edible, for some reason the 65% was worse than the 60%.
I have since realised from the chart there is about 10 hrs more with 17 degrees C compared to 15 degrees C and I just can’t control the temperature of the kitchen bench overnight so it’s likely a temperature error on my behalf. I had a leftover 65% dough ball so I tried it at 48hrs. Much better, but still not as good as the initial 4D CF, this is the third photo.
My second question, the cornicioni from this example (photo 3), it’s still a bit wet/gummy internally? What does this mean, what caused it and how do I prevent that? It’s happened to me a couple of times trying random RT ferment recipes from youtube etc, I’m going to go back to my 4D CF until I can work this out. Ideally i’d like a puffier more airy crust but at the moment I’ll be pleased if I can just get rid of that!
Many thanks, sorry it’s a bit of a ramble!
