My dough is too stretchy

[daveinhampton]

Didn't want to hijack a previous post for practically the same method, but with opposite results. I've tried many different tweaks so take the values below as general ranges of attempts. Recently I compared my home-made dough to store-bought, and found store-bought to be far superior in handling and baking results.

I don't have a kitchen scale, but I generally use a ~2.5-3 cup split of 75% 00 or bread flour and 25% semolina flour, with 1-1.25cup warm filtered water.

Dissolve a tablespoon of starter in water, add 1/2 to 1tsp traditional yeast for a few minutes, then add flour to Kitchenaid mixer along with 1-2 tsp salt and 1tbsp olive oil. Mix until combined, then run on speed 2. I've tried 3-5mins, 10mins, up to 30mins. I divide dough and rest under plastic for 1-2 hours, then refrigerate for 24-72 hours. I let it come to room temperate as the oven preheats. Every single time it's too stretchy and over-proofing. I have to be extremely delicate or else the dough can tear quite easily, perhaps from lack of gluten development. Store-bought dough was a genuine challenge to stretch by comparison.

The oven preheats to 550F convection with a thick, carbon baking steel over 1-1.5 hours. I stretch the dough, brush crust, sauce, top, and bake for ~7mins turning once halfway through.

With store-bought dough, I get a thin crispy base with a very airy crust - which is perfection to me (see image for the most recent result). My home-made dough typically doesn't crisp up on the bottom as much and has a denser crust.

It feels like the store-bought dough has far better developed gluten, since it's tough to stretch and traps large pockets of air easily. I would think that my 10-14% protein flours I've used should suffice (having used 00, bread, semolina, and AP over my countless number of attempts). Kneading seems an important factor in gluten development, and having used my mixer up to a max of 30 mins with the dough hook, I would have expected at some point to have passed a window-pane test properly, but haven't. The dough breaks/tears quite easily. Store-bought also feels like it has a higher moisture content than my dough - there is condensation in the bags and it's fairly sticky. I typically only mix my doughs until they clean the bowl and are no longer stick to the bottom when mixing, maybe even this is too dry?

I realize the above contains somewhat scattered information, but it's been many years with many different methods, many pictures of various successes and failures, and here I wanted to capture: what I've tried, what the desired consistent result is, and what I think might be contributing to my issues.

Thanks;

Dave

[Pizza_Not_War]

Buy the scale, it's cheap. Start with accurate amounts and then you can properly troubleshoot. Otherwise it's a pure guessing game.

[daveinhampton]

Thanks will strongly consider. In the meantime, if one was to make a dough with absolutely maximum levels of gluten, how would they achieve that?

[Timpanogos Slim]

Thanks will strongly consider. In the meantime, if one was to make a dough with absolutely maximum levels of gluten, how would they achieve that?

Can't imagine why you'd want to, but you can get "vital wheat gluten" and add it. You can also get high-gluten flour like central milling's "tony gemignani california artisan" which is 15% protein, malted, and has "type 00" on the label for no good reason.

Years ago some people i know who were trying to low-carb or something added a bunch of vital wheat gluten to some muffin batter they were mixing. They were like nerf balls.

[atxguy]

Buy the scale, it's cheap. Start with accurate amounts and then you can properly troubleshoot. Otherwise it's a pure guessing game.

I agree 100% with this.  You can get a great digital scale for less than $15 and it makes it 100 times easier to get repeatable, great results.   

Simplify the variables and:
Get a cheap digital scale,
use 1 type of flour,
Knead it by hand. 
Use a brand new packet of Instant Yeast

After mixing the ingredients let it sit for 10-15% to fully hydrate, covered.  Then knead by hand.  You will feel the gluten and strength of the dough in less than a minute or two of kneading by hand.  It's like folding a piece of paper in half repeatedly. The first few folds are easy with no resistance and it will very quickly gain strength and become too tough to create another fold.  Once its strong enough that its difficult to keep folding/kneading you'll know that the problem is not lack of gluten development.  If the dough is super slack and never becomes stronger and stiffer, then something is already wrong and no need to go further. Once you have strength in the dough, the only thing left to do is not let it overproof and you just need to figure out the timing.  Maybe start with a same day dough and just let it proof at room temp for 3-4 hours and try to stretch it out sooner and see how it compares.  My guess is that your measurements are wildly off or that your yeast is not doing it's job well.   

[[email protected]]

Thanks will strongly consider. In the meantime, if one was to make a dough with absolutely maximum levels of gluten, how would they achieve that?

I don't think you probably want max levels of gluten but would suggest you find some flour with a bit more protein, something in the 14% vicinity. Skip the mixed blends at least to begin. Also I would suggest room temp water instead of warm water. I found pizzamaking.com through this  site. https://feelingfoodish.com/the-best-new-york-style-pizza-dough/  The group here really helped her get her crust dialed in and she condenses the info into what I found to be a very helpful blog. And last thing... totally agree with everyone who said get a digital scale... will make a much bigger difference than you would expect.

[jma6610]

I don't have a kitchen scale, but I generally use a ~2.5-3 cup split of 75% 00 or bread flour and 25% semolina flour, with 1-1.25cup warm filtered water.

Dissolve a tablespoon of starter in water, add 1/2 to 1tsp traditional yeast for a few minutes,

You're overproofing - as you seemed to suspect. 1 tsp of yeast is over 5 grams. You should be using a fraction of this amount - with the amount dependent upon the amount of time the dough is fermenting and the temperature. If the yeast uses up the food available to it (sugars in the dough), the gluten network will start to break down.

[[email protected]]

You're overproofing - as you seemed to suspect. 1 tsp of yeast is over 5 grams. You should be using a fraction of this amount - with the amount dependent upon the amount of time the dough is fermenting and the temperature. If the yeast uses up the food available to it (sugars in the dough), the gluten network will start to break down.

Good catch. Missed that. Use 4.4g for about 1500g of finished dough here.