Dough too sticky - hard to get on\off peel (many possible issues)

[lucy1337]

Hi guys, I have a lot of problems with my pizza-making journey.
When I baked in the home oven I managed to get consistent results by using parchment paper that I removed after a minute on the steel.
I tried that yesterday with my brand new Bertello Grande and despite the fact there was no visible paper anywhere (I cut it in a perfect circle) it burnt in like 30 seconds just from the stone heat. Also, I am not a huge fan of keep using this hack - it means I won't practice the proper technique. So no more with that.

My main issue is, I think, the tomato source which is possibly too watery.
I mostly just take a can of Bianco DiNapoli (the yellow one) whole tomatoes and mill them.
I then split them into 5 small boxes and freeze 4 as I only make two pizzas at a time.

The sauce is amazing, it is so tasty I can just eat it by itself - but I always feel it is too watery and makes my dough sticky.

I am using KA bread flour with hydration between 65% and 70%.
Tomorrow I will also try 80%.

It is extremely possible it is not at all the sauce's fault and that my technique is wrong.
It is possible that I shape the dough too thin and it sticks.
It is possible that I overproof the dough which in turn makes it harder to shape properly.

So far I used the gravity method to shape the dough - and it has been pretty difficult - I barely have any time to react before the center of the pizza is way too thin and tends to tear which usually makes a huge mess on the stone\steel.

Yesterday I also tried 0.2% dry yeast instead of the regular 1-2% that Vito always recommends and it was significantly easier to work with (probably because I didn't overproofed the dough).

Any tips would be appreciated.

[stevenfstein]

a couple of questions - are you using a wood or metal peel to launch the pies. What are you putting on the peel to help eliminate sticking. Personally, I use a wood peel with rice flour and have never had any issues. Before you launch the pie into the oven give it a few shakes to make sure it is not sticking. If it is, you can blow under the dough or sprinkle more of your dusting powder. I'm on my own journey and I'm sure the experts on here will be of immense help.

Best... Steve

[lucy1337]

Correct, forgot to mention what I tried so far:
My only attempt with a friend's wood peel was perfect, with no issues at all - I prepared the pizza on the peel and slid it to his Ooni Fyra without issues.
The only thing I didn't like about it is that I had flour inside the oven, that's why I prefer a perforated peel (hehe)

The peel I use at home is an aluminum peel which honestly feels like garbage, can't wait to get rid of it. Tomorrow I get https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094Q4K3MD/?tag=pmak-20.

Up until this point I used semolina - starting tomorrow I will try 50/50 semolina and flour.

[Pizza_Not_War]

Too much water. Drop hydration lower, maybe try 60%. Your oven is capable of high temperature, what temperatures are you baking at?

[lucy1337]

Too much water. Drop hydration lower, maybe try 60%. Your oven is capable of high temperature, what temperatures are you baking at?

Well, yesterday was my first attempt with this oven, I tried to bake at a floor temp of around 800F and I had the bottom burn too fast.
I didn't like 60% when my friend did that (he followed the Ooni recipe).
I would say that my personal preference is at least 65%

[wotavidone]

Your dough is too sticky at 65% to 70% hydration. So you are going to try 80%?
Defies logic, don't you think?

But you think your issue might be watery sauce?
I'm wondering how the sauce is laying there on the stretched skin long enough to penetrate the dough and increase its stickiness.

When you used 0.2% dry yeast instead of the regular 1-2% it got better perhaps due to not over-proofing it.
Stretches ridiculously easy also says over fermented to me.

Here's my take:
Go back to basics. Forget most everything you've learned.
You are moving from a home oven to a mini incinerator - its a whole different ball game.

In no particular order,
a) Reduce the hydration - it never ceases to amaze me that people who find their dough too wet to handle cannot bring themselves to reduce the amount of water they add.
Pete-zza went into this in detail, and posted some useful links. The professional equivalent of KABF is the "Special". In the link Peter put in his post they list the absorption as 62%.
https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=4646.msg39204#msg39204
It is said that "operational" hydration can be 2-4% higher than the published absorption.
So 66% is the upper end of the range for this flour. People can and do go quite a bit higher than that, of course, but they have to develop their technique quite a bit to handle it.
I strongly suspect that they would not be trying to slide it off an aluminium peel.

b) Post your dough formula. Take no offense, but I'd like to see your grams of flour and grams of water and calculate the hydration myself.
I've spotted a couple of errors lately, and I'd also like to know if there is added sugars and oils.
c) Keen to know your workflow.
d) was the "regular 1-2% yeast" fresh or dried?
e) also KABF is, I believe, malted. I don't think malted flours are the best things to use at 800F. That is un malted typo 00 territory.
f) was that regular 1-2% dry or fresh  yeast? If dry, do you rehydrate it in warm or cold water? Apparently re-hydrating it in cold water generates a compound that is particularly good at attacking the gluten.

[lucy1337]

Your dough is too sticky at 65% to 70% hydration. So you are going to try 80%?
Defies logic, don't you think?

But you think your issue might be watery sauce?
I'm wondering how the sauce is laying there on the stretched skin long enough to penetrate the dough and increase its stickiness.

When you used 0.2% dry yeast instead of the regular 1-2% it got better perhaps due to not over-proofing it.
Stretches ridiculously easy also says over fermented to me.

Here's my take:
Go back to basics. Forget most everything you've learned.
You are moving from a home oven to a mini incinerator - its a whole different ball game.

In no particular order,
a) Reduce the hydration - it never ceases to amaze me that people who find their dough too wet to handle cannot bring themselves to reduce the amount of water they add.
Pete-zza went into this in detail, and posted some useful links. The professional equivalent of KABF is the "Special". In the link Peter put in his post they list the absorption as 62%.
https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=4646.msg39204#msg39204
It is said that "operational" hydration can be 2-4% higher than the published absorption.
So 66% is the upper end of the range for this flour. People can and do go quite a bit higher than that, of course, but they have to develop their technique quite a bit to handle it.
I strongly suspect that they would not be trying to slide it off an aluminium peel.

b) Post your dough formula. Take no offense, but I'd like to see your grams of flour and grams of water and calculate the hydration myself.
I've spotted a couple of errors lately, and I'd also like to know if there is added sugars and oils.
c) Keen to know your workflow.
d) was the "regular 1-2% yeast" fresh or dried?
e) also KABF is, I believe, malted. I don't think malted flours are the best things to use at 800F. That is un malted typo 00 territory.
f) was that regular 1-2% dry or fresh  yeast? If dry, do you rehydrate it in warm or cold water? Apparently re-hydrating it in cold water generates a compound that is particularly good at attacking the gluten.

Hi thanks for the detailed response.

I will go over your point one by one.

Hydration - I managed to get good-looking pizzas with lower hydration but they didn't taste as good.
So yes, the success rate of 60% hydration was 5 out of 5 compared to like 3 out of 5 when doing 70% hydration - but I didn't like the results of the 60% hydration - so am I suppose to do something I dont like just because it is easier to pull off?

About the 80% - it is experiences time. I have like 6 dough balls in the refrigerator with different hydration levels and I plan to start experiencing what works best for me. For now I won't waste any cheese, will just practice with dough and sauce.

Formula(s):
I tried two formulas:

274/178/8/0.2 - Fermented over ~20 hours, first 8 hours at temperature between 17c and 14c then another 8 hours in the refrigerator (around 4c?) and then another 3 hours at room temperature again (25c). This was by far the easiest to work with. I liked it a lot.
Sadly I have no idea if it would have worked or not because this was the pizza I slid using the parchment paper.
The 2nd ball of that formula is defrosting right now and I will give it a second attempt tonight.

285/200/9/3 - first poolish of 100/100/3 about one hour at 22c then 24 hours in the refrigerator, add rest of the flour water and salt and ball it, another 24 hours in the refrigerator and then about two hours at room temperature (25c). It was hard to work with but I suspect the problem was actually my technique and not using enough flour on the counter. Will see again tonight.

Workflow - I try to follow what Vito on youtube does except that I use the gravitation method on my fists, I think this part kinda ruin the shaping for me. I will try something else tonight.

Yeast was dry.

[TXCraig1]

What is your oven temp?

Try opening your dough like this rather than the gravity method:

[lucy1337]

What is your oven temp?

Try opening your dough like this rather than the gravity method:

I tried this technique but it is not that easy to master, I will practice more today and see how it goes

The back was around 850 which I think is too high, the front was ~650
I think I will aim for 750 in the back

[TXCraig1]

I tried this technique but it is not that easy to master, I will practice more today and see how it goes

LOL. Nothing about great pizza is easy to master, and it all requires practice. The single most important ingredient in great pizza is experience.

Once you exceed 700F, it's time to move away from malted flour because it browns/burns too fast. Look at the ingredients on the bag of flour, and if there is either malted barley flour or enzymes listed, it's malted. KABF is malted. KAAP is too. You may find unmalted AP flour at the grocery store. It's not that uncommon. Unmalted bread flour is a bit harder to find. Often the organic bread flour is not malted.

[wotavidone]

Hi thanks for the detailed response.

I will go over your point one by one.

Hydration - I managed to get good-looking pizzas with lower hydration but they didn't taste as good.
So yes, the success rate of 60% hydration was 5 out of 5 compared to like 3 out of 5 when doing 70% hydration - but I didn't like the results of the 60% hydration - so am I suppose to do something I dont like just because it is easier to pull off?

About the 80% - it is experiences time. I have like 6 dough balls in the refrigerator with different hydration levels and I plan to start experiencing what works best for me. For now I won't waste any cheese, will just practice with dough and sauce.

Formula(s):
I tried two formulas:

274/178/8/0.2 - Fermented over ~20 hours, first 8 hours at temperature between 17c and 14c then another 8 hours in the refrigerator (around 4c?) and then another 3 hours at room temperature again (25c). This was by far the easiest to work with. I liked it a lot.
Sadly I have no idea if it would have worked or not because this was the pizza I slid using the parchment paper.
The 2nd ball of that formula is defrosting right now and I will give it a second attempt tonight.

285/200/9/3 - first poolish of 100/100/3 about one hour at 22c then 24 hours in the refrigerator, add rest of the flour water and salt and ball it, another 24 hours in the refrigerator and then about two hours at room temperature (25c). It was hard to work with but I suspect the problem was actually my technique and not using enough flour on the counter. Will see again tonight.

Workflow - I try to follow what Vito on youtube does except that I use the gravitation method on my fists, I think this part kinda ruin the shaping for me. I will try something else tonight.

Yeast was dry.

Yeast was dry at 3g and at 0.2g? Earlier you mentioned 0.2% and 1-2%. Which is it? I suggest it looks more and more as if you were over fermenting earlier in the piece.
When you look at your flow for the 285/200/9/3  mix. 100g of your flour spent 25 hours getting munched by all your yeast.
And, it looks like you rehydrated your yeast at cold temperatures both times. Try 35C water.
You did miss one important point I made - malted flour is the wrong ingredient for the temperatures you are now playing with.

[lucy1337]

Yeast was dry at 3g and at 0.2g? Earlier you mentioned 0.2% and 1-2%. Which is it? I suggest it looks more and more as if you were over fermenting earlier in the piece.
When you look at your flow for the 285/200/9/3  mix. 100g of your flour spent 25 hours getting munched by all your yeast.
And, it looks like you rehydrated your yeast at cold temperatures both times. Try 35C water.
You did miss one important point I made - malted flour is the wrong ingredient for the temperatures you are now playing with.

I only have dry yeast. 3g out of 285 is 1% so it falls in the 1-2% I said, and the reason I said 1-2% is because my digital scale doesn't show fractions, so it is possible it was actually a bit more than 3g. When I measured the 0.2g I did that using volume instead, I tried to add 1/8 teaspoon of dry yest, which according to the internet is about 0.2g.
Next time I will try 35C water like you said.

I didn't miss the malted flour point, but that's what I currently have, and when I used my friend Fyra12 a few weeks ago (with a wood peel) I managed to pull of a decent pizza with the same flour I am using now, not amazing, but decent - and very tasty, and that was my first ever attempt with a pizza oven:
https://i.imgur.com/TJTAgnx.png

Todays attempts were terrible. I am returning the GI-wannabe peel I ordered (it was also concave for some reason) and will stick to wood peel for now. Much easier to make the pizza on the peel. Much less room for errors.

How do you suggest ferment when doing the 274/178/8/0.2 formula? Most tutorials say to leave the dough at room temperature of 16-18c for 24h but I can't do that as it gets pretty hot where I live.

[wotavidone]

That certainly is a good looking pizza.
I dunno what to suggest next.
It's winter here - and a bloody cold one at that.
It got down to about 8C today. I had to put a jacket on over my t-shirt.
My last batch I used 9g of fresh yeast, which I believe is the equivalent of about 2.7-3.0g of IDY.
That was in 1100g flour. So about the equivalent 0f .25% yeast.
I made a starter of 100g flour and 150g warm water with it that I let develop for about 1.5 hours, then mixed everything in the twin spiral mixer.
I only left that mixed dough out long enough to assure myself the yeast was working, then it went into the fridge for about 20 hours, IIRC. In bulk.
Then it was take it out, ball it, and give it about 4 hours on the bench to properly warm up.
Final dough I calculated at about 62%, I think.
Anyway, it just plain worked. Sticky (00 flour), but manageable.
One of the things you'll often see on youtube vids -
You and I would normally scatter some flour on the bench, and work the doughball on it. Some of these guys working really high hydration doughs are using a bowl of flour they drop the doughball into when they get it out of the box. I reckon I've even seen one where the guy was tossing the bowl so that the ball was flipped over and actually submerged in the flour. I dunno how much sticks, but I reckon it'd be enough to cause a measurable change in the hydration.

[lucy1337]

That certainly is a good looking pizza.
I dunno what to suggest next.
It's winter here - and a bloody cold one at that.
It got down to about 8C today. I had to put a jacket on over my t-shirt.
My last batch I used 9g of fresh yeast, which I believe is the equivalent of about 2.7-3.0g of IDY.
That was in 1100g flour. So about the equivalent 0f .25% yeast.
I made a starter of 100g flour and 150g warm water with it that I let develop for about 1.5 hours, then mixed everything in the twin spiral mixer.
I only left that mixed dough out long enough to assure myself the yeast was working, then it went into the fridge for about 20 hours, IIRC. In bulk.
Then it was take it out, ball it, and give it about 4 hours on the bench to properly warm up.
Final dough I calculated at about 62%, I think.
Anyway, it just plain worked. Sticky (00 flour), but manageable.
One of the things you'll often see on youtube vids -
You and I would normally scatter some flour on the bench, and work the doughball on it. Some of these guys working really high hydration doughs are using a bowl of flour they drop the doughball into when they get it out of the box. I reckon I've even seen one where the guy was tossing the bowl so that the ball was flipped over and actually submerged in the flour. I dunno how much sticks, but I reckon it'd be enough to cause a measurable change in the hydration.

Thanks, appreciate your help. What you described is almost exactly what this dude did here:



I think I will stick to that recipe and method for now with a wood peel and see how it goes.

I also got myself about 1kg of Tony Gemignani's 00 Pizza from a friend of mine, so next time I will be able to see the differences

[wotavidone]

Thanks, appreciate your help. What you described is almost exactly what this dude did here:



I think I will stick to that recipe and method for now with a wood peel and see how it goes.

I also got myself about 1kg of Tony Gemignani's 00 Pizza from a friend of mine, so next time I will be able to see the differences

Ah, a good Aussie boy is Johnny. Started his own pizza restaurant in Melbourne Australia in 2008.
Competed against 600 chefs from 35 countries and won Best Margherita in 5 Stagioni's 2014 World Pizza Championship, in Parma, Italy.
I think he did it again a few years later.
He has restaurants all over the place now. Even Texas.
https://www.dallasobserver.com/restaurants/best-italian-dallas-14403974