Experiment

[RHawthorne]

It would seem to me that if the flour is that dry, the enzymes in it are probably way past the point of being viable enough to use. But apparently you got a good final product.

[wotavidone]

By "dry" I meant that this whole wheat flour absorbs massive amounts of water. i.e. whereas my Gaganis Bros flour makes a nice silky smooth dough at 60% hydration, this stuff needs more like 80-90% water to make a barely usable dough.
I thought it would be too old, but the starter really took off, and it had a very positive contribution to the flavour of the crust.
I will work through what I have left, but there may be no more, The wholesaler I got it from has closed down.

[Heikjo]

I just had to make this. I see where you are coming from and won’t disagree. The best part is that my dough fermented more with the extra 0.08 g, as I was hoping it would. But that’s what we can get for single experiments. It’s repetition and consistency that matters.

I agree that for miniscule amounts of IDY, you may be better off using volume rather than mass, but my doughs still produce somewhat consistent results with the scale. Not that the scale is accurate down to 0.01 grams, but it can tell the difference between 0.25 and 0.75.

[wotavidone]

I just had to make this. I see where you are coming from and won’t disagree. The best part is that my dough fermented more with the extra 0.08 g, as I was hoping it would. But that’s what we can get for single experiments. It’s repetition and consistency that matters.

I agree that for miniscule amounts of IDY, you may be better off using volume rather than mass, but my doughs still produce somewhat consistent results with the scale. Not that the scale is accurate down to 0.01 grams, but it can tell the difference between 0.25 and 0.75.

weigh 0.25g a dozen times, then combine them al together and see if it says you really have three grams.
then weigh 0.75 a dozen times and see if it says you have 9 grams.

[Heikjo]

12x0.25 became 2.99 g
12x0.75 became 9.01 g

I’ve had this scale for years and I’m not surprised about the result. The higher number of measurements you do, the more I’d expect the sum to be close to the intended sum. I know it can’t tell 0.01 g apart accurately, but I have tried a few other 0.01 scales that felt much worse than this one. Whenever I use it and add or retract small amounts, it just looks like the numbers are pretty accurate.

The question is perhaps not if 12x0.25 becomes 3, but how much each sample actually weigh and what the variance is. Does it range from 0.2-0.3, 0.15-0.35 or worse? I can’t say, other than that it feels pretty accurate. And the important part is that it is consistent enough that I can use amounts under 1 gram of IDY.

You mentioned earlier that other factors can have as big if not bigger influence, like dough and fermentation temperatures, which I agree with. I don’t know how much of a difference 10% of IDY makes if you had a 100% controlled environment and made two doughs.

[wotavidone]

I'd expect quite a bit of variation between samples.
Of course, when I was using a $20,000 microbalance for weighing small gold prills, I was performing the buyer assays for $100 million dollar ore shipments, where +/- 1% meant a lot of money.
Where we disagreed with the seller by more than the contracted splitting limit the samples went to umpire. The final result would then be the average of the umpire assay and whoever was closest to the umpire, with whoever was furthest away having their result excluded from the average, and also paying for the umpire assay.
Still proud of the fact that I won more than I lost by a healthy margin.
Anyway, back to pizzas. Very happy with how my crusts turned out last night.
Seem to be back on track, now.
Left overs were tasty at lunch today. Had that sort of tangy taste you only get when the fermentation has gone well. Not really sourdough, but tangy. I've always put it down to a few wild organisms present in the semolina and the whole wheat flours. There's no brominating and/or bleaching with most Aussie flours, so it wouldn't surprise me if the whole wheat flours had few wild yeasts and things on board.
If I could only figure out where the hell my new package of yeast went, I'd be even happier.

[wotavidone]

Just riffling through some stuff, being confined to quarters whilst waiting out my covid isolation, and I came across this diagram. It is similar to what I used to draw quite often for any trainee assayer/chemist who asked me the difference between accuracy and precision. My freehand efforts weren't quite as pretty, but generally got the message across.

[wotavidone]

Covid isolation over. Got an sms from the Gummint last Friday to say I was allowed out.
Decided tomorrow night shall be pizza time.
Made a batch of "Start Ya Bastard", using 150g warm water and 100g of Atta Flour, with 1/2 tsp yeast.
Sitting at the table scoffing homemade wonton soup for dinner when I was startled by a loud pop.
The starter blew the lid off the Tupperware container.
The missus said, "That's the third time it's done that, maybe its time to make the dough."

[02ebz06]

Covid isolation over. Got an sms from the Gummint last Friday to say I was allowed out.
Decided tomorrow night shall be pizza time.
Made a batch of "Start Ya Bastard", using 150g warm water and 100g of Atta Flour, with 1/2 tsp yeast.
Sitting at the table scoffing homemade wonton soup for dinner when I was startled by a loud pop.
The starter blew the lid off the Tupperware container.
The missus said, "That's the third time it's done that, maybe its time to make the dough."

[wotavidone]

Yesterday I hit Gaganis Bros in the smoke and came away with 12 Kg of 00 four and a 246g block of fresh yeast.
Today I made my "Start Ya Bastard" pre-ferment with 7g of fresh yeast, which is allegedly the equivalent of about 3/4 tsp of IDY.
Smelled great and sure kick started the preferment. I used cold water but after an hour and twenty minutes I was starting to think it was actie enough.
After about 1 1/2 hours I made dough with the starter and the 00 flour.

[wotavidone]

So I took 1000g of my newly acquired Gananis Bros 00 flour, 4 tsp salt, and 580g cold water and my "Start Ya Bastard" preferment made with 7g fresh yeast, and made myself a dough that was borderline too sticky.
The preferment is 100g flour and 150g water, so end result is 1100g flour and 730g water for a final hydration of 66%.
I think I see why it was sticky. I was mental arithmeticking it at 62%. It was only when I just checked with a calculator that I realised my error.

I left it out on the bench for a few hours after mixing, its winter here, but I soon saw the need to retard it in the fridge.
In total about 4 hours in bulk on the bench, then about 19 hours bulk in the fridge, followed by 6 hours in balls out of the fridge.
I found it necessary to knock it down about midnight as it was trying to takeover the bottom shelf of the fridge.
The balls came put pretty darn good, but a little hard to handle due to being just that little bit too sticky.
But we survived.

[wotavidone]

As always, I made a Margherita first.
The doughballs were alarmingly extensible but, again, we survived.
As usual, if you want a perfectly round pizza, see you at Dominos.
I used the diced tomatoes from Gaganis Bros.
They were very coarsely chopped, resulting in using quite a bit more than usual to top the pizza.
Really nice flavour, though.
The missus suggested I should blitz them with the stick mixer. However, I liked the way the pizzas came out, so I reckon the proper course of action is just to get two cans, they are less than a dollar.
So I made a Margherita, ran the oven floor a little hotter than last time, cooked in about 80 secs.
And, as "rustic" as it looked, it tasted great.
I'm hoping, one day, to actually nail these Margheritas consistently.
Somewhere between the second and third photos I must have got a little flour on the lens.