Is Tom's sponge method an easy one to convert for smaller dough batches other than 50 lb. of flour?Norma,
Norma
| Total Formula: Flour (100%): Water (60%): Salt (1.75%): IDY (0.34375%): Olive Oil (2%): Sugar (1.5%): Total (165.59375%): | 22680 g | 800 oz | 50 lbs 13608 g | 480 oz | 30 lbs 396.9 g | 14 oz | 0.88 lbs | 23.7 tbsp | 1.48 cups 77.96 g | 2.75 oz | 0.17 lbs | 8.63 tbsp | 0.54 cups 453.6 g | 16 oz | 1 lbs | 33.6 tbsp | 2.1 cups 340.2 g | 12 oz | 0.75 lbs | 28.44 tbsp | 1.78 cups 37556.66 g | 1324.75 oz | 82.8 lbs | TF = N/A |
Norma,
The math isn't difficult but it all has to be done longhand with pencil and paper since none of the dough calculating tools can do all of the calculations required by Tom's sponge method. That means that anytime you want to change anything, all of the calculations will have to be redone by hand.
FYI, using the top part of the preferment dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/preferment_calculator.html (http://www.pizzamaking.com/preferment_calculator.html), this is what the Total Formula looks like, without any bowl residue compensation:To use the above to complete the rest of the exercise, you would have to subtract the amounts of ingredients used to make the Preferment (sponge) from the values given in the Total Formula set forth above to arrive at the amounts of the ingredients to be used to make the Final Dough. All of the quantities are scalable to any dough ball weight you want but all of the math has to be done by hand.
Total Formula:
Flour (100%):
Water (60%):
Salt (1.75%):
IDY (0.34375%):
Olive Oil (2%):
Sugar (1.5%):
Total (165.59375%):
22680 g | 800 oz | 50 lbs
13608 g | 480 oz | 30 lbs
396.9 g | 14 oz | 0.88 lbs | 23.7 tbsp | 1.48 cups
77.96 g | 2.75 oz | 0.17 lbs | 8.63 tbsp | 0.54 cups
453.6 g | 16 oz | 1 lbs | 33.6 tbsp | 2.1 cups
340.2 g | 12 oz | 0.75 lbs | 28.44 tbsp | 1.78 cups
37556.66 g | 1324.75 oz | 82.8 lbs | TF = N/A
BTW, in coming up with the above formulation, I used 16 pounds of water for the Preferment portion and 14 pounds of water for the Final Dough. Tom's recipe actually has four different amounts of water that can be used. You would have to decide which pair of water quantities you want to use. The above formulation also assumes regular salt, not Kosher salt.
Peter
Norma,
In Tom's recipe, he calls for 15 to 16 pounds of water for the sponge and 13 to 14 pounds of water for the final dough. You will have to decide on what set of values you would want to use if you were to use Tom's recipe.
As an alternative to using Tom's recipe, where you seem to be leaning, you can use the Boardwalk formulation you referenced and adapt it to use a sponge. The sponge used by Tom has a hydration of around 53% and represents about 92% of the total formula flour. You could use the same percents or else you can follow the recommendations discussed in the Didier Rosada article at http://web.archive.org/web/20040814193817/cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food3_apr2004.htm (http://web.archive.org/web/20040814193817/cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food3_apr2004.htm). Technically, I believe that Tom's sponge is more like a biga because of its lower hydration value than is typically used for a sponge, based on the Rosada article.
There is no one way that is best or right. Once you decide on which way you would like to go, maybe I can help you with an initial formulation to try.
Peter
What is the difference between a sponge and poolish?Nate,
Norma,
Can you give me an idea as to the temperature that would exist at market when you would make the sponge preferment? And, also, what duration would you want to use for the sponge preferment before incorporating it into the final mix?
I raise the above questions because any preferment you make at market will always be at the mercy of the amount of yeast used in the preferment and the temperature at which the preferment is held until used to finish the dough. I suspect that Tom's sponge recipe and methods were intended for a more stable temperature environment, such as exists, for example, in a typical enclosed pizzeria. Also, I suspect that his version of the sponge was more like a biga because it is of a lower hydration than the classical poolish or sponge preferments and there is no break point to speak of with a biga as there is for a poolish or sponge. That makes a biga less temperature and time sensitive. As a practical matter, what this may mean is that any sponge you make will be what it will be and you will have to adjust the final mix to compensate for any shortcomings in the sponge and hope you end up with a product that can be repeated consistently to get the desired end results.
Peter
Norma,
I don't mind giving it a try. In fact, it might be an interesting exercise. I just wanted you to know what the issues are. I think the major adjustment at the final mix stage would be the amount of yeast. Specifically, in cold weather, you would use more yeast, and in warm weather, you would use less. It would take experience in assessing the state of the sponge at the time of intended use--most likely how it looks--and how to modify or adjust for it from a yeast quantity standpoint. It would be somewhat a seat of the pants sort of thing with no math involved.
Can you tell me what the market temperature is this time of year? And what flour, type of oil, and type of salt you would be using?
Peter
thanks Norma! You inspire me with your go for it drive to conquer so many different styles of pizza. It makes me remember there are no rules and that makes it fun. I will post the numbers Monday. Walter
Norma,
What usually dictates the amount of yeast to be used in a preferment such as a sponge or poolish is the amount of yeast used in the sponge or poolish. For example, if you look at the formulation I used at Reply 28 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=6515.msg62814#msg62814 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=6515.msg62814#msg62814), you will see that I put all of the formula yeast (almost 1.4%) into the sponge (actually the sponge was between a classic sponge and a poolish, which is I why I put the word sponge in parentheses in the second line of the post). With all of the yeast in the sponge, it took only three hours for the sponge to peak and collapse on itself, as is shown in one of the photos. Eventually, the dough ball went into the refrigerator for almost two days but the high amount of yeast in the sponge still had its effect on the fermentation of the dough ball.
For an example on the other end of the spectrum, you will see from the formulation I used in Reply 4 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=6515.msg56131#msg56131 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=6515.msg56131#msg56131), that I used only 1/32 teaspoon of IDY in the poolish preferment. And it took about 15 hours for the poolish to become noticeably active.
What I have been thinking about for your situation is something like what I did in Reply 4 referenced above but using a sponge instead of a poolish and, at the same time, trying to adapt everything to your market temperature of 45-50 degrees F and a contemplated 15 hour prefermentation period (unless you would like some other time period). That is where the heavy math comes in. In this vein, I would be guided by Didier Rosada's work as discussed in the article at http://web.archive.org/web/20040814193817/cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food3_apr2004.htm (http://web.archive.org/web/20040814193817/cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food3_apr2004.htm) and also tying in some of member November's work. Unfortunately, the Rosada article referenced above does not show the peaking and collapsing of the sponge or poolish (although I show the phenomenon in the photo in Reply 28 referenced above). The original Rosada article no longer is available on the Internet. I retrieved the article from the Wayback Machine archives.
Peter
Norma: My room is usually around the mid 60's this time of year in the overnight hours and my preferement rises fine. I didn't take the water temp. I did turn the hot tap on a bit because our cold water temp is in the 40's. Didn't I read somewhere you have a warming box? If not you can try this and I am sure you know about it already. Put the preferment inside a box( a cardboard box might work just fine) with a lightbulb on- just a cheap standard hanging light extension cord you can buy at home depot or one that will hold an oven light size bulb is ideal for an insulated set up. Once I built the box out of rigid insulation that was held together with blue masking tape so it could be taken apart/put together in a minute with no damage to the foam. We use these kind of boxes to cure epoxy for the fusalages and fiberglass sheeted wings that my friends and I build for radio controlled gliders. I had to drill large holes in it that could be covered/uncovered to adjust the heat for the baking box but I think now there are cheap thermostadt controllers for the light bulb? A large cooler with a pan of hot water can work great too. When I smoke meats for a large party I store them in a cooler until serving. Without opening/closing the cooler until use, the meat stays hot for hours. With the foam you will be amazed at how low a wattage bulb you will need. It may work just fine till the warmer nights of spring/summer comes and just water temp adjustments will allow it to sit out. I would also try my formula sitting out on your shop counter with warm water and see what happens just for the heck of it. Walter
PS: One more idea?? Couldn't you make the preferment at home the day before and then bring it to market on your day, mix, ball, and see how long it takes to rise for baking?. But do you really need all these new experiment ideas to scramble your mind :)
Thank you for your link to where you used the sponge that collapsed fast from the high amount of yeast (that was between a classic sponge and a poolish) and your link to where you tried the poolish preferment with a small amount of yeast in JerryMac's dough. Could you say offhand which pizza was better in the taste of the crust?Norma,
This is an article on sponges by Didier Rosada. http://www.elclubdelpan.com/es/node/2702 (http://www.elclubdelpan.com/es/node/2702) The sponge image is gone though. This article shows what a poolish and sponge should look like before being incorpoated into the final dough. http://www.bakerconnection.com/artisanbaker/article_04.htm (http://www.bakerconnection.com/artisanbaker/article_04.htm)Norma,
Norma,
I don't really recall which of the two versions was better. Both were adaptations of the JerryMac dough formulation as set forth in the opening post at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=6515.msg55855#msg55855 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=6515.msg55855#msg55855). That version was a one-day version using a lot of yeast and the techniques used in those versions would not be suitable for your use at market. The methods used for the other two versions that I mentioned in my last post could be adapted for use at market, although I think I would tend to go with the use of a small amount of yeast and an overnight prefermentation and a one-day cold fermentation of the final dough. That would be a Sunday through Monday scenario. Maybe this question has been asked before, but if a sponge prefermentation method were to work at market would you be permitted to make the sponge at home and bring it to market to make pizzas to be sold or would the sponge also have to be made at market under the rules of the market?
Peter
Norma,
Since you have been working with Walter on this matter I will hold back for now because I don't want to confuse or distract you. However, I may play around with some numbers in the meantime to satisfy my own curiosity.
Peter
Norma: Yes my preferment was stiff/dough like. Your warming oven looks like a small version of mine.
Walter
Norma,
Can you tell me how you came up with the numbers for the dough that you described in Reply 1805 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9068.msg304434#msg304434 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9068.msg304434#msg304434)? I know that the thickness factor is 0.08, and the bowl residue compensation is 2%, but I don't know the number of dough balls or the size of the pizzas. Also, the baker's percents numbers in the photo are a bit blurry. Usually, I can figure out what you did but this time I am stumped.
Peter
| Flour (100%): Water (63%): IDY (0.25%): Morton's Kosher Salt (2%): Olive Oil (1.5%): Sugar (0.85%): Total (167.6%): Single Ball: | 6197.92 g | 218.62 oz | 13.66 lbs 3904.69 g | 137.73 oz | 8.61 lbs 15.49 g | 0.55 oz | 0.03 lbs | 5.14 tsp | 1.71 tbsp 123.96 g | 4.37 oz | 0.27 lbs | 8.61 tbsp | 0.54 cups 92.97 g | 3.28 oz | 0.2 lbs | 6.89 tbsp | 0.43 cups 52.68 g | 1.86 oz | 0.12 lbs | 4.4 tbsp | 0.28 cups 10387.72 g | 366.41 oz | 22.9 lbs | TF = 0.0816 494.65 g | 17.45 oz | 1.09 lbs |
Norma,
After my last post, I figured it out. It was 21 dough balls for 16.5" pizzas. It was the 16.5" number that stumped me since I am not used to seeing a size like that. This is what the dough formulation looks like:Note: Dough is for twenty-one 16.5" pizzas; nominal thickness factor = 0.08; bowl residue compensation = 2%
Flour (100%):
Water (63%):
IDY (0.25%):
Morton's Kosher Salt (2%):
Olive Oil (1.5%):
Sugar (0.85%):
Total (167.6%):
Single Ball:6197.92 g | 218.62 oz | 13.66 lbs
3904.69 g | 137.73 oz | 8.61 lbs
15.49 g | 0.55 oz | 0.03 lbs | 5.14 tsp | 1.71 tbsp
123.96 g | 4.37 oz | 0.27 lbs | 8.61 tbsp | 0.54 cups
92.97 g | 3.28 oz | 0.2 lbs | 6.89 tbsp | 0.43 cups
52.68 g | 1.86 oz | 0.12 lbs | 4.4 tbsp | 0.28 cups
10387.72 g | 366.41 oz | 22.9 lbs | TF = 0.0816
494.65 g | 17.45 oz | 1.09 lbs
Peter
Norma,
What prefermentation period would you plan to use, in hours, prior to incorporating the sponge in the final mix at market? I assume that the prefermentation would take place at your home rather than at market and, if that is so, what would be the average temperature at your home during the prefermentation period? You also indicated that you wanted to make a five-pound batch of dough. Is that correct?
Peter
Norma,
Your situation is tricky but I think it is worth proceeding if only to tell us whether a sponge preferment approach is viable for your case.
For the five dough ball batch you mentioned, what would be the individual dough ball weights?
Peter
Walter,
The preferment dough calculating tool does not do a particularly good job with preferments that include commercial yeast. When Boy Hits Car (Mike) and I designed that tool, we considered whether it could be used or be adapted to be used with preferments with commercial yeast. We discovered that there were so many possibilities (poolish, sponge, biga, old dough, prefermented dough, etc.) that it would have been a nightmare from a programming standpoint to be able to cover them all. I mention this because I suspect that you used commercial yeast (IDY) in your poolish even though it is not shown in the output of the preferment dough calculating tool. Some people put all of the commercial yeast in the preferment but others split the total formula yeast between the preferment and the final mix. I suspect that you did the former. Is that correct? Or did you use a natural starter for the preferment. If that is the case, then what you posted would be correct.
Peter
Walter,
Since you mixed the dough this morning with the poolish IDY preferment you made last night I would say that is a very nice looking pie. :D Do you think there is any way there could be a better flavor with such a short ferment time, even if it was risen at room temperature for 2 hrs. Did the dough ball open easily in that short amout of time? To me that sounds like too short of a ferment time to produce any flavors, but what do I know. Do you think it you would have mixed that dough, balled and boxed and then left it cold ferment for one day if there might have been different results. I think what you experimented with was more like an emergency dough with a poolish preferment, but am not sure.
Will be interested if you try your inactive pure sourdough starter and put the same weight in. Are you going to add some IDY. I wish we all could taste/smell/and touch each others pizzas too. I agree we all have our own ideas of what taste and texture we like. Maybe I am chasing after something I might never find in finding something that works at market. The preferment Lehmann dough did taste better to me than my regular one day cold fermented doughs but hardly any of my customers could tell the difference.
I had thought about going against the grain of using natural starters and adding some IDY to see what would happened. I never tried that if I recall right in a one day cold ferment.
Norma
Norma: Yes today was an emergency dough. It was rising really fast after an hour or so, so I put it in the fridge for an hour and the warmed it up for another hour before making. It opened fine once it was warmed up and the flavor was definetly better than if it was just a IDY only emergency. I will make another poolish tonight and give the finished dough a 24 cold ferment tomorrow. I weighed out the sourdough starter (inactive) before I left today and will add it to the dough tomorrow and cold ferment it as well. I will also make a 24 hour dough with just IDY. So I will have 3 different - 24 hour cold ferments going tomorrow so I can bake them all off Wed. If you add commercial yeast to a sourdough starter it will kill most of the sourdough flavor. I will not add any because the main dough will have IDY in it. To be continued! Walter
Peter: Thanks so much for doing all that work! I am excited to try your formula. It may not be until next week because my fridge is stacking up with my own experiments. You are a great resource/assesst to the pizza world. If there were pizza grammy's you would be first up for one :) Walter
Norma,
I have set forth below a dough formulation for you to consider that makes use of a sponge preferment. That formulation is a conversion of the dough formulation as set forth in Reply 1805 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9068.msg304434#msg304434 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9068.msg304434#msg304434) to a sponge format.
As you can see, I was able to use the preferment dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/preferment_calculator.html (http://www.pizzamaking.com/preferment_calculator.html) to come up with the formulation. However, it took a lot of playing around with the output of the formulation to include the IDY in the sponge Preferment and to adjust the IDY in the Final Dough (as shown below) and to get all of the numbers to line up. In retrospect, it would have been far easier to leave out the IDY component of the sponge Preferment, like Walter did, and to simply state what the amounts of IDY should be in the sponge Preferment and in the Final Dough. However, I wanted you to see exactly how all of the numbers look so that you can make similar adjustments at a later date should the formulation presented below be useful but still need adjustment. Unfortunately, there is no easy way of getting around the need to do a fair amount of math calculations whenever basic variables are changed, whether it is the amount of the sponge Preferment, the temperature of the prefermentation, or the duration of the prefermentation period, or any combination thereof.
As background, I used the following assumptions:
1. The dough batch is enough to make five dough balls, each weighing 1.15 pounds (18.4 ounces), for a total of 92 ounces.
2. The bowl residue compensation is 2%. For scaling purposes, 18.4 ounces should be used for each of the five dough balls.
3. The room temperature during the prefermentation of the sponge Preferment is 68 degrees F.
4. The duration of the prefermentation of the sponge Preferment is 20 hours.
5. The temperature of the water used to make the sponge Preferment is 60 degrees F (per Didier Rosada).
6. The sponge Preferment is 65% of the total formula water of 1000.02 grams (based on Rosada).
7. The hydration of the sponge Preferment is 63%, which is the same as for the dough formulation given in Reply 1805 cited above.
8. The sponge Preferment percent of water is 38.6503% (this number is used in the preferment dough calculating tool).
9. The thickness factor that corresponds to a 16.5” pizza using 18.4 ounces of dough is 18.4/(3.14159 x 8.25 x 8.25) = 0.08605.
10. The flour used is the Full Strength flour, the salt is Morton’s Kosher salt, and the oil is the Lira Olive Pomace Oil.
11. Upon completion of the Final Dough and dividing and scaling, the dough balls will be subjected to a period of cold fermentation.
You will note that, as Walter has stated, there is not much yeast (IDY) used in the sponge Preferment. It comes to 1/16 teaspoon of IDY. That is convenient because it is a standard mini-measuring spoon that is called “pinch”. The amount of IDY to use in the Final Dough is also a convenient value. It is a bit more than 1 ¼ teaspoon.
You will also note the 63% hydration of the sponge Preferment. That should yield a texture like the Final Dough into which it is to be incorporated but there may be some slight differences to the extent that some of the water in the sponge Preferment evaporates during the period of prefermentation. Also, the Final Dough contains some oil that might lead to slight differences in extensibility.
Within the framework of sponge preferments as described by Didier Rosada, there are a myriad of possible combinations. But, even within the Rosada constraints, there would not be a lot of yeast in the sponge Preferment for the duration of the prefermentation you would be using and also the temperature of prefermentation that you would be using. I used member November’s analytical approach to adjust the Rosada prefermentation profile as set forth in the Rosada article referenced earlier in this thread to fit your particular situation.
Here is the formulation:
Total Formula:
Flour (100%): 1587.33 g | 55.99 oz | 3.5 lbs
Water (63%): 1000.02 g | 35.27 oz | 2.2 lbs
Salt (2%): 31.75 g | 1.12 oz | 0.07 lbs | 6.61 tsp | 2.2 tbsp
IDY (0.25%): 3.97 g | 0.14 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.32 tsp | 0.44 tbsp
Oil (1.5%): 23.81 g | 0.84 oz | 0.05 lbs | 5.29 tsp | 1.76 tbsp
Sugar (0.85%): 13.49 g | 0.48 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.38 tsp | 1.13 tbsp
Total (167.6%): 2660.36 g | 93.84 oz | 5.87 lbs | TF = N/A
Preferment:
Flour: 398.78 g | 14.07 oz | 0.88 lbs
Water: 251.23 g | 8.86 oz | 0.55 lbs
IDY: 0.19 g l 0.0067 oz l 0.063 tsp (1/16 tsp "pinch" mini-measuring spoon)
Total: 650.2 g | 22.94 oz | 1.43 lbs
Final Dough:
Flour: 1188.55 g | 41.92 oz | 2.62 lbs
Water: 748.79 g | 26.41 oz | 1.65 lbs
Salt: 31.75 g | 1.12 oz | 0.07 lbs | 6.61 tsp | 2.2 tbsp
IDY: 3.78 g | 0.13 oz | 0.01 | 1.26 tsp | 0.42 tbsp
Preferment: 650.2 g | 22.94 oz | 1.43 lbs
Oil: 23.81 g | 0.84 oz | 0.05 lbs | 5.29 tsp | 1.76 tbsp
Sugar: 13.49 g | 0.48 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.38 tsp | 1.13 tbsp
Total: 2660.36 g | 93.84 oz | 5.87 lbs | TF = N/A
Peter
Norma,
To know if any of the water in the sponge Preferment evaporates during prefermentation, you would have to weigh the storage container by itself (i.e., while empty), then with the sponge within it, which would tell you the weight of the poolish, and again at the end of the prefermentation. By subtracting the weight of the storage container from the combined weight at the end of the prefermentation period, that would tell you whether the poolish lost any weight through evaporation. Of course, you can also use the tare feature approach Also, how you cover the storage container during prefermentation can affect the degree of any losses due to evaporation.
The method that I used to modify the Rosada prefermentation protocol is the one that November discussed in Reply 6 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=5028.msg42572#msg42572 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=5028.msg42572#msg42572) . I simply treated the poolish Preferment as though it was a regular dough. At 63% hydration, that is essentially what a sponge is.
Peter
One other thing I don't understand is why you call a sponge a poolish.Norma,
PS: FYI I rate pizzas as really good or crap. No inbetween. Todays experiments were crap but my kids ate them all up. Again I realize most people don't judge as harshly as I do.
Walter,
I also realize too that most people (that don't actually make pizzas or have not tasted so many different ones) don't judge pizzas as I do.
Norma
Here are some pictures from todays experiments. I think they are all labeled. I would nix them all with the preferment amount I used (same in both IDY and sourdough) and sent you and think published here. Walter
Walter,
I am not sure of what pizza you used the 24 hr. cold ferment with the IDY starter. The photos look labeled the same. All of the pizzas look good.
Norma
I wonder if you could blend a modest percentage of 5 day dough into fresh dough and overnight it.
They all are of the IDY starter pie. The others were not worth pictures. Walter
Total Formula:
Flour (100%): 1374.95 g | 48.5 oz | 3.03 lbs
Water (63%): 866.22 g | 30.55 oz | 1.91 lbs
Salt (1.75%): 24.06 g | 0.85 oz | 0.05 lbs | 4.31 tsp | 1.44 tbsp
IDY (.5%): 6.87 g | 0.24 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2.28 tsp | 0.76 tbsp
Oil (2%): 27.5 g | 0.97 oz | 0.06 lbs | 6.11 tsp | 2.04 tbsp
Sugar (1%): 13.75 g | 0.48 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.45 tsp | 1.15 tbsp
Total (168.25%): 2313.36 g | 81.6 oz | 5.1 lbs | TF = N/A
Single Ball: 578.34 g | 20.4 oz | 1.27 lbs
Preferment:
Flour: 115.67 g | 4.08 oz | 0.26 lbs
Water: 115.67 g | 4.08 oz | 0.26 lbs
pinch of IDY and it sat overnight on the counter
Total: 231.34 g | 8.16 oz | 0.51 lbs
Final Dough:
Flour: 1259.29 g | 44.42 oz | 2.78 lbs
Water: 750.55 g | 26.47 oz | 1.65 lbs
Salt: 24.06 g | 0.85 oz | 0.05 lbs | 4.31 tsp | 1.44 tbsp
IDY: 6.87 g | 0.24 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2.28 tsp | 0.76 tbsp
Preferment: 231.34 g | 8.16 oz | 0.51 lbs
Oil: 27.5 g | 0.97 oz | 0.06 lbs | 6.11 tsp | 2.04 tbsp
Sugar: 13.75 g | 0.48 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.45 tsp | 1.15 tbsp
Total: 2313.36 g | 81.6 oz | 5.1 lbs | TF = N/A
I have added a ball or 2 to 15 new ones that will sit for 48+ hours. I couldn't taste any improvement. I find a 48 hour ferment is just about perfect without any added preferment or old dough. I rarely do a 24 hour dough but will try it with some old dough in it for the heck of it. Walter
I am going to try Peter's formula and also some bulk multi day ferments. There just seems no way around the time factor that I have found yet.
Sourdough bread- wonderful. Sourdough Neapolitan pizza- fantastic. Sourdough NY pizza- all wrong.
Norma,
What E.J. Pyler says is essentially correct. And, if you go back to the Rosada article that we both referenced earlier in this thread, at http://web.archive.org/web/20040814193817/cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food3_apr2004.htm (http://web.archive.org/web/20040814193817/cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food3_apr2004.htm), you will see that Chart A presupposes a bakery prefermentation temperature of 80-85 degrees F. That is the chart that I modified to conform to the lower prefermentation that you planned to use. That change, along with the longer prefermentation period you decided to use, altered the amount of yeast to use in your sponge preferment.
Typically, a sponge preferment will indicate its readiness to be incorporated into the final dough by peaking and than collapsing onto itself. However, that event will be less pronounced than with a poolish preferment because a sponge preferment has a hydration of around 63% whereas a poolish preferment has a hydration of 100%. I am not sure how critical the peaking and collapsing event is with a sponge preferment. Even when that event occurs, there is still a few hours extra time to use the sponge preferment. In your case, you will have to play things by ear, especially if it is colder at market than it was in your home when you made the sponge preferment. It is possible to take more than one prefermentation into account but that is something that might await a future experiment in the event you achieve success with the present sponge preferment.
Peter
A noticeable sourdough flavor doesn't work well with bitter vegetable toppings, but with proteins it's wonderful.
Vito told me that his "yeast" (which is NOT a sourdough per him) was brought over from Italy by a family member over 150 years ago. Whatever it is, his crust haunts me.
Vito told me that his "yeast" (which is NOT a sourdough per him) was brought over from Italy by a family member over 150 years ago. Whatever it is, his crust haunts me.
I guess I will watch the sponge preferment while I am market to see if it peaks and than collapses onto itself. I never know what temperature it is going to be when I go to market, but it will probably be colder at this time of the year than at home. This is what the temperature outside in our area is supposed to be today http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/Manheim+PA+17545 (http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/Manheim+PA+17545) so I would imagine it might be colder at market.Norma,
Maybe it's just my inexperience, but I had trouble balling cold dough. I couldn't get the doughballs to close properly which then lead to thin spots when I stretched them out. So now I stick to balling and then into the fridge for 2 days. Is there a trick to balling cold dough? Bulk fermenting would save me a lot of room.
This morning we dumped 20lbs of dough into a container and put it in the fridge. I am leaving it in till wed/thurs.
Walter, did you halve the yeast?
Scott: I think your proposed work flow of scaling the cold dough then letting them sit to warm up a bit and then balling would work best.
Norma,
After my last post on the above subject, I found this post by Tom Lehmann at the PMQ Think Tank that discusses how to tell when a sponge preferment is ready:
http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/increasing-the-flavor-of-dough.4231/page-2#post-23990 (http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/increasing-the-flavor-of-dough.4231/page-2#post-23990)
FYI, the thread from which the above post came from has one of the highest page view counts of any thread that has ever appeared on the PMQTT forum. I reread a good part ot that thread today, since it deals with dough/crust flavor issues, and it makes for a very interesting read.
Peter
Walter, this recipe is normally 2 day, right? If you're refrigerating the dough until thursday, and then doing 1 day balled, that's 4 days. I might 3/4 the yeast for doubling the time just by itself- outside of the bulk context.
I would watch it very closely. Cold fermenting dough won't rise much each day, but it will rise a little. If you're seeing any kind of noticeable growth, I'd ball it. Remember, it's way better to undershoot than overshoot. There's a few people here who feel that you can re-ball overfermented dough and have a happy outcome, but, for me, I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle.
If the dough isn't ready on the day you need it, you can just about always find a warmer place to temper it or leave it out of the fridge for a bit longer.
Norma: I look forward to seeing how the dough works out. Sorry if I have derailed this thread some but if bulk cold fermenting works out it is also about adding flavor too right? Walter
The temperature at market today was almost 70 degrees F. At 2:00 PM the first 3 photos show what the sponge looked like. Looks like your calculations were really good Peter. Since I am not really familiar how a sponge should look when it has matured enough I thought it looked like it had fallen some, but was not sure if it had fallen enough. I was ready to mix another batch of dough so I went ahead and mixed it. At about 3:00 PM the next 2 photos show what the sponge looked like. The sponge look like it developed a few more bubbles so I don't know what those bubbles meant. I then incorporated the sponge preferment into the final dough. The dough felt nice after it was mixed.Norma,
Sorry if I have derailed this thread some but if bulk cold fermenting works out it is also about adding flavor too right? WalterWalter,
Norma,
Based on what appears from the sides and bottom of your storage container to be a lot of activity in the sponge preferment, I would say that you are perhaps in pretty good shape. However, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.
In the thread that you referenced in the opening post of this thread, you might have noticed Tom's comments in post #9 at http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/more-flavour-in-the-dough.14995/#post-91509 (http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/more-flavour-in-the-dough.14995/#post-91509) that sponge preferments "are very tolerant to variations in fermentation time so you don't have much if any variation in flavor due to differences in sponge age over the course of the day." That might be something to keep in mind for future reference should you decide to proceed further with the sponge project. Actually, what Tom describes as a sponge in the above post #9 reminds me more of a prefermented dough (aka old dough) but at the single dough ball level rather than as part of an entire dough batch.
Peter
What do you mean about what Tom describes as a sponge in the #9 post reminds you more of an old dough, but at the single dough ball level rather than the entire dough batch? I really don't understand about using old dough. I did try different times adding frozen dough balls, from the previous week, that were defrosted (also fermented for about a day before being frozen) and thought those pizzas made with those frozen dough balls added to one batch did give a better flavor in the crust. I guess I was too lazy to make extra dough balls each week to see if those frozen dough balls really gave the crust a better flavor. I think I added at least 4 or 5 dough balls to a batch a couple of times.Norma,
...if the bulk thing doesn't work out.
Walter,
No need to apologize. Any time you change the fermentation protocol, it will have an effect on the flavor of the finished crust. The question becomes whether the flavor impact is noticeable and meaningful.
In your case, with your dough consisting of only flour, water, yeast and salt, you are not left with a lot of options to improve the flavor of the finished crust, especially if the window of fermentation is made intentionally short. Setting aside for the moment the use of the bulk dough ferment, you could get some improvement by using a different flour or flour blend, and maybe you could test out the use of cake yeast, which some people contend does make a difference, but beyond these simple expedients you are left with the options of using preferments or natural starters. One advantage of using preferments is that they can be made at day's end and left to preferment overnight. That way, the advantages of such preferments are conferred to the final dough early the next day when the final dough batch is made. This can be a time saver because you used the overnight hours. Again, the question will be whether any improvement is detectable and desirable to make it worth the while to prepare and use the preferments.
I have intentionally not mentioned using flavor enhancers like honey or oils or herbs or color enhancers like dried milk or dairy whey or diastatic malts since they would take your dough in a different direction that you want to go.
Peter
Walter, the bulk thing will work out :) IF you give it enough time. Nobody ever converts a balled ferment to a bulk/balled ferment and hits it out of the park on their first try. As I said before, you'll need to dial in the yeast. You'll also most likely have to get the hang of balling cold dough, and might have to incorporate a warm up time for the dough balls to get them to close well. I'm thinking it'll take about three batches for you to dial it all in.
I'm certainly not discouraging you from buying a new fridge, but having a bulk in your arsenal wouldn't hurt, either for your present or future settings, or... if you end up consulting for someone with limited space, it wouldn't hurt there either.
Norma,
What I was referring to is what is discussed under the section "Pre-fermented dough" of the Rosada article at http://web.archive.org/web/20040814193817/cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food3_apr2004.htm (http://web.archive.org/web/20040814193817/cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food3_apr2004.htm). The old dough can be created as such (I sometimes refer to this as a "new old dough") or it can be a portion of a prior day's dough production. Old dough in this latter respect is similar to scrap dough that is leftover at the end of the day that is blended into the next dough batch. But typically the amount of the recycled dough should be no more than about 15% of the new dough (see Tom Lehmann's PMQTT post #2 at http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/resusing-yesterdays-dough.13650/#post-84232 (http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/resusing-yesterdays-dough.13650/#post-84232)). Usually, the purpose of reusing the scrap dough is to save money, not to materially alter the characteristics of the new dough.
Peter
Norma,
No matter how they taste, you always manage to make them look delicious.
Norma: Thanks for the feedback on the experiment. When I do an overnight preferment with just flour, water, IDY, it has a slightly yeasty smell the next morning. Like you I found my experiment to not rival a cold ferment. The pizzas looked good anyway and I bet no one tasted a difference. Walter
The temperature at market today was almost 70 degrees F. At 2:00 PM the first 3 photos show what the sponge looked like. Looks like your calculations were really good Peter. Since I am not really familiar how a sponge should look when it has matured enough I thought it looked like it had fallen some, but was not sure if it had fallen enough. I was ready to mix another batch of dough so I went ahead and mixed it. At about 3:00 PM the next 2 photos show what the sponge looked like. The sponge look like it developed a few more bubbles so I don't know what those bubbles meant. I then incorporated the sponge preferment into the final dough. The dough felt nice after it was mixed.
Norma
norma, i had a chance to get the olive oil in this post for $12 at community market. is this a good price vs what you pay?
Norma,
I know that you weren't crazy about the use of a biga, so the sponge preferment was a step away from a biga but still far away from a poolish, with which you had better results before at market when you used that preferment form with the Lehmann NY style dough formulation. Just about any standard dough formulation can be adapted to a preferment format but there is no guarantee that the results will be acceptable since there are so many different possibilities and variations and potential outcomes. It also doesn't help that you have so many constraints imposed on what you do at market, which can become limiting factors since you are forced to do things that comply with those constraints.
Remember, also, that preferments are largely creatures of bread making, where many of the procedures are different than with pizza making. As with other bread making techniques, it became natural for artisan pizza makers to use them for pizza dough making also, just as you have tried to do.
Peter
I really didn't mind the use of a biga before and don't think I tried enough with a biga as a preferment if I recall right.Norma,
Did I actually use the right amount of yeast in my final dough for the 5 dough ball batch? If I did use the right amount of IDY in the final dough do you think it could be upped so the dough balls would ferment better until the next day, or don't you think that would really matter when using a sponge preferment. I would think more yeast would be needed in the final dough.Norma,
I know I have many constraints imposed upon what I do at market. Is there anything you can think of for me to try next?
Norma,
I apparently read too much into your posts at Reply 6 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=11647.msg107233#msg107233 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=11647.msg107233#msg107233) and reply 4 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=13769.msg138269;topicseen#msg138269 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=13769.msg138269;topicseen#msg138269).
Peter
Norma,
Since all I did was to adapt your existing workable recipe to a sponge preferment format, I believe that you used the correct amount of IDY in the final dough. However, that shouldn't deter you from increasing the amount of IDY in the final mix. You might even consider moving more in the direction of a poolish preferment by using more yeast in either or both the preferment and final mix, along with a higher hydration for the preferment (whatever we would call it) so that there is more activity during the prefermentation period.
As for what to try next, I was actually going to ask you what you were considering next ;D. However, no matter what you do, you will be at the mercy of the conditions that exist at market. In my opinion, the best tasting crusts come from using natural starters or simply long fermentation windows. Natural starters pose the same kinds of problems as using preferments because of their temperature sensitivity, and they can be especially finicky in a variable temperature environment and a one-day-a-week setting. As for the benefits of a long fermentation, they can only be achieved by time. As scott123 aptly put it recently, you can't compress the best attributes and benefits achieved by a long fermentation into a short window.
You seem to have achieved a stable market situation with the Boardwalk and Detroit-style pizzas. Are you not satisfied with those as market offerings?
Peter
Norma,
Your last post was like a trip down memory lane. Terry Deane did indeed make some remarkable pizzas, which he deemed to be NY style even though he unconventionally used a natural starter (and sometimes added ADY or IDY). More than once he commented on the benefits of using a natural starter (like the Camaldoli) to get outstanding crust flavor, along with his insistence of using top notch cheeses, sauce and toppings. His pizzas were quintessential NYC 18" size and he used an above average hydration (around 65%+) and a high oven temperature (around 650 degrees F). I don't know which dough formulation was his last one but the one you cited at Reply 33 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7561.msg65290#msg65290 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7561.msg65290#msg65290) used an amount of poolish that was somewhat on the low side for a poolish-based preferment. As you know, Terry sold his Abbotsford BC location to open Pizzeria Barbarella as a memorial and tribute to his deceased mother: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=13731.msg137746#msg137746 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=13731.msg137746#msg137746). What he made at Pizzeria Barbarella was quite different than what he made at his BC pizzeria, at least in terms of pizza size and the oven used. However, judging from his website at http://www.pizzeriabarbarella.com/ (http://www.pizzeriabarbarella.com/), it looks like Terry has remained true to his concept of using the best and finest ingredients to make his pizzas.
Based on what you said about Terry's efforts to get more crust flavor in a short period of time, one thing you might consider is to give your bulk dough or the dough balls formed from the bulk dough a fair amount of bench time at room temperature before refrigerating. This is something that Tom Lehmann generally frowns upon because of his concern that the dough balls will start to ferment and expand to the point where they acquire insulative properties and qualities and, as a result, are harder to cool down. And if the dough balls are held at room temperature too long and the dough balls do cool down slower than desired, they may have a tendency to "blow" by the time they are ready to be used. However, Tom's concern is usually stated in the context of large numbers of dough balls being made, for example, a hundred or more dough balls that, in the ideal world, are capable of being be formed within a roughly 20-minute time frame. In your case, with far fewer dough balls, you might be able to tolerate say, one or maybe two hours of room temperature fermentation (depending on the actual room temperature), before refrigerating. What I can't say is how much improvement in final crust flavor you will get using this technique. But that technique is one that some pizza operators use, maybe because they perceive that it produces a better pizza or because they were taught to do it that way, even if an expert like Tom generally advises against it for cold fermented dough balls for the reasons mentioned above.
Unfortunately, you are correct about the drawbacks of using preferments in the temperature environment in which you are forced to operate. It would be possible to control the amounts of preferment to use, whatever their form, and also the duration of the prefermentation, in order to simplify matters, but the factor that you can't control is the temperature. In your case, especially because you are not comfortable with all of the math that goes along with modifying preferments and dough formulations, someone would have to come up with a spreadsheet of some equivalent thereof that would handle all of the math involved so that all that you would just have to do is plug in the variables. For example, the variables could include not only the basic total dough formulation (with baker's percents) but also the desired amount of preferment in relation to a specific ingredient (like the weight of flour or water, total dough batch weight, etc.), the prefermentation temperature, and the desired duration of prefermentation. That would give you the amount of yeast needed for the preferment under the conditions specified. Whether such a tool could be created, of created easily, I have no idea. But, as I see it, that would be your only solution.
Peter
If I tried Terry's formulation with a natural starter and either IDY or ADY would you advise to up the natural preferment amount, decrease the salt a little and up the IDY or ADY for a one day cold ferment? I think I would decrease the hydration to about 65%.Norma,
I can try a bulk ferment at room temperature before balling to see if that helps get any better crust flavor too. I have also wondered if I could successfully have consistent dough balls with doing a 4 day cold ferment. That kind of scares me though, in not knowing how many dough balls I would need for a Tuesday, depending on the weather, because the weather can change a lot in that time period. I also wonder if I would be able consistently to make dough that would be good to use from Friday until Tuesday.Norma,
Do you really think a bulk cold ferment would give a better taste in the crust? I have a hard time believing that would give any better flavor in the crust because in my opinion it would be just like cold fermenting for the same amount of days. I also think it would be hard to ball those dough balls, and think the time frame after the balling would need to be long enough for the gluten to relax in those dough balls. I think you have seen where I have had problems with reballs and the dough balls being hard to open. The only way I think there could be better flavor if the mass effect comes into play some way. Maybe I am missing something though.
Norma,
As best I can tell from re-reading Terry Deane's thread at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7561.msg64913#msg64913 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7561.msg64913#msg64913), the dough formulation that Terry used is the one that was mentioned earlier, at Reply 33 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7561.msg65290#msg65290 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7561.msg65290#msg65290). For that formulation, the natural poolish preferment was made with the Camaldoli starter, and the final dough was subjected to about two days of cold fermentation, followed by about two hours tempering at room temperature. The poolish represented about 9% of the total formula flour. That is a bit more than Jeff Varasano used, and Jeff also used commercial yeast and the dough was cold fermented. At one point, Terry talked about eliminating the commercial yeast (IDY) in his dough altogether since he felt that his natural poolish preferment worked well enough on its own as to make the IDY unnecessary. I assume that you would like to retain the use of the IDY. Is that correct?
For your information, a classic poolish uses about 20-80% of the total formula water, by weight, and that amount of water is elaborated using an equal weight of flour. So, a threshold decision that has to be made is how much poolish do you want to use? Unfortunately, there is no easy way to answer that question without conducting actual bake tests, since there are so many possibilities, but maybe your first cut should be to use the same amount of poolish that Terry used if you are trying to mimic his dough but with more yeast to accommodate a two day cold ferment. That would leave only the questions of the total formula hydration, which you indicated you want to lower to 65%, and the amount of salt you would like to use and its type (I would assume Morton's Kosher salt).
To the foregoing, I would add that using more natural poolish preferment would be like adding more yeast to the dough. So, together with the IDY, the dough would ferment faster unless the amount of IDY is reduced from its normal value. Using more natural poolish preferment would also have the effect of making a dough that is more bread-like than pizza-like.
Peter
Norma,
With some experimentation to determine the proper amount of yeast to use, and assuming that your dough cold storage equipment operates at a fairly constant temperature, I offhand don't see any reason why you can't make a dough that can sustain four days of cold fermentation. One risk is that something could happen, such as a power or equipment failure, that renders the dough balls unusable on the Tuesday when you need to have them. To know whether such an event occurs to render your dough unusable, you would perhaps have to check on the dough balls on Monday to see if they are still OK. To be on the safe side, in case something happens that makes your dough balls unusable, you would perhaps want to have a second dough formulation at the ready that you can turn to on Monday to make a one-day cold fermented dough to be used on Tuesday. That same dough formulation might also be used in the event you find that you need more dough balls than what you made on the prior Friday. Those extra dough balls would be made on Monday for the next day (Tuesday). Most likely the greatest risk would be if bad weather forced closure of the market. Maybe then you could freeze the unused dough balls for some future use if you have adequate storage capacity.
If you decide to stick with your regular one-day cold ferment, bulk fermenting the dough at room temperature before balling and refrigerating the dough balls should help produce more desirable byproducts of fermentation, in part because of the larger dough mass and the mass effect (which might require adjustment to the amount of yeast to use). The question then becomes whether the increase in the byproducts of fermentation lead to a noticeably better taste in the finished crust. The only way to know is to try the room temperature bulk ferment.
As for cold fermenting your dough in bulk, the thought occurred to me to suggest that as a possibility but I decided to hold back on that suggestion until Walter has completed his experimentation with that method and we have a better idea as to its value and any problems or other issues that might need or warrant addressing or further experimentation.
Peter
Thanks for telling me with some experimentation to determine the proper amount of yeast to use, and assuming that my dough cold storage pizza prep fridge operates at a fairly constant temperature you don't offhand see any reason why I could not make a dough that can sustain four days of cold fermentation. I know there is the risk that a power failure, or equipment failure, could happen that would render my dough unusable. I already have my regular formulation that I could use on a Monday if something would happen. What amount of IDY do you suggest for a 4 day cold ferment to start with?Norma,
Norma,
I cited the 9% number and its relation to the total formula flour because that is how it was stated by Terry in Reply 25 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7561.msg65261#msg65261 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7561.msg65261#msg65261) (you might also note that the IDY should have been 0.15%, not 1.5%). Had Terry calculated the amount of water in his poolish in relation to the total formula water, the number would have been 16.92/250.03 = 6.76%. Terry just used a different reference, that's all. I stayed with Terry's number so as not to confuse you. Hopefully, the above explanation will deconfuse you.
I also thought to mention Marco's posts on using small amounts of natural preferment (up to 5% of the total formula water), but didn't because his use of the small amount of natural preferment was for a room temperature fermented dough, not a cold fermented dough. Using up to 5% natural preferment alone for a cold fermentation application would not work out well. But you are correct that Marco drew the line between bread dough and pizza dough. That line was at 5% of the total formula water.
Peter
Norma,
Can you link me to the dough formulation that you would like to use to make a dough that can go out to four days of cold fermentation and also the temperature at which you maintain your pizza prep fridge?
Peter
Peter,Norma,
The formulation I would like to try for a four day cold ferment is at Reply 29 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg306235#msg306235 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg306235#msg306235) but that formulation with the amount of IDY I used can't go out to 4 days.
My pizza prep fridge stays at about at 36 degrees F on a regular market day and the temperatures are a little lower when the doors aren't opened and shut. I would say the temperature probably would be at 34 degrees or 35 degrees F on non market days.
Norma,
If your pizza prep fridge regularly operates at around 34-36 degrees F and you have been using 0.50-0.55% IDY this time of year, then the adjusted percent of IDY would be 72 hours/96 hours x 0.50-0.55% IDY, or between 0.375% IDY and 0.4125% IDY, or an average of around 0.394%. Maybe you can try that percent in the expanded dough calculating tool and see how that works out. The above calculation assumes that the next dough batch will be prepared as you usually do.
Peter
I sure don't know why but the formulation I used at Reply 29 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg306235#msg306235 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg306235#msg306235) with 0.25% IDY for a 3 day cold ferment seemed to be enough for the 3 day cold ferment. I don't know if you recall when I posted about what I did with that 3 day cold ferment using that formulation, but to refresh your mind the first part is at Reply 1805 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9068.msg304434#msg304434 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9068.msg304434#msg304434) which shows I had a final dough temperature on my one batch of 72.3 degrees F. At post Reply 1806 and the next post you can see the dough balls cold fermented for 3 days using 0.25% IDY fermented about right when put in the pizza prep fridge. The dough balls in the deli case were fermented too much, although they could be used.Norma,
Don't you think if I tried an average of around 0.394% IDY in the formulation my dough balls might ferment too fast over a four day cold ferment?
Norma
Norma,
In Reply 29 that you cited I apparently misinterpreted the statement "IDY was 0.25% for the 3 day cold ferment but usually is between 0.50% to 0.55% for this time of the year" to mean that while your recipe called for 0.25% IDY you found it necessary to use 0.50-0.55% IDY this time of year.
If you actually used 0.25% IDY and that worked for the three-day cold ferment, then the conversion for four days of cold fermentation, all else being equal, would be 72/96 x 0.25% IDY = 0.1875% IDY. However, this amount of IDY implies that you would try to achieve the same finished dough temperature (72.3 degrees F) for the next dough batch with 0.1875% IDY. If you plan to shoot for a finished dough temperature of around 80 degrees F next time, which would suggest using warmer water to achieve that finished dough temperature, then you would reduce the amount of IDY to compensate for the higher finished dough temperature. Maybe something like 0.17-0.18% IDY will work.
Peter
Norma,
On the matter of the Terry Deane dough formulation using the natural poolish preferment, I forgot to ask you earlier if there is a particular pizza size or dough ball weight that you would like to use, and also if there is a particular number of dough balls or dough batch size you would like to make based on Terry's dough formulation.
For now, I am assuming that you would use a hydration of 65%, the same amount (9%) of natural starter in relation to the total formula flour that Terry used (but using the Ischia starter in your case instead of the Camaldoli starter), Morton's Kosher salt at 2%, and an amount of IDY suitable for a one-day cold fermentation. The thickness factor would be the same as Terry used, and a bowl residue compensation of 2% would be used even though Terry did not use one.
Peter
No, there is no particular pizza size, or dough ball weight I want using Terry Deane's dough formulation. I would only like to try one dough ball first to see how it works out if that isn't too much of a problem. I don't think, if I recall right, that I ever made a NY style pizza without oil so I curious how that would taste baked in my oven.Norma,
Yes, use a hydration of 65%, 9% of natural starter in relation to the total formula flour that Terry used, Morton's Kosher salt at 2%, and an amount of IDY suitable for a one-day cold fermentation. That is fine if the TF is the same as Terry used. I really don't care or not if a bowl residue compensation is used.
Norma
| Total Formula: Flour (100%): Water (65%): Salt (2%): IDY (0.28%): Total (167.28%): Preferment: Flour: Water: Total: Final Dough: Flour: Water: Salt: IDY: Preferment: Total: | 381.32 g | 13.45 oz | 0.84 lbs 247.86 g | 8.74 oz | 0.55 lbs 7.63 g | 0.27 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.59 tsp | 0.53 tbsp 1.07 g | 0.04 oz | 0 lbs | 0.35 tsp | 0.12 tbsp 637.88 g | 22.5 oz | 1.41 lbs | TF = N/A 17.16 g | 0.61 oz | 0.04 lbs 17.16 g | 0.61 oz | 0.04 lbs 34.32 g | 1.21 oz | 0.08 lbs 364.16 g | 12.85 oz | 0.8 lbs 230.7 g | 8.14 oz | 0.51 lbs 7.63 g | 0.27 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.59 tsp | 0.53 tbsp 1.07 g | 0.04 oz | 0 lbs | 0.35 tsp | 0.12 tbsp 34.32 g | 1.21 oz | 0.08 lbs 637.88 g | 22.5 oz | 1.41 lbs | TF = N/A |
Norma,
I decided to stick with what Terry did in terms of the total dough ball weight (22.5 ounces) and pizza size (18"), and I decided not to use a bowl residue compensation since Terry did not use one. So, the final dough may be less than 22.5 ounces, which is what Terry would have experienced also. I have set forth below the specifics of the dough formulation I created so that you can see how I arrived at everything.
Using the preferment dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/preferment_calculator.html (http://www.pizzamaking.com/preferment_calculator.html), I came up wit the following dough formulation based on the inputs you provided:
Total Formula:
Flour (100%):
Water (65%):
Salt (2%):
IDY (0.28%):
Total (167.28%):
Preferment:
Flour:
Water:
Total:
Final Dough:
Flour:
Water:
Salt:
IDY:
Preferment:
Total:
381.32 g | 13.45 oz | 0.84 lbs
247.86 g | 8.74 oz | 0.55 lbs
7.63 g | 0.27 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.59 tsp | 0.53 tbsp
1.07 g | 0.04 oz | 0 lbs | 0.35 tsp | 0.12 tbsp
637.88 g | 22.5 oz | 1.41 lbs | TF = N/A
17.16 g | 0.61 oz | 0.04 lbs
17.16 g | 0.61 oz | 0.04 lbs
34.32 g | 1.21 oz | 0.08 lbs
364.16 g | 12.85 oz | 0.8 lbs
230.7 g | 8.14 oz | 0.51 lbs
7.63 g | 0.27 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.59 tsp | 0.53 tbsp
1.07 g | 0.04 oz | 0 lbs | 0.35 tsp | 0.12 tbsp
34.32 g | 1.21 oz | 0.08 lbs
637.88 g | 22.5 oz | 1.41 lbs | TF = N/A
Details
1. The dough (22.5 ounces) is for a single 18" pizza, with a nominal thickness factor of 22.5/(3.14159 x 9 x 9) = 0.08842.
2. The Preferment is a natural poolish preferment based on using the Ischia starter.
3. The Preferment has a hydration of 100% (50% flour and 50% water, by weight). (The Preferment percentage of water is 50%.)
4. The Preferment has a weight (34.32 grams) equal to 9% of the total formula flour (391.32 grams). (9% of 391.32 = 34.32 grams.)
5. There is no bowl residue compensation (so the actual final dough weight will most likely be less than 22.5 ounces).
6. The flour is the Full Strength flour.
7. The salt is Morton's Kosher salt.
8. The value of the IDY is intended to permit a single day of cold fermentation.
9. The desired finished dough temperature is around 80 degrees F.
Peter
Norma,
I noticed this morning that I forgot to answer a question you posed to me in Reply 116 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg308233;topicseen#msg308233 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg308233;topicseen#msg308233) as to the reason why Terry might have used such a small amount of his Camaldoli starter (9% of the flour weight). I have no idea as to why he did that or who might have influenced that decision. However, Terry did say that his pizzas were in the Dom DeMarco mold but that he used local ingredients and a sourdough crust (Reply 26 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7561.msg65262#msg65262 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7561.msg65262#msg65262)). Later, to pay homage to Dom, Terry went so far as to name one of his pizzas "DiFara" (see Reply 14 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7561.msg65182;topicseen#msg65182 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7561.msg65182;topicseen#msg65182)).
There are a few other tidbits I gleaned from reading Terry's AH-BEETZ thread and another thread started by Terry that you might find of interest. For example, in Reply 25 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7561.msg65261#msg65261 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7561.msg65261#msg65261), Terry noted that a flour with a protein content of 12.5-13% was suitable to make his style of pizza. As it so happens, and as noted at http://www.professionalbakingsolutions.com/product/full-strength-flour-bromated-enriched-malted-50-lb/53391000?mct=Flour&ct=spring-patent&typ=Type (http://www.professionalbakingsolutions.com/product/full-strength-flour-bromated-enriched-malted-50-lb/53391000?mct=Flour&ct=spring-patent&typ=Type), the Full Strength flour that you are using has a protein content of 12.6%. In that same post, Terry also mentioned that he was using Morton's Kosher salt, just as you plan to use. And, in the opening post of another thread that Terry started before the AH-BEETZ thread, at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7178.msg61910;topicseen#msg61910 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7178.msg61910;topicseen#msg61910), Terry mentioned that he tried the Ischia culture and liked it a lot. And, in Reply 4 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7178.msg61932#msg61932 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7178.msg61932#msg61932), Terry discussed his dough making regimen.
Earlier, before revisiting the earlier thread that Terry started, I had made mention in this thread of the similarity of what Terry was doing to what Jeff Varasano was doing. In response to my mention of Jeff to Terry, he addressed this similarity at Reply 7 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7178.msg61937#msg61937 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7178.msg61937#msg61937). You will also see in that thread that I did some conversions of Terry's dough recipe to the format used by the preferment dough calculating tool. I even went so far as to say that sometime I planned to try his recipe but I must have gotten a case of amnesia because I do not recall ever attempting his dough recipe :-D.
Peter
I am curious as when you actually made your last pizza if you are willing to share that information.Norma,
Norma,
The last pizza I ate was a frozen Vito & Nicks II pizza that I found at a Whole Foods. It was only so so. The last pizza I "made" was using a refrigerated dough ball from my local supermarket. I was more interested in the ingredients list and Nutrition Facts than a compelling need to make a pizza out of it. I think it ended up being a pepperoni pizza but it was not so good as to induce me to try to reverse engineer and clone it.
Peter
Terry's dough ball fermented very nicely until this afternoon. The dough ball was left at room temperature for about 2 ½ hrs. to warm up. The dough ball opened very easily. Terry's pizza baked well. I thought there was a nice crispness on the bottom crust and the rim crust was moist even though there was not a lot of oven spring for the hydration that was used. The rim crust had a crisp to it too. I thought Terry's pizza tasted good and had a different taste in the crust than my normal boardwalk style pizzas. Steve thought the pizza was a little too crispy in the rim crust, but thought Terry's pizza tasted good.Norma,
I wonder if the rim crust would be a little less crispy if a little oil was added to Terry's formulation.
Norma
Norma: thanks for the the report. I am very suprised your 1 day dough tasted as good as the 4 day. Maybe the addition of oil/sugar in your dough is the taste difference from our dough that has no oil/sugar? Could the sugar/oil affect how the yeast reacts and the dough develops over days? With our 4 day the taste, browning, texture is night and day difference over a 1-3 day and so much so I get a bit nervous selling a 1 day dough. Also our oven differences may add something or maybe your stand is in one of those alien vortexes I see on the History channel alien shows :-D? Walter
I did not have a lot of time to take photos of the 4 day cold fermented dough pizzas (all the dough balls were used to make pizzas), but Steve and I are stumped that those pizzas did not have a better taste in the crust than my normal one day cold fermented dough balls. We even thought that my one day cold fermented crusts taste better than the 4 day cold fermented crusts. I don't think I will ever be able to figure out why stuff happens. There was no blistering on the 4 day cold fermented rim crusts.
The dough balls did ferment okay in the 4 day cold ferment.
I have no idea why my one day cold fermented dough makes a better tasting pizza in the crust than the four day cold fermented dough did. I told Steve it is hard to know why stuff happens and he also did agree. Steve has been tasting my boardwalk style pizzas for a long while. Steve has also tasted his pizzas from a one day cold ferment to a lot longer cold ferment. Steve's results don't jibe with my results. When I posted about the 3 day cold fermented dough at Reply 1810 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9068.msg305067#msg305067 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9068.msg305067#msg305067) it can be seen I said the crust did taste very similar. There was a lot better blistering going on though. Why there was not better blistering yesterday is still a mystery to me.
I am beginning to think something goes on at market that goes again the whole grain of cold fermenting as what we know from here on the forum and what pizza dough experts say. I told Steve no one would probably believe what I said, but it was true.
I have experimented with many formulations for the boardwalk style dough and have no explanation of why things happen at this point in time.
Norma,
I think your results reflected the lower oven temperature you used as compared with the oven temperature that Terry used. I believe that he was using an oven temperature in excess of 600 degrees F (he was shooting for around 700 degrees at one point when he was investigating ovens), and he said that his bake times were around 4-7 minutes. A high hydration value doesn't automatically translate into a better or more oven spring. You need an oven with enough oomph to go along with the higher hydration value. And if you find that you need a fairly long bake time, the finished crust can be crispier than you would like because of the loss of moisture in the crust due to the longer bake. Even Terry mentioned on occasion that his pizzas had crispy crusts so that may have been an inherent attribute of the pizzas he made using the dough formulation that was posted on the AH-BEETZ thread and his particular bake protocol as well, especially for a crust baked at the high end of his bake time.
In your case, I think I would lower the hydration value to 63% and add about 2% oil to see if that fixes the problem. If you decide you would like to give this another try and need help with modifying the formulation to reflect the above changes, let me know.
Peter
Your idea of lowering the hydration to 63% and adding about 2% oil sounds like a good idea to see if it fixes the crisper rim crust. I would like to give Terry's dough another try with the changes. There was something really good about Terry's pizza.Norma,
Norma
| Total Formula: Flour (100%): Water (63%): Salt (2%): IDY (0.28%): Oil (2%): Total (167.28%): Preferment: Flour: Water: Total: Final Dough: Flour: Water: Salt: IDY: Preferment: Oil: Total: | 381.32 g | 13.45 oz | 0.84 lbs 240.23 g | 8.47 oz | 0.53 lbs 7.63 g | 0.27 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.59 tsp | 0.53 tbsp 1.07 g | 0.04 oz | 0 lbs | 0.35 tsp | 0.12 tbsp 7.63 g | 0.27 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.69 tsp | 0.56 tbsp 637.88 g | 22.5 oz | 1.41 lbs | TF = N/A 17.16 g | 0.61 oz | 0.04 lbs 17.16 g | 0.61 oz | 0.04 lbs 34.32 g | 1.21 oz | 0.08 lbs 364.16 g | 12.85 oz | 0.8 lbs 223.07 g | 7.87 oz | 0.49 lbs 7.63 g | 0.27 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.59 tsp | 0.53 tbsp 1.07 g | 0.04 oz | 0 lbs | 0.35 tsp | 0.12 tbsp 34.32 g | 1.21 oz | 0.08 lbs 7.63 g | 0.27 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.69 tsp | 0.56 tbsp 637.88 g | 22.5 oz | 1.41 lbs | TF = N/A |
Norma,
Since you and Steve did not repeal any laws of science, were I to hazard a guess, I would say that the problem was due to insufficient fermentation. And if I were to look for a culprit, it would be the stable, relatively low temperature of your pizza dough fridge that was uninterrupted over the long weekend by multiple openings and closings. This is something I have experienced even here in Texas when I have made and cold fermented dough balls and left town for several days, only to discover upon my return that the dough had not risen nearly as much as I had expected or would have imagined. I also learned from my Papa John's reverse engineering work that a dough ball that is targeted for a long cold fermentation is not really usable after only two or three days of cold fermentation. It needs longer than that. Also, a low blistering activity is often a sign of underfermentation. I saw this underfermentation phenomenon with all of the experimental De Lorenzo dough balls that I made where I intentionally tried to make dough balls that exhibited almost no bubbling during formation into skins.
If I am correct in the above assessment, the options available to you to address this issue would be one or more of the following: 1) increase the amount of IDY, 2) use a higher finished dough temperature, 3) rest the dough, in bulk or as dough balls, for a period of time at room temperature before refrigerating, and 4) use a longer temper time at room temperature. These situations call for some trial and error to get the desired outcome. Not all darts thrown at a dartboard hit the bulls-eye. Some will, but some will hit the wall next to the bulls-eye or fall to the floor. The answer is to be patient, learn from the results you get, even if they puzzle or frustrate you, and keep trying.
Peter
Norma,
Here you are:
Total Formula:
Flour (100%):
Water (63%):
Salt (2%):
IDY (0.28%):
Oil (2%):
Total (167.28%):
Preferment:
Flour:
Water:
Total:
Final Dough:
Flour:
Water:
Salt:
IDY:
Preferment:
Oil:
Total:
381.32 g | 13.45 oz | 0.84 lbs
240.23 g | 8.47 oz | 0.53 lbs
7.63 g | 0.27 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.59 tsp | 0.53 tbsp
1.07 g | 0.04 oz | 0 lbs | 0.35 tsp | 0.12 tbsp
7.63 g | 0.27 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.69 tsp | 0.56 tbsp
637.88 g | 22.5 oz | 1.41 lbs | TF = N/A
17.16 g | 0.61 oz | 0.04 lbs
17.16 g | 0.61 oz | 0.04 lbs
34.32 g | 1.21 oz | 0.08 lbs
364.16 g | 12.85 oz | 0.8 lbs
223.07 g | 7.87 oz | 0.49 lbs
7.63 g | 0.27 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.59 tsp | 0.53 tbsp
1.07 g | 0.04 oz | 0 lbs | 0.35 tsp | 0.12 tbsp
34.32 g | 1.21 oz | 0.08 lbs
7.63 g | 0.27 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.69 tsp | 0.56 tbsp
637.88 g | 22.5 oz | 1.41 lbs | TF = N/A
Details
1. The dough (22.5 ounces) is for a single 18" pizza, with a nominal thickness factor of 22.5/(3.14159 x 9 x 9) = 0.08842.
2. The Preferment is a natural poolish preferment based on using the Ischia starter.
3. The Preferment has a hydration of 100% (50% flour and 50% water, by weight). (The Preferment percentage of water is 50%.)
4. The Preferment has a weight (34.32 grams) equal to 9% of the total formula flour (391.32 grams). (9% of 391.32 = 34.32 grams.)
5. There is no bowl residue compensation (so the actual final dough weight will most likely be less than 22.5 ounces).
6. The flour is the Full Strength flour from General Mills.
7. The salt is Morton's Kosher salt.
8. The oil can be vegetable (soybean) oil or olive oil.
9. The value of the IDY is intended to permit a single day of cold fermentation.
10. The desired finished dough temperature is around 80 degrees F.
Peter
Norma/Peter: My dough is around the low 60's when I put it in the fridge balled for cold ferments. We make dough Friday afternoon that is not touched till monday morning. The door never opens. I mix around 6-7 minutes and the balls are not risen much at all when pulled out. They flatten out some as well. With a 2-3 hour room rise they open up very easy/ hit the oven and burst open just fine at 560 degrees. I find the cold water with at slightly higher yeast amount than if I was going for the 80'ish finished temp really does something to the process. I also think the lack of sugar and oil play into the equation. This time of year I can use straight tap water but as it warms up I use ice water. I know it goes against the accepted methods of pizza dough but I swear the difference from a 1-2 day cold ferment is quite obvious. Walter
Norma and Walter,
When I was making all of the DeLorenzo clone test dough balls (I made over 26 of them), I often experienced the same phenomenon of the dough balls showing little bubbling activity while in their storage containers but coming alive once tempered at room temperature in preparation for forming skins out of them. Just about all of the test dough balls were made in the months of September and October of last year. September in Texas is still one of the hottest months, and I discovered that the finished dough temperatures as a result were higher than for the dough balls made in October when it was starting to cool off. The range of finished dough temperatures for the September and October test dough balls was between about 70 degrees F and 85.5 degrees F. And if I used a lot of yeast in the dough balls made in September, it was common for the dough balls to double or triple in volume while in the refrigerator in the course of about a day. By contrast, the test dough balls made in October rose much less, and especially if the amount of yeast was on the low side. The range of expansion of the test dough balls in those cases was around 20-67%. When I reviewed my notes for all of the test dough balls, I could see the effect of ambient temperature on finished dough temperatures and also the effect of different quantities of yeast on dough ball expansion and degree of fermentation. Those dough balls with the lowest finished dough temperatures and the least amount of yeast experienced the least dough expansion. That is what I was looking for because the real DeLorenzo skins did not exhibit signs of fermentation activity.
Had I repeated the above experiments in Pennsylvania or Ohio instead of Texas, I am sure my results would be closer to the dough balls I made in the month of October. To more closely correlate my results with those in Pennsylvania and Ohio, I would have to adjust downwardly the finished dough temperatures and amounts of yeast. Remember also that all of my test dough balls were kept in my refrigerator, which tracked outdoor temperatures. The door of the refrigerator was also opened and closed many times during the course of any given day.
Peter
Water,
I find your colder than normal final dough temperatures along with a little higher amount of yeast interesting in a longer cold fermented dough. I wonder how sugar and oil would fit into that equation.
Norma
Norma: If you like I can send you our dough formula. I don't have it at home but will be back at school on Friday. You can try some with oil/sugar and without and see if that makes a difference from the 1 day dough. If it doesn't you got alien powers down at that there market or you have some sort of formula that I need to have :-D Walter
Norma: I look forward to your results. I see the finished dough temp was about the same as the last batch and that bench rise probably will not be that big an influence but it is another changed variable. If it does come out close to the last experiment try my recipe - drop the oil and sugar and start with ice water. If that comes out not as good as your 1 day dough I am going to fly you out here to make your 1 day dough and put it side by side with my 4 day :-D. Actually this week I have been off for spring break and avoiding work as much as possible. I did get a prep table delivered this week. It is used and I am a clean freak so I spent a few hours cleaning it and our convection ovens(with oven cleaner and a real messy job and no fun to do with school in session). When I got done I forgot to get the recipe for you. I am still a bit stiff from being on my knees, upside down, and having to rearrange the room to accomodate the prep table. I will get it to you Monday. Sorry. Walter
Norma: It was great to see/hear you and see your space. It looks great with all that stuff on the walls and around. Classic IMO! I give up on your 4 day dough. Mine will always brown better with a 4 vs a 1-2 day. The flavor is blatantly obvious too between the 2. It must be aliens! Here are some shot from today of our 4 day that went to day 5 today. It was still in great shape and could have went to day 6 but we used it all up. Paige and myself can tell right off by looking at the dough and in a blind taste test which dough is 1-2 and which is 4-5. Walter
Norma,
Can you refresh my memory on the dough formulation you used, and also the flour that you used? And can you tell me the bake temperature and time?
Peter
Boy Norma between your set up/routine and mine we could make a movie that would rival the Marx Bros :-D. It is a challenge to work in a small space and maximize it. Our space is about 600 sqft but with up to 15 kids in there and all the equipment, tables, it gets to be an exercise in space management. Thanks on my pies. I wish I could send one out for you to compare taste wise. I figure you want to switch your stones because of the run off from reheating slices direct on the stone? We sell probably 10 pies a day or more by the slice. I am a bit of a nut about my ovens and hate getting the stones all funked up. I have a pile of 16" pizza pans that we use for reheats and that keeps the stones clean. I hope your remodeling goes as smooth as possible. Walter
Hiya Norma,
Somewhere I remember reading to spray/brush the edge of the pizza after loading with toppings just before it goes into the oven - I've been using that method for a great cornicione that puffs up really well, browns really well too..
The last pizza I made probably got a bit overdone (tasted good nevertheless)... and I used this same technique with the 5 day dough... pic in the link...
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=11994.msg310190#msg310190 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=11994.msg310190#msg310190)
Cheers!
Peter,Norma,
The formulation I used for the 4-day cold ferment was posted at Reply 128 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg308378#msg308378 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg308378#msg308378) I think that was for 6 dough balls if I recall right. I only used a formulation for 5 dough balls last Friday but did not post that print out sheet here on the forum. I used GM Full Strength flour as I also did before. GM Full Strength bleached and bromated flour is all I have been using since I changed from the All Trumps flour.
I really don't know what the temperatures read across my bottom stone. I think they range between about 525-549 degrees F. The boardwalk style pizzas usually take about 4 ½ minutes to 5 minutes to bake. For some reason this past Tuesday the pies were baking faster. Steve and I couldn't figure why that was because there were more pizzas being baked than normal. I have not changed the temperature control on my oven for a long time.
If you want me to take my IR gun over to market this coming Tuesday to see really what the ranges of temperatures are I can take the IR gun along.
Norma
The attempt on a Terry's sourdough pizza using Peter's modification of using oil went well in some ways. The first photo is how much the dough ball fermented until 8:07 AM Tuesday. The dough ball was taken out of the pizza prep fridge and I had planned on making the pizza after the dough ball doubled in size but that was not meant to happen since I was too busy then. The dough ball sat out at room at the room temperature of about 75 degrees F for about 5 hrs. It can be seen how much it fermented until then.Norma,
The dough ball was very easy to open and opened almost too easily. The pizza baked okay. Steve and I thought the taste of the rim crust was very good. It sure was a lot different than my normal crusts are. The rim crust did have a distinct sourdough taste and am not sure why that really happened since IDY was also used in addition to the Ishcia starter. The rim crust was a little crisp and the bottom crust was crisp (but not as crispy as last week). The inside of the rim crust was moist. The thing that wonders me why that the slices we ate tasted like they were made with a higher protein flour than GM Full Strength.
Norma,
I think that there are other factors at play as to why you did not get more crust flavor and color. In other words, I don't think it is the dough formulation or the fermentation protocol that is at fault. There are some possible changes that you might make to the dough formulation (more on this below) but it might be that the problem has to do with the bake temperature and time that you are using. In this vein, I take note of the fact that Walter bakes his NY style pizzas at around 560-570 degrees F, and while he says he does not time the pizzas, he estimates that it takes about 6 minutes to bake his pizzas in his Blodgett 1000 deck ovens. And this is with a long cold fermented dough using Full Strength flour, a hydration of about 63% (give or take a few percent), a low finished dough temperature, a small amount of IDY, and no sugar or oil. Yet he gets noticeably improved crust flavor and color.
I mention the oven in your case because both crust flavor and color are both enhanced not only by the many byproducts of fermentation but also by using a proper bake temperature and time. These enhancements come from the denaturing of protein, the Maillard reactions and caramelization of sugars (added and natural). But these enhancements take time to develop in the oven. A common solution to deficiencies in crust flavor and color is to use a lower bake temperature and a longer bake time. But if this is not a viable solution, for whatever the reason, then you are left with having to try to modify the bake process, as by using pizza screens at some point during the bake to control crust color development, or to modify the dough formulation itself to compensate.
One modification to the dough formulation, without the need to use pizza screens, would be to lower the hydration value. The Full Strength flour has a protein value of 12.6%, so a hydration value of around 62% might be a value to consider since that is likely to be the rated absorption value for that flour anyway. Also, with a lower hydration value, more of the energy of the oven is devoted to browning the crust rather than trying to drive moisture out of the dough. Another modification of the dough formulation might be to add more sugar. You might try using 2% sugar but you may have to resort to using pizza screens if you find that the bottom crust is browning too quickly.
Maybe the next step is to measure your oven temperature and bake times when you are next at market, as you suggested, to see if those numbers tell us anything of value. You might also run a test dough batch with a hydration of around 62% and sugar at 2% to see if that helps avoid messing around with the oven temperature and bake times. Those changes in the dough formulation might not be enough but maybe the results will suggest the direction in which you should proceed.
Peter
Norma,
To my eye, the attempt at Terry's NY style pizza looks quite good. However, from the tenor of your post ("went well in some ways", "The pizza baked okay", "a lot different than my normal crusts are"), there was clearly something that was lacking from your perspective. Can you put your finger on what it was that did not meet with your approval?
I am surprised by the noticeable sourdough flavor, especially given the large amount of IDY that you used. Was the flavor dominated by the acetic acid component or the milder lactic acid component that most of our members favor when using the Ischia and other starters for their pizza doughs?
As for your comment about how the slices you ate " tasted like they were made with a higher protein flour than GM Full Strength", I believe that the explanation has to do with the way that the acids produced during fermentation, and especially with the use of the Ischia starter, strengthen the dough by their action on the protein and gluten. Didier Rosada discusses this phenomenon under "Advantages" in his article at http://web.archive.org/web/20050829015510/www.cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food4_dec2004.htm (http://web.archive.org/web/20050829015510/www.cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food4_dec2004.htm).
Peter
I realized this morning we had a dough box in the fridge left over from last week. It was our 4 day dough that went to 7 days. Man did it come out sweet. I forgot my camera but Paige has some new fangeled device she bought this weekend and took pictures. She is bringing in the cord to download it tomorrow. I consistantly find letting our 4 day go past the 4 makes a great pie. Today was the limit. It was starting to blow out and had to be handled gently. I am convinced the cold water we use to mix with affects how the sugars/flavor are developed in the dough as well. Walter
Norma: The ball looks good in color to me. Color tells me just about everything with a multi day ferment. You may get a suprise when you bake it. The lack of sugar and oil definetely affects the fermentation process in some way. Also the cold water, cold finished dough temp does something too. I am not a scientist. I have come to use cold water because I like the color, texture, taste, of the crusts more than with a warmer finished dough temp. I look forward to seeing the finished pies. Walter
Walter,
Glad to hear that you think the dough ball is fermenting well and the color looks good. I hope I get a surprise, but I also have a much different oven than you do. That is very interesting that you think a colder final dough temperature gives better color, texture and taste than one with a warmer finished dough temperature.
Norma
I wonder if anyone can explain why cold water affects how the sugar/flavor develop in the dough.Norma and Walter,
I don't have any scientific data to back up my theory but the cold water, higher yeast amount, no oil, no sugar, create a different dough ball than a warmer, lower yeast amount, sugared, oiled, dough ball. I wish I could ship you one of my ovens to use for a week. Walter
Norma and Walter,
This is a matter that I tried to explore and to understand in the thread at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.0 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.0). However, to my chagrin, I eventually came to accept that I could not explain why certain doughs could last so much longer under cold fermentation than others.
I think it is safe to say that using very cold water is a contributing factor to dough longevity but that is not the only factor in my opinion. For example, you might think that using a small amount of yeast will lead to a longer life. I believe that that is true to a certain extent but I tested that thesis using 0.25% IDY in one case and 0.60% IDY in another. In both cases, the preparation methods and dough formulations were the same, with similar thickness factors, but the amounts of dough were different (to make different size pizzas) and, as noted above, the amounts of IDY were different. The finished dough temperatures were very similar, both doughs were stored in lidded metal tins during fermentation (to keep them cooler), and neither dough formulation included any added sugar. The hydration in both cases was 65%, which was a value that was possible because I had sifted the flour and I used all three attachments of my mixer to make the dough, including the whisk attachment, the flat beater and the C dough hook.
The dough with the 0.25% IDY lasted 10 days and 4.5 hours, at which time I decided to make a pizza out of the dough. The dough with the 0.60% IDY lasted 12 days and 4.5 hours, when I used the dough to make a pizza. What I haven't mentioned thus far is that I added the IDY late in the dough making process. I believe that that was a major contributing factor to dough longevity, by slowing down the fermentation process more than might be achieved by using cold water alone. You can read about the two experiments discussed above at Reply 23 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg35370#msg35370 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg35370#msg35370) and Reply 29 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg36081#msg36081 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg36081#msg36081). There are a couple of things that you will take away from those posts--the existence of good crust coloration and sweetness in the finished crusts even in the absence of any sugar added to the dough. Clearly, there was enough natural sugars extracted from the flour to feed (maybe starve is a better term) the yeast for up to twelve plus days yet provide good crust coloration and detectable sweetness. As noted in Reply 29, the degree of sweetness was not as much as the crust shown in Reply 23 but the flavor was still there, and pleasant at that. I think it was the higher amount of IDY for the dough discussed in Reply 29, along with a longer fermentation, that consumed more of the natural sugars than the dough discussed in Reply 23.
I once asked member November for his explanation of the above phenomena, at Reply 13 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg33945#msg33945 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg33945#msg33945). You can read his response in the following post at Reply 14 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg33947#msg33947 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg33947#msg33947). Now you can see why I did not come away from my experiments with a sense that I understood what was happening.
Peter
Norma: As my mother says- the proofs in the pudding. Tomorrow shall tell. Walter
I guess there are some things about dough I will never understand.Norma,
Norma,
As we have discussed many times before, what complicates matters in your case is that you work in an open, quasi-outdoor setting where the temperatures can vary all over the place. Also, you are constantly experimenting with new dough formulations--including formulations for many different styles--and you frequently experiment with new flours, tomatoes, cheeses, toppings, and different preparation methods. All these variables makes it difficult to know or learn what to expect in any given case. On the other hand, Walter operates in a much more stable environment, and he has limited his repertoire to a small number of pizza styles that he has mastered and has come to understand very well. He is more like a typical pizza operator who makes one or two different types of pizzas. There are some pizza operators like Tony Gemignani who have learned how to make different types of pizzas but you have perhaps made more different types of pizzas than he has in his entire life for his entire pizza empire. And you do it in a one-day-a-week operation.
Peter
I guess in the end I am way all over the place too much in what I try.
But you're enjoying the ride I hope! I know I enjoy following your experiments. :chef:
Norma/Peter: Back to the dough mysteries. Another variable is this internet. We are not in the same space physically. I find the internet intersting on some levels but for actual doing nothing will replace everyone in the same room. I feel lucky to have found a dough and style that has yet to bore me. I use the same dough for whatever pizza I make and there are only 3. The NY style I do 99.99999% and the occasional star like clone and a cast iron skillet pie are it. The main thing is to follow what inspires one self :) WalterWalter,
Peter: Your dough calculator is something that should put you in the pizza hall of fame. I use it all the time. Up till then it was like you said - a lot of pencil and paper math which I never enjoyed but something you had to do. Thanks for creating the calculator. I asked this before but maybe you missed it. Do you sell the dough calculator? My fear, now that I have grown so dependent on it, is this. I have seen forums fold with no notice and all the connections one had via it disapear instantly and usually forever. I would like to purchase your calculator so I will have it for the rest of my days. Thanks. WalterWalter,
Norma: I know you were shorthanded today and I felt for you. It must be an epidemic because Paige was a no show and I had to bust my hump overtime. We made 1,000 cookies, a few hundred bagels, dog biscuits, and about 20 pizzas. Paige is the only student I have that can answer the phone, do pizzas, the higher end work on the bagels, and count money accurately. I pulled it off but if she doesn't return next year I will be having to seriously cut back. Today I worked like I did when I was 20. The only problem was I am almost 60. I hope your day went ok. Here are some 3 day old dough from today. Walter
Norma: All the pies looked good! Your oven runs hotter than mine and I am suprised you get such light browning on the bottoms at that temp. At that high a temp my bottoms would look like your last picture bottom. So did any of the experiments equal or exceed your 1 day dough flavor? I was suprised to see such light color on the rim with my recipe. It could be the camera too. That is another variable with internet correspondences. I know my pies look a lot lighter in the pictures than in the flesh. I am glad you survived the day. I learned a lot yesterday and am in the process of drawing up a proposition to my superiors that will hopefully be a win-win for me, them, and the kids. Walter
Norma,
Do you normally use the same oven temperature when you make your boardwalk and Detroit style pizzas at market, and, if so, did you use your usual oven temperature for the three different pizzas you made yesterday as part of your experiments?
And do you remember offhand what the finished dough temperature was for your version of Walter's dough?
In retrospect, for the dough formulation I suggested, I think that the 2% sugar was too high for the oven temperatures you reported. The conventional advice, such as routinely dispensed by Tom Lehmann and others, is to use little or no sugar for pizzas to be baked in deck ovens. Without knowing what you would report in the way of temperatures of your oven, I had hoped that the sugar would provide just the right amount of bottom crust browning and also avoid the need to use pizza screens to control bottom crust coloration. I suspected that 2% sugar might have been on the high side, and that seems supported by the results you achieved yesterday. By contrast, neither of the two other pizza doughs (the preferment Lehmann and your version of Walter's dough) had any added sugar.
Peter
Norma: Thanks for the detailed response and for being so kind in your comparisons. I am from Jersey so you don't have to be so nice. Just say "Walter my pie dusted yours" :-D Ypu have your following Norma and they dig your pies. That is as good as it gets. That is cool you tasted a bit of nutty flavor to the dough. That is the taste I love and our dough has a strong flavor in that sense. Yesterday and earlier today we got real busy and used up all our bench risen dough. I had to use straight from the fridge dough balls. They cooked great. The crust doesn't burst as much and it is more dense but nobody notices but me. That is another thing I like about my dough formula. It can come right out of the fridge, opens easy, tosses fine. Great for when in a pinch. See you. Walter
I have not changed my oven temperatures at market for a long while, so yes, I do normally use those temperatures for the boardwalk and Detroit style of pizzas. My oven temperatures can change though depending on how many slices are being reheated and also how many times I have to rotate the pizzas. Yes, I did use about those same temperatures to bake all of the three different experimental pizzas. The Detroit style pizzas are baked on top deck where the temperatures are lower, but some have been baked on the bottom deck. I do start some of the boardwalk style pizzas on the top deck and then move them to the bottom deck to finish baking when I am busy.Norma,
The final dough temperature of Walter's dough was 74.8 degrees F, and your experimental dough had a final dough temperature of 75.2 degrees F.
I can understand you had no idea of what deck temperatures I am using when you suggested I add 2% sugar to the formulation. I do not seem to have any problems using 0.85% sugar in the formulations I have been using for the boardwalk style of pizzas in getting the bottom crust too dark. I know neither of the other two dough balls had sugar added.
Norma
Norma: You are to kind. Jersey talk only works in NYC and NJ I learned once I left home with music and got a rude awakening to how polite the rest of the country is. I think you said your market temp was the upper 70's? With temps like that I would take my dough out 45-1 hour before using. We run pretty steady here in the winter/early spring at 68-70. Today it got into the mid 70's in our room and I took them out about an hour before using. No bubbles, opened easy, tossed fine. That is great you are having real pizza lovers come in and compliment your pies. That is as good as it gets. Today a guy came to order a pie and had never seen one tossed live. He video taped Paige tossing. Stuff like that touches my heart. As little kids we would sit at the feet of the old men as they made pies in their white outfits and aprons. It was as good as watching a pro baseball game! When I started fooling with cold water bread ferments years ago the first thing that hit me was the nutty flavor. Walter
Norma,
I'm beginning to think that your oven and the high temperatures you have been using may be behind some of the unfavorable results you have been getting. But this may all be moot if you are not in a position to lower the bake temperature and increase the bake time because you need and rely on your regular bake protocol to make the pizzas that you are selling. That leaves you in the position of having to adapt the test dough formulations to the oven rather than the oven to the formulations. For example, in lieu of 2% sugar, you could use around 0.85% sugar since that already seems to work well with your oven protocol. Whether that is good enough may be something you would have to test. Each dough formulation adapts to the oven in a different way. In your case, you might select one dough formulation to test over time and play around with different versions of that formulation to see if you can find a version that works best for your particular oven protocol.
Peter
Interesting to hear you think that my oven and the high temperatures may be behind some of the unfavorable results I have been getting. I am in a position to lower the bake temperatures if you think that might help.Norma,
It still makes me wonder how I did get blistering on those rim crusts at Reply 1810 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9068.msg305067#msg305067 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9068.msg305067#msg305067) with a longer cold ferment than a day. The oven temperatures were the same then as now.
What do you suggest to try next?
Norma
Norma,
As best I can tell from what you reported in Reply 1810 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9068.msg305067#msg305067 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9068.msg305067#msg305067), it appears that the temperature of the deli case was higher than that of the pizza dough fridge. That could have caused the dough to overferment. In such a case, it would not have been uncommon or unexpected to have the small bubbles in the dough that formed the small blisters in the finished baked crust.
As for what to try next, I think it might be useful to make a few pizzas with a longer bake at a lower oven temperature to see if that leads to better crust development and flavors. I don't think it really matters what dough you use at this point but you might try either Walter's dough formulation or the one I suggested but either omitting the sugar altogether, to parallel Walter's dough for comparison purposes, or reduce the sugar from 2% to something like 0.75-0.85%. You might even use the lower bake temperature and longer bake time with your regular boardwalk dough.
Peter
Norma: If you didn't care for that hint of nutty flavor I would scrap my recipe. If you are going to do it again put ice in your coldest tap water and stir it good and strain the ice cubes out. Use that temp water with no oil/sugar and see what happens. That is how I do it. Walter
I wanted to ask you another question. What temperature do you think I should be aiming for in the bottom deck to get even bottom crust browning and decent rim browning?Norma,
Norma
Norma,
You understand your oven and its idiosyncrasies better than I, but I was thinking the usual range that Tom Lehmann often speaks of for a deck oven, which is about 500-525 degrees F (see, for example, his PMQ Think Tank post at http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/cooking-temp-with-deck-oven.6699/#post-43698 (http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/cooking-temp-with-deck-oven.6699/#post-43698)). I have seen Tom go as low as 450 degrees F but that would seem too low to me, and that is why Tom usually advises pizza operators to test different bake temperatures to find the optimum for their given applications, as he once advised you at http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/oven-temperature.8089/#post-55794 (http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/oven-temperature.8089/#post-55794).
You might also find Reply 7 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=1355.msg12252;topicseen#msg12252 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=1355.msg12252;topicseen#msg12252) of interest because it quotes Tom on the benefits of a longer bake at a lower oven temperature.
Peter
If a slower bake is so much better for flavor and crispness why are most members here on the forum trying for fast bakes for NY style pizzas in your opinion?Norma,
Norma
Peter,
Thank you very much for those links. I forgot about what Tom Lehmann told me on PMQ Think Tank. Those posts were not too long after I started making pizzas at market. In my opinion your mind is like a computer that recalls everything. ;D I used to have some of those grill (hockey puck) thermometers but they kept breaking fast in my deck oven. I might have to purchase one again to help me see what the actual temperatures are across the deck in addition to my IR gun.
I did find the reply at #7 interesting. I did not know a slower bake would give a better flavor to the crust and better crispness over a fast bake.
I will try to achieve a temperatures of around 525 degrees F on Tuesday. I might even play with my deck oven tomorrow while I am at market. That way when I get to market Tuesday I won't have to be guessing until I get to around 525 degrees F. Right now my dial is set at around 545 degrees F, but it could be seen my temperatures did not stay there.
If a slower bake is so much better for flavor and crispness why are most members here on the forum trying for fast bakes for NY style pizzas in your opinion?
Norma
Norma,
Scott (scott123) is a better one than I to answer that question but I believe that he answered it quite well in his post at Reply 15 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=22794.msg233691;topicseen#msg233691 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=22794.msg233691;topicseen#msg233691). Also, you might recall that he concluded that you would have to modify your oven in order to optimize the pizzas out of it. See, for example the last four paragraphs of Scott's post at Reply 26 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=20126.msg197785;topicseen#msg197785 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=20126.msg197785;topicseen#msg197785).
Peter
Norma: Each oven will have its own personality. Your go to pizzas come out great. It seems when you start experimenting the results start to vary. Personally I know my oven for my pizza like you know yours for your go to pizza. You like your 1 day dough, your customers do and many of them are knowledgable of NY style pies. So I ask why mess with it when it ain't busted? From my experience on the old deck ovens like I have and the BP, Barri, ovens, they were always run between 500-575 but most ran between 500-550. Anything higher than that results in burnt bottoms and that was never the norm when I was growing up. From what I can tell there were a few places that burnt the bottoms/edges and now that the wood fire craze has become the rave more deck people are burning their pies than back when I grew up in NJ/NYC in the late 50's-70's. Walter
Norma: I say keep on doing what you are doing because it turns you on. I had some funky old solid state public adress system junk someone gave me awhile back. I met a minister from Africa and he told me about how poor the people were there and how they take what we call junk and make it work. I gave him the gear and you would think I gave him a million dollar system. I am not saying your oven is junk but what I am saying is it is amazing what people can do with less than stellar equipment when they are inspired and you sure are inspired. Walter
Norma: You have to pay for a new floor? I figured the market would pay for that. Your boardwalk pies look great to me. My dough balls are 20-20.3 oz for an 18" pizza. Walter
Walter,
I have to pay for all the 2x4's, the better kind of plywood, the linoleum and pay for someone to install the linoleum. Market is supposed to be paying the maintenance men to pull everything out of my stand, for them to build the floor and for the maintenance men to move everything back in the stand again, so market is paying for a part of the work that needs to be done.
Thanks again for saying the boardwalk style of pizzas look great to you. I would like a smaller rim crust and no matter how hard I try I usually can't obtain a smaller rim crust with the current formulations I am trying. It might be hard to see on the photos, but the preferment Lehmann dough pizza, your dough pizza and the one Peter recommended all did have a bit smaller rim crust when looking at them in person. I am not sure why that was.
Do you know what TF you are using if your dough balls are 20-20.3 oz. for an 18” pizza?
Norma
Do you know what TF you are using if your dough balls are 20-20.3 oz. for an 18” pizza?Norma,
Norma
Norma: That is good they are doing the heavy work and you don't have to pay for it. I have not run a commercial business in the private sector just in the schools. I have a lot to learn about renting and running my own shop in regards to repairs/upgrades and such. On the rim crust it looks like you extend the sauce and topping out to the edges the right amount. Do you work some of the air out of the edge of the dough before final shaping? I poke it with my fingers all the way to the edge if the dough if airy and flatten any big bubbles. If it is still pretty dense I don't mess with the dough much and mainly just shape /toss. This is all dependent on the fermentation state of the dough. Do you build a rim on the edge? I do somewhat but not near as much as what I have seen on videos posted here. I don't use the thickness factor in the calculator just dough weight. I like a thin crust with a puffy edge. Walter
Norma,
The thickness factor is 20/(3.14159 x 9 x 9) = 0.078595 to 20.3/(3.14159 x 9 x 9) = 0.079774. Using 0.08 should be good enough.
Peter
Norma: I know marble is the rage but I prefer our stainless steel work tables to any other surface. They are bulletproof, clean up great, require no treatments, have no cracks/crevaces, and with a dusting of flour make opening dough balls easy. I may not be hip with them but they sure are user friendly :) Walter
Norma: Cool you have stainless underneath. You may rediscover you like it. Oven temps with the IR gun and those range thermometers are often not all that accurate I was told by the guy who repaired one of our southbend convection ovens a few weeks ago. He has been repairing commercial kitchen equipment forever and has this little probe gizmo that he hangs in the oven and told me that was the most accurate way to do it. For me with only doing 1 basic pizza I know the oven dial pretty well so speak. I am not really concerned with what the IR gun says but how the pizzas cook. We run our lower deck at 450 for our artisan breads, strombolis, pepperoni rolls, bagels and that temp came about from playing with the dial as well. I guess what I am trying to say is you know your oven better than you think. Follow your gut with the dial setting and note the results. Also I wonder do you run pie after pie or give the deck time to recover heat? That is one thing with my ovens that I love. They really need little to no recovery time. If one is fully loaded when I pull one out, grate some cheese on it, slice it, that deck space is ready for another pie. Walter
Norma: You sure have come a long way but you pizzas still looked good back then. It was nice to see you shop layout and you are not lying when you say it is small. I didn't see a vent over your oven. It must get hot in there! Your oven has 1 burner underneath the bottom deck and that heats both stones? If that is right do you find the stones cook different because one has direct heat? I have seen large ovens with that set up but never made pizzas in them. You are making different thickness/ingredient crusts so do you run one style through and then adjust the heat for the next? Walter
Norma: You have your oven figured out. I looked at your manual. Do you know how many BTU's it is? How thick are your stones? I feel for you with the heat. Until they built our new high school we were in a room with one small window and no air conditioning. We had 4 home ovens in it (was an old home ec. room) and it got over 100 for about 3 months of the year. Now with powerful central a/c I feel like a spoiled child because this is the first commercial setting I have worked in with noticable a/c in the kitchen.
I recently bought a prep table and have learned the fridge unit underneath does not keep dough as cold as our True upright fridge. The 4 day dough recipe lasts about 3 in the prep table but will easily go to 5-6 days in the True. Fridge temps may be part of the cause to your confusing results with these experiments? A big factor with internet experiments is all our variables can be slightly to radically different and will effect the final dough.
Your final dough temp is perfect. I look forward to seeing what happens. Walter
I really don't have my deck oven figured out, if I am now lowering the temperatures, so I can understand if the pizzas would bake better for a one day cold ferment, or a four day cold ferment. I posted before I have tried many oven temperatures before and never truly found out what were the best oven temperatures to use.
This is the document for my GP-61 Baker's Pride deck oven that says the BTU's are 45,000. The Codierite ceramic hearth bake decks are 1” thick. The man I purchased my oven from said the deck oven came from an Olive Garden Restaurant but I am not sure if that is true. http://www.bakerspride.com/specs/Hearthbake/Hearthbake_GP.pdf (http://www.bakerspride.com/specs/Hearthbake/Hearthbake_GP.pdf)
I do mind the heat some when the days are long, but I did work at our caramel popcorn, cotton candy, etc. in the heat for many years. We also had food approved shed at home to pop our corn (before the caramelizing) and did make other food products in that shed with no air-conditioning. We also had a concession trailer we took to fairs and festivals in the summertime and set-up on the ground sometimes. Those burners from the caramel corn kettle and the regular popcorn machines also made a lot of heat, and so did the cotton candy machines. In the end I was some what conditioned to work in the heat, but since I am also getting older, I don't know how many summers I will be able to tolerate the heat all day long.
I hear you when you know say you feel spoiled since you have a powerful air-conditioning now. Your situation in the old home ec. room is something like I am experiencing.
Interesting that your prep table does not keep the dough as cold as your True upright fridge. Thanks for mentioning that my pizza prep fridge might be the cause of some of my confusing results with these experiments. I know my pizza prep fridge and also the deli case run differently in colder weather than in warmer weather. That is one reason why I purchased two thermometers for the bottom of my prep fridge to see just how cold it really is. Neither are really good thermometers though. If I fiddle around with the temperature dial on the prep fridge I can really mess those temperatures up too because that dial is also touchy and is hard to reach in the bottom back of the prep table.
Norma
Norma: After reading this you just may have your ovens figured out :) With 45k btu's and 1" stones I don't think we can compare temps/bake times with any authority. My ovens are 120k btu's for each oven and the stone is made of different material and is 1.5" thick, and each deck can cook 4-18" pies at a time. Also with more square footage of deck stone and our oven ceilings much different there are tons of variables....... IMO your boardwalk pies look great and you have captured the essence of them without the ovens they use. Your oven temp does them justice but I understand trying to lower the temps. Most NY/NJ pizzerias bake at 500-550 with the big BP and Blodgett ovens. I hear you on the heat factor too! I am going up to Reno NV this summer with my friend who wants to finance a pizzeria for me. I found a commerical realtor and we will see whats up there and check out housing. Any space I look at will have to have good a/c and an open floor plan so the pizza maker and customer can easily chat as the pies are made. Walter
Norma,
Based on the tape measurements you showed in Replies 251 and 254, I estimate that Walter's dough ball initially increased in volume by about 20% (Reply 251) and then increased in volume by about 31% (Reply 254). By contrast, I estimate that the other dough ball initially increased in volume by about 42% (Reply 251) and then increased in volume by 68% (Reply 254).
Peter
f the dough ball, that is not Walter's, increases as much by tomorrow I guess I am adding too much IDY for a 4 day cold ferment. Maybe I should not let the other dough ball warm-up as long tomorrow. It is supposed to be around 60 degrees F in our area tomorrow, then quickly drop in temperatures when a cold front comes through. Maybe even snow tomorrow evening.Norma,
Norma: My dough ball is looking, smelling, right on schedule from what I can tell. I never have done the containers only dough boxes. the dough balls look different when not contained. It is the ice water that does it for the flavor due to the way it works with the sugars. Tomorrow will tell. Like I have said earlier when I started fooling with ice water and overnight to 2 day fridge ferments with bread I found that nutty flavor and got hooked. You said nutty in one of our correspondences. I didn't know quite what word to use but you nailed it. Now I am deep into same day french bread and multi day sourdoughes. The ice water breads have faded but transfered to my pizza doughes :) I look forward to your report.
We had the big television station from columbus in today for 3 hours filming for an upcoming story. The woman doing the story was reluctant to eat but a sliver of pizza. These people are always eating rich foods served by chefs/restaurants and like politicians usually have a few tiny bites and thats it. I convinced her to have a whole slice. She ended up eating 3 and said the dough had a flavor/texture like she never tasted and she is from Chicago(said no such pizza is in Chicago) and called herself a pizza snob which made me feel good. She was a very kind person and we had a great day with her making pizzas, bagels, with the kids. We used a 4 day dough. Hopefully you will find the same results tomorrow. Walter
Norma,
To a great extent this depends on what you are using as a benchmark and what you are trying to achieve. If you are using Walter's dough as the benchmark and you are looking for the same degree of volume expansion as Walter achieves, then it might be necessary to adjust the amount of yeast for a four-day cold fermentation. But remember that there are no hard and fast rules for the degree of volume expansion. The dough might increase by fifty percent, or two hundred percent (a doubling) or by three hundred percent (a tripling) and still be usable. Tempering of the dough allows you a measure of control over the final degree of volume expansion.
Peter
Norma: I am glad to hear the lower temp helped! I am glad my dough worked ok for you too minus the spring. Did you flatten the dough all the way to the edge? If so maybe next week leave the edges alone. I often only stretch the dough because it is so easy to open. Tossing IMO is not necessary for a good pie. The pies look great too! You are about the same bake times I am at I think. I will have to time one today if I remember. I just take em out when they are done :) What was your oven temp? Walter
Walter,
I did not need to flatten or press bubbles out of your skin at all. There were not many fermentation bubbles in the skin. Your dough ball and the other dough ball opened so fast, that there was nothing else I had to do. I really liked the smaller rim your dough ball produced.
I must have missed the photo last evening, but I did take one after your dough ball was tempered. As can be seen a bubble formed on your dough ball in the short temper time, even though the dough ball had only doubled in the 4-day cold fermentation, plus the temper time.
I would be interested in hearing your bake times again if you remember to take some. I am not sure what the oven temperature was when I made your pie. My bottom deck ranges in different temperatures depending on where it is measured with the IR gun.
During your watching bake times and oven temperatures in NYC, for a NY pizza, what do you believe was the norm years ago in bake times and oven temperatures?
Norma
Norma: Glad you liked the rim. I prefer a small/medium rim to a big one personally. I will time the pies today. Ovens ran at 500-550 back then and still do today if they use the old ovens. They are the same ovens I use and if you push them past that the bottoms burn. mid 500 range pushes them to the limit. Walter
Walter,
I have to think over if I want to try to get a lower final dough temperature for your formulation, or use less IDY. Thanks for telling me what the deck ovens ran at back then and also today. I know when I pushed my deck oven up too high in temperatures my bottom crusts burnt too. On some temperature readings yesterday some were still at about 550 degrees F, while some other ones were a little below 500 degrees F.
At least my Detroit style pizzas did not mind the lower bake temperatures.
Norma
Norma,
I agree that your latest pizzas turned out well with the new bake protocol.
You didn't say much about the other dough ball. I was especially curious to know what the final spacing of the poppy seeds for that dough ball was, whether the rim was also small, and what effect the lower hydration and sugar had, if any.
Peter
Norma: I rarely get bubbles in the warm up. I would cut back on the yeast and or colder fridge temps. Whatever your oven temps are the pies looked great. As you know the oven temps vary as the bakes go on. I have baked as low as 450 and had great pies IMO. I am not trying to sway you to my methods just commenting. You are a way better pizza maker than you give yourself credit for. Walter
Bake time: 6:23
Norma: Bake times:
warm dough Bake time: 6:23
colder dough : Bake time: 8:00
The 8 minute time is pretty typical of the pies I grew up with (8-10 minute bakes). I am not sure how accurate my oven temps are but I really don't care because I know when the pies are done and I like them the way they come out :) Walter
Walter,
I thought that bubble might be from the way I might have formed the dough ball, but I am not sure now. Even though the dough ball did not look overfermented by using the poppy seed trick, the way the dough ball handled and the amount of oven spring in the rim crust, tends to make me think that I would need to lower the final dough temperature or use less IDY. I also really liked the looks of the pie made with your dough formulation. I am not sure if you want to, but maybe other members might be interested in your dough formulation if you want to post it. Your dough formulation, along with your methods of using cold water does make a very tasty NY pizza. Thanks for posting that you have baked as low as 450 degrees F and had great pies.
Thanks for your bake time! It is interesting that we both get about the same bake times with much different deck ovens. Do you recall bake times in NY pizzas from long ago?
I wanted to mention that I used the same TF for your dough ball, the other dough ball and for my regular dough balls Monday.
Norma
Norma: Boy you have a full plate right now. I read your previous post. Thanks for taking the time to post the results and the compliment on my dough recipe. If you and Steve said it was ok I take that as a big compliment! NYC/NJ bake times were always in the 8-10 minute range and still are for the most part from what I see on my visits home. The high temp coal ovens were not the norm in the 60-70's but ovens like mine were and still are. When you would call in for a pie to go they always told you it would be ready in 15 minutes (standard answer unless they were swamped beyond words but very telling in the time factor - a couple minutes to make the pie, 10 minutes or so to bake it). I don't get the interest you do with my pies but if anyone wants the info they can PM me. Part of my trouble for doing things via the net is I change things in mid stream alot. Today I lowered the oven temp on the top deck some because it was cooking too fast on the bottoms but yesterday they were fine. My hydration in the dough today was a bit higher than normal and they puffed around the edges more than normal thus the burning....... It is a fine line between getting it right and burning(charring). I don't like char(burnt) crust and most people here don't either. With weather warming up I will be cutting back on yeast. These things are too complicated to keep updating on the net- recipe/oven temp/hydration, etc. So what I did today was today and tomorrow will tell me what to tweak. I dig this about dough/yeast. It is an ever changing thing and I like pushing the safety zone to max out flavors and that means on the fly adjustments. Things like checking the dough and seeing it needs to stay in the fridge to about 1/2 hour before baking or it might need to come out 2 hours before. Things change as you well know in a commercial setting. Home baking is a much easier game to get right on all the time. I don't really want to find a perfect everyday the same dough because it will lack the umph due to me being bored. So take me with a grain of salt with my somewhere in the ballpark ever changing recipes and keep making those nice pies of yours. Walter
Walter,
That is okay if I have a full plate now. At least it keeps me out of trouble and busy.
Your dough formulation made a very good pizza for Steve and me. Better than ones I have tasted in NYC. I also wanted to tell you that as soon as we got your pizza and the other dough pizza out of the oven customers wanted to purchase them first before the other pizzas I already had made. Steve and I try to tell customers that those pies are only experiments for right now. I really think the customers dug the looks of those two pizzas. ;D We did give out a couple of slices for customers to taste though and they really liked them too.
Since you are telling me those NYC/NJ bake times were always in the 8-10 minute range and still are for the norm for the most part I still wonder how NYC/NJ pizzas were so different from long ago. What do you think happened to those pizzerias that the flavor went downhill? I know it is a fine line between getting a pizza right and burning/charring. I only like charring on certain types of pizzas and that really isn't the NY pizzas that I have liked. My customers also don't like that charring on the rim crust or bottom crust.
I don't think anyone is really interested in my pizzas either, but I can understand why you would want someone to PM you for the details of what you do. Interesting to hear what happened with you pies today. Thanks for telling me with warmer weather you will be cutting down on the yeast amount. I know how things can change in a commercial setting. The one batch of dough balls for yesterday were partly on the bottom of the prep fridge and they fermented quicker than the other dough balls did on the other shelves. I don't even know why that happened. I used them up first though.
Steve and I talked yesterday and we decided when I am finished being so busy we are going to do a pizza crawl in our county. Steve is also busy with a aging parent now. This are just some of the pizzerias we could visit in our area. http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurants-g1732735-c31-Lancaster_County_Pennsylvania.html (http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurants-g1732735-c31-Lancaster_County_Pennsylvania.html) There are so many pizzerias Steve and I never visited right near us. I think it would be interesting to see what other pizzas taste like in our area. Steve agrees.
Thanks for you nice comment about my pizzas!
Norma
These are the photos of the other dough ball and final other pizza that had 62% hydration and 0.25% IDY for a 4-day cold ferment. The other dough ball did develop more bubbles on top of the dough ball while it cold fermented from Monday until Tuesday. I pinched those bubbles shut when I saw them. I guess that pinching those bubbles did change how the poppy seeds looked in the spacings before the other dough ball warmed up, so it might not be accurate really how much the other dough ball changed in the warm-up.Norma,
The other dough ball was also very easy to open with not many fermentation bubbles in the skin. Steve and I thought the other dough ball also made a very good NY pizza. The rim crust was moist, there was decent rim crust browning and the bottom crust had good browning.
Norma: thanks again for that feedback on the dough and that it tasted better than NYC pizza. Sadly it is hard to find a good pie back home today. I am hooked on the ice water even though it is a pain via another added step of chilling the water and straining it. I may go back to my old method of putting a container of cold water in the fridge the day before. That gets it plenty cold. I think the decline in pizza has to do with the poor quality of ingredients, lack of skill in the employees, and greed. Greed makes many go as cheap as possible. Also pizza has been so yuppified that now one can get it with a million different combinations. I think this has hurt the art of making a great tasting simple cheese pie because you can mask it with all these fu fu toppings. The really good shops I remember were family run and small. Most are gone and/or gone to crap, but star tavern seems to keep it up. All things were more local then as well, fresh, lacking preservatives, artifical ingredients, and such.
My mother told me stories of her growing up in Harrison NJ in the 40-50's. They had a bread shop on the corner that an Italian man owned. He not only made the bread but also delivered it to the homes in the neighborhood 2x's a day until he got too old to walk so much and then people had to come and get it. The same with the cheese shop. Much of it made on site with what was probably local organic milks. Her father was a butcher and all the meats were top shelf in their house. He taught all his daughter about meat because any Italian woman needed to know about meat to satify her husband. He also made lots of salami, sausage, smoked meats, specialty Italian meats, and smoked/dried fish in the garage and her mother made everything by hand. They would lay out sheets on the extra bed with the pasta, the raviolis were hand made, bread was kneaded each day, etc... My grandfather made his own wine and had a still that he made cordials with. I remember as a young boy all the detail that went into making food in their house and I was put to work in the production. I use to crank the meat grinder, do the casing, make pasta, knead dough, crush grapes, and it was fun. This stuff just doesn't happen in most peoples day to day lives anymore.
That way of life carried over to the bakeries and pizzerias and the need to use quality stuff with a highly trained staff was a given. Today things are heavily processed/preservatives added, the animals eat garbage, live in their own filth, are kept in too close of quaters, injected with chemicals, and are not happy. My mother still talks about how they had happy animals in Italy. They had nice pastures, stream, shade trees, they were loved by the family, and they returned good tasting products. Pizzerias today rarely have a long time pizza master making the pies. They are now mostly short trained and have no real connection to the product. One can learn to make pizzas realitively fast nowadays with this internet teacher but to know the little things that make the product pop takes years and years to master. People today want mastery instantly and tend to jump all over the map with thier mastery quests. The old ways were you did one thing and did it really good. Now people claim to be masters of so many things it would have taken 100 lifetimes doing it the old way.
I don't want to start publishing my recipes because they change all the time. Anyone that is really good has their stuff already and a beginner would be confused/frustrated by the lack of conistent results and not knowing what to do to correct it and I don't have the time or interest to deal with that via the net. There are lots of great consistent recipes here on the forum for people to have success with. Come in the flesh and I love sharing but the net is a big headache for me with that. The chain shops get perfect reproductions every time and many of the smaller shops sacrifice the top shelf product for lower quality and a consistancy that matches the chains. My pies vary from day to day. I would not want it any other way. Today I was on my last dough box from Friday's dough. It was near dead but I was short on dough and used it. The pies were not up to my liking and when I pointed out to customers that the newer dough pies were better they said they could not see a difference(we make about 10 a day before the lunch rush to sell by the slice via reheat). I love the ever changing nature of dough. When I was talking with Anthony of Una Pizza in SF he told me his dough is forever changing too and many days he wished he could have captured the dough of the day before......... Long ramble. I bet you will be amazed at how bad the pizza is in your area compared to yours. I am not interested in seeing any more pizzerias around here. You could compete anywhere with your stuff. Walter
Norma,
Thank you for the additional detail on the other dough. Based on the poppy seed spacing shown in the photo you provided, the dough increased in volume by around 275%, or nearly a triple. For comparison purposes, the photo of the Walter dough that you showed in Reply 264 was a bit shy of a double (including the 4-day cold ferment and the tempering of the dough). However, that comparison is not a proper one since you reported that the Walter dough had a finished dough temperature of 66.6 degrees F and the other dough had a finished dough temperature of 77.4 degrees F. That is a sizable difference. Its significance is that the results suggest that you could use less yeast or a colder finished dough temperature, as Walter mentioned in an earlier post, or possibly a combination of both measures.
I'm not sure that I would make any drastic changes at this point. The hydration is a tricky matter because there is a range of workable values below which or above which you may not get the desired results. For example, you may not get the desired oven spring or you may not get the desired degree of crust coloration or the final taste you are after. With your Full Strength flour, I would think that a workable hydration range is perhaps somewhere between 58-63%. And that range has to be balanced against the temperature of your oven and the duration of the bake. As for the sugar, as you know, Tom Lehmann often suggests that one add some sugar (about 1-2%) to the dough where the cold fermentation window is to be over two days. At 0.85% sugar, I do not see a problem at this point. It could become a problem if you were to go back to a higher oven temperature or if you decided to materially increase the amount of sugar in order to get increased crust coloration. Of course, you could use pizza screens to slow down the bake but that is not an option that I would suggest. It is better to avoid having to add another step to your pizza making process.
In due course, I suspect that you will find the aspects of the pizzas that you like or do not like. Maybe then the dough formulation can be tweaked. One useful experiment that you might consider would be to make two dough balls that are identical in all respects but for the hydration. One would have 58% hydration and the other would have a hydration of 63%, using the Full Strength flour in both cases. The objective would be for you to see which you prefer better. Knowing that might allow you to decide in which direction to tweak the hydration value.
Peter
Norma,
In my last post I meant to comment on the big bubbles. Given the amount of yeast and the temperatures of fermentation that you used, I am at a loss to understand how you got such large bubbles. The last time that I saw a really large bubble in my experience was several years ago (in late 2005) when I made a NY style pizza based on member Canadave's dough recipe. In that case, I used water on the fairly cold side to slow down the rate of fermentation (the finished dough temperature was under 70 degrees F), and the dough was cold fermented for a few days, but I estimated that the amount of yeast was around 0.76% IDY, as compared with the value of about 0.25% that I typically used at the time. You can see the bubbly dough and get a few laughs at Reply 3 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=2238.msg19652#msg19652 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=2238.msg19652#msg19652). You will also note in Reply 4 that followed that Dave said my dough looked like his dough using his recipe.
Peter
I forgot to mention this, but Steve and I thought Walter's dough made a little bit of a chewier pizza in the crust rim, but Walter's slice stayed crisper after the reheat (not too long after Walter's whole pizza was sliced). I don't know if you know how to tweak those parts so both parts could be interchanged. We really liked the both slices though. I still have an extra slice of Walter's to reheat tonight and also one extra slice from the other dough. I will see how both slices taste in the reheat and what textures there are.Norma,
I am not sure which formulation I should use the 58% hydration and the 63% hydration for.
Norma
Norma,
It is quite possible that the pizza crust made from the other dough was not as chewy or crispy because of the addition of sugar. Sugar is a hygroscopic substance (it takes up and retains water from its surroundings) so there will be more moisture in the finished crust. That, in effect, tenderizes the crust and lengthens its shelf life. A crust without sugar, or without oil, or both, will have a short shelf life. That is why a classic French baguette has to be eaten soon after baking. The next day, it will be too dry to be satisfying.
I am not sure what features you would like to be interchangeable. Can you clarify what you mean?
As for a dough formulation to use to conduct a hydration experiment, you could use either Walter's dough or the other dough. That would make for a better comparison since you now have benchmarks against which to compare future efforts.
Peter
Norma and Peter: I learn a lot from you two bouncing all these ideas around. I know learning never stops. Thanks for all the time you 2 put into these things and I have learned much from your experiments. Norma with the extreme heat you will be dealing with the ice water will help keep your dough temp down. Have you thought about putting your scaled unballed dough balls on a tray that is on top of a tray that has ice in it to keep them from begining to ferment before you can ball them and put them in the fridge? I don't know how many balls you make but I figure with a 20qt mixer maybe 20-25 or so at most at a time? I don't know how fast you ball a full batch either. So maybe all this is overkill. I know this approach is radical but it sounds like you work in extreme heat during the summer months and I know east coast mornings can be 80 degrees and humid. I thought a few full sheet tray lined with ice with another full sheet tray on top that the balls go on before they are finished and put in the cooler. Then as you finish balling them put them back on the iced tray until you wrap them and put in the fridge. That way the iced tray keeps the cool before and after balling. Does that make sense?? I remember working in bakeries in Austin TX and how hot they were. We had to keep our icing in bowls on top of bowls that were filled with ice. When doing wedding cakes we had to work in short bursts and put the cake in the walk in to cool/harden and continue this cycle until it was done. Also we had to really plan out our trips in and out of the cooler because it would warm up quickly in that heat. I always enjoy thinking on such things............ Walter
I also never really thought about why a classic French baguette has to be eaten soon after baking. I don't think I ever tasted a real classic French baguette to really know.Norma,
Norma,
I will address your yeast/temperature questions tomorrow but for now I just wanted to mention that oil also helps retain moisture in the dough, by slowing down its rate of evaporation. So, the oil also has a tenderizing effect and increases shelf life. It will also add a bit more flavor to the finished crust and add to the fat mouth feel.
Of course, shelf life is not a big issue with pizza that is primarily intended to be eaten shortly after being made. But shelf life does come into play for leftover slices. For a dough that does not have oil or sugar in it, that pretty much makes it imperative to use a higher hydration to keep the crust moisture high. And it may necessitate a faster bake because a high hydration dough opens up more quickly and acts much like an insulator during baking, causing the oven heat to be directed more to the bottom of the crust to brown and crisp it up rather than passing through the crust to drive moisture out of the sauce and to cook the cheese and any toppings.
Peter
You got me curious about oil now. Could you tell me how much is in your recipe Norma? When I do use oil in breads I use EVOO. Is that what you use? I want to make my Monday batch today with oil (no school tomorrow Good Friday holiday). Thanks. Walter
Norma,
I remember when I was in France (Paris and surrounding towns) many years ago that you couldn't just go into any neighborhood bakery any time of day and buy a baguette or something similar. Apparently it was very common for workers to stop at their local bakery on their way home from work and buy a baguette to take home to be eaten with their dinner or maybe with their wonderful cheeses and wines. But because the baguettes did not have any oil or sugar in them, they had to be baked to a high degree of freshness. I remember seeing people with baguettes (in paper bags) under their arms, apparently heading home or to meet with friends.
Of course, with a pizza you fortunately have cheese, sauce and toppings to make the entire pizza a pleasurable eating experience.
Peter
Norma,
To be sure we are on the same page, can you tell me what experiments you want to conduct next and also when and where you would make the dough? I believe the last time you made the two test dough balls at home sometime on last Saturday and you kept them in your home refrigerator until you brought them with you to market sometime on the following Monday, where they were kept refrigerated until you used them on Tuesday.
Peter
I want to conduct the two experiments using the other dough with 62% hydration and 58% hydration. I know you mentioned to try 58% hydration and 63% hydration at Reply 279 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg312523#msg312523 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg312523#msg312523) but don't you think since I normally like 62% hydration that wouldn't be a better number to stick with? I also want to keep using 1.75% Morton's Kosher Salt, 1.5% oil and 0.85% sugar.Norma,
I did mix the experimental doughs on Friday evening last week and kept them in my home refrigerator until I took them to market on Monday, and yes they were then cold fermented at market until I used them on Tuesday. I want to mix the two experimental dough at home again until I can see if those dough balls performed well. I would mix at market, but then I would have to mix probably 5 dough ball batches for the Hobart to mix properly.
If you have any other ideas for me to try let me know, and if you think the formulation ingredients need to be changed that is okay.
Norma
Walter,
I am using 1.5% Lira Olive Pomace oil in my formulations, but have used Fillippo Berio (yellow can) different times and liked both. I really don't think it matters though if another brand of olive oil/pomace oil is used. Good luck on your oil experiment! I will be interested in what you think.
This is a little off-topic, but I thought you might be interested in this Susquehanna Valley woman that created the 'Neat' meat substitute. Where they produce the Neat meat substitute hires 80% blind or visually impaired employees. http://www.wgal.com/pennsylvania-woman-creates-neat-meat-substitute/25512454 (http://www.wgal.com/pennsylvania-woman-creates-neat-meat-substitute/25512454) Maybe Peter could reverse engineer Neat for our pizzas. :-D The ingredients for Neat sound simple.
Norma
Norma,
After rethinking the hydration matter, I am inclined to agree with you and that it is perhaps better to stick with your current formulation. My original thinking was that a lower hydration dough might be easier for you to handle, and would allow for tossing and spinning the skin, and might even lead to a smaller rim because it wouldn't expand as fast or as much. But a side effect of using the lower hydration value would be a slower fermentation rate. To compensate for that would require making adjustments to the rest of the formulation ingredients or the fermentation temperature, or possibly even both. There is no point in opening up that can of worms at this point.
That leaves us with the issues of the amount of yeast to use and the fermentation temperatures and rate. In my experience, most people, including professionals, seem to prefer adjusting the amount of yeast rather than the water temperature needed to achieve an optimum finished dough temperature. I guess it is just easier to play around with yeast quantities than trying to get the water temperature just right. One of the risks of doing this, especially when one's instincts say to lower the amount of yeast, is that the dough may not ferment enough and you can end up with a flat, dense crust. One way to adjust for this is to give the dough balls some bench time at room temperature to get the fermentation process going before refrigerating. Even someone like Papa John's, which uses a small amount of yeast to make dough balls that can last up to eight days of cold fermentation, does this. Even then, the dough won't be usable until about the third day (the PJ window is about 3-8 days).
Arguably, the better way to go is not to strive for a very low amount of yeast to extend the fermentation time but rather to strive for the desired optimum finished dough temperature. Normally, that would be around 80-85 degrees F for a commercial setting using a commercial cooler, and around 75-80 degrees F for a home setting where a standard, less efficient refrigerator is used. However, for a particularly long cold fermentation period, a viable option is to use an even lower finished dough temperature than the ranges mentioned above. That is what Walter has been doing. You can read more about some of the issues involved in the yeast quantity/fermentation temperature debate in these two PMQ Think Tank posts by Tom Lehmann:
http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/tom-anyone-help-for-crispier-pizza.6069/#post-37872 (http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/tom-anyone-help-for-crispier-pizza.6069/#post-37872) (you will perhaps want to read the rest of the thread for background purposes)
http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/struggling-with-my-dough-tom-or-anyone.3163/page-2#post-17715 (http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/struggling-with-my-dough-tom-or-anyone.3163/page-2#post-17715)
As you can see from the above PMQTT posts, the amount of yeast to use and the temperatures to use is a rather delicate balancing act. And there can be times where, even after following all of the rules, the best option might be to adjust the amount of yeast, maybe even along with the finished dough temperature. I have done this many times myself, usually to adjust for seasonal changes like going from really warm weather to colder weather. Within a particular season, I try to leave the yeast quantity alone and to use a water temperature to achieve a finished dough temperature in the range of 75-80 degrees F.
In your case, I think I would stick with your current dough formulation but strive for a lower finished dough temperature, much as you did with the Walter dough. This means using a lower temperature water. Based on your results, we can assess whether additional changes should be made.
Peter
Thanks Norma. I made 20 dough balls for Monday with 1.5% EVOO(only oil I have). I will check that link over the weekend-thanks. I lived in Brussels for 2.5 years with my band. I got to know the corner bread store owner who was French and grew up outside Paris. His breads were killer. I use to sit in the back of his shop as he made bread and sang my music. He dug my music and I learned much about bread from him. Like my mother told me when she grew up, this guy did the same thing with making 2 runs of bread a day and they sold out before they were an hour on the shelf. Much of my pizza dough making is influenced by breadmaking. That is why I have shyed away from oil. But you got me curious. I will let you know how it works. I cut my yeast back, used ice water, and ended up with a 66 dgree final dough. Walter
I am not sure what to try now. Thank you for those two links on PMQ Think Tank. I thought the way Tom Lehmann responded in the first link he suggested trying a value of IDY at 0.375% and a final dough temperature of 80-85 degrees F, but wasn't that just for a one day cold ferment?Norma,
I can see from the PMQTT posts, that the amount of yeast to use and the temperatures to use are a rather delicate balancing act.
I don't know if you recall where I tried that 3-day cold ferment at Reply 1805 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9068.msg304434#msg304434 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9068.msg304434#msg304434) and only used the value of 0.25% IDY for that cold ferment. The hydration was 1% higher and the salt value was 2%. My final dough temperature was 72.3 degrees F. It also was cold at market, so the when dividing, scaling and balling the dough would not have fermented much if any. When I went to market on the following Monday some of the dough balls in the deli case already seemed like they were fermented enough.
I had rethought about making dough at home and maybe was going to try a 5 dough ball batch tomorrow, but not am not sure about that now. I have to go to market earlier tomorrow because a repair man has to repair something at my mother's home tomorrow afternoon around 2:00 PM.
Norma
Norma,
I cited the first PMQTT post principally to point out some of the problems that can arise if someone decides to reduce the amount of yeast rather than try to achieve the proper finished dough temperature. As for the 0.375% IDY, it is true that Tom mentioned a one day cold fermentation but if you look at his words more closely, you will see that he said that "the dough will be ready to use on the following day" (my emphasis). I don't think that he meant that the dough couldn't be used beyond that time. As an example of how Tom often discusses when a dough can be used, see the instructions for his NY style dough formulation at http://www.pmq.com/Recipe-Bank/index.php/name/New-York-Style-Pizza/record/57724/. (http://www.pmq.com/Recipe-Bank/index.php/name/New-York-Style-Pizza/record/57724/.) In that case, Tom says the "dough balls will be ready to use after about 12 hours of refrigeration. They can be used after up to 72 hours of refrigeration with good results".
In your case, if you are concerned that you used too much IDY for your last test dough balls, then you can by all means reduce it, along with trying to achieve a lower finished dough temperature. This is something I once attempted with Tom's NY style dough formulation as I noted at Reply 280 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=576.msg17956#msg17956. (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=576.msg17956#msg17956.) In my case, however, I didn't go below a finished dough temperature of 75 degrees F.
Peter
Peter/Norma: I read your .17 yeast post this morning. Yesterday I used .16 yeast I think (the paper is at work) with a 66 degree finished temp and followed Norma's oil amount. I put them in the True refrigerator which runs really cold. I am thinking they will not rise too much. I will use the balls on Monday and see how they work. Using dough boxes with multi day ferments leads to the balls bleeding into each other if they are left in too long and or the yeastis to high/finished dough temp is too warm. They still make great crusts but by the time I cut them apart and get them out they are more square than round and shaping them takes a bit more time and care. Using a 24-48 hour cold rise is safe but when I push to 3 days or more it can lead to this but the crust flavor improves noticably over a 1-2 day. This is one reason I use the ice water to keep them from rising too much as well as adding a different flavor to the dough. I can see why most places would go with a 1-2 day cold ferment for ease of use but I prefer to have the flavor over that and don't mind dealing with dough balls that bleed into each other. Walter
I have made a decent amount of dough balls at market and never could fully understand how Tom can say that dough balls can be used up to 72 hrs. of refrigeration with good results with the desired dough temperature he uses. My dough balls would never last that long while cold fermenting. I can watch in a days time at market and see how much the dough balls ferment as the day goes along.Norma,
But I would like to toss out another idea for your future consideration. And that is to add the IDY, in dry form, to your dough late in the dough making process and even as the last step in the dough making process. This is something I played around with quite a bit in order to extend the useful life of the dough. To extend the dough life even further, you can use ADY in dry form, that is, not rehydrated in warm water as is the recommended method. I expounded on the above matters with respect to IDY in Replies 2 and 3 starting at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg33252#msg33252 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg33252#msg33252), and also in the post at Reply 42 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3919.msg32928.html#msg32928 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3919.msg32928.html#msg32928) referenced in Reply 2 noted above. For the use of dry ADY in the dough, see Reply 48 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=6758.msg64308#msg64308 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=6758.msg64308#msg64308).
Peter
Norma,
It is possible that Tom assumes a somewhat generic commercial environment where commercial coolers are used, and also that the dough balls are cross stacked in dough boxes (or in some equivalent way with sheet trays/racks) to promote faster cooling and then down stacked. He also advocates making the dough balls within a 20-minute period (see item 9 in Reply 18 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7499.msg64554;topicseen#msg64554 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7499.msg64554;topicseen#msg64554)) and then going directly into the cooler with the dough balls. I realize that using plastic storage bags as Tom recommended to you is a viable alternative to dough boxes or sheet trays but maybe that is not part of Tom's generic explanation and assumption given that the use of dough boxes and sheet trays are the most common situations.
You might pose your question to Tom directly to see what he says.
Peter
Our True upright fridge is a great unit. You have a 1 door prep table right? What brand is it? The 2 door prep table I got for a song is a randell. If I get the rest of the year out of it I won't complain. My next prep table will be most likely a new True or La Rosa. I am still figuring out what my final solution will be with my own shop. My classroom is a wonderful lab to experiment in and I get paid a decent salary to do it. Working in other peoples shops I was stuck with the gear/set up they used. Some things I liked and some I didn't. With my room I have a blank slate and can fill it anyway I want. This is a great bonus and a big learning curve without the stress of it being my own business.
Thanks Norma. I made 20 dough balls for Monday with 1.5% EVOO(only oil I have) . I will check that link over the weekend-thanks. I lived in Brussels for 2.5 years with my band. I got to know the corner bread store owner who was French and grew up outside Paris. His breads were killer. I use to sit in the back of his shop as he made bread and sang my music. He dug my music and I learned much about bread from him. Like my mother told me when she grew up, this guy did the same thing with making 2 runs of bread a day and they sold out before they were an hour on the shelf. Much of my pizza dough making is influenced by breadmaking. That is why I have shyed away from oil. But you got me curious. I will let you know how it works. I cut my yeast back, used ice water, and ended up with a 66 dgree final dough. Walter
Here are the results. The dough balls opened easy as pie and tossed great- rose at room temp (about 75 for 2 hours). They were black specked and .16 yeast. There are some balls leftover and we will bake them tomorrow. The crust was definetely chewier/moister. The flavor did not seem to be affected and it tasted like our non oil dough. It didn't have as much crunch on slicing and the rim did not rise as high as without oil. The rims look higher than they are on the whole pie picture for some reason and the browning was darker than the picture depicts (this is always the case with my pictures for some reason). Browning was the same as normal and plenty so I see no need to add sugar. Reheats were good too I will keep the oil for now and see how it hits me as the days go bye.. Thanks for the much info Norma and Peter :) Walter
thanks Norma! It sounds like you are best suited for the 1 day dough. You like it and your customers do too. That is all that matters. I look forward to how your dough comes out tomorrow. We have one of the Governor's staff coming out tomorrow morning to observe our program and talk to me on behalf of the Governor. He is trying to get vocational education back in each high school like it use to be when we were going to school back in "the old day" :-D I am going to send him back with some pizza, breads, and our baked goods. It will be a busy day tomorrow with that and making 3,500 cookies for the district cafeterias to be served on Wed. I was told last week all our cookies and bagels will have to be made with 100% whole wheat next year(means I will have to have our nutritional labels redone as well). I found this flour that was developed for the new school law- healthy choice by conagra- that fits. What a scam. It cost almost $5 more a bag than the whole wheat and AP flours I have been using in combination for these products. I know it will work for cookies but doubt it will make a bagel I would eat but it is work and as long as they are buying we will be making. Imagine how many millions are being made on this - every public school in the USA will be buying products made with this stuff. My mob friends were criminals but this is some high collar crime at its best! Walter
http://www.conagramills.com/our_products/ultragrain.jsp (http://www.conagramills.com/our_products/ultragrain.jsp)
Norma: I am glad to pies came out good and they look great too! Thanks for the ultragrain links. The cookies came out great with it considering I use applesauce, low butter, low eggs, in the recipe. Now to try the bagels. I hold no hope for them in what I consider a bagel but the schools will buy them. My pies came out great yesterday with the oil in the dough (6 days in fridge). I saved one to try today as well. Walter
Norma,
Those are some fine looking pizzas. I scratched my head the other day when you said that you didn't think the dough balls would last four days, since I didn't see anything to suggest a problem with overfermentation, but, then again, I don't know the peculiarities of your refrigeration equipment, and your operating setting, like you do. But it is good to hear that everything turned out well.
I think that you and Walter are demonstrating how small amounts of yeast and keeping things really cold can have a material and positive effect on results. It has also been interesting to see Walter's pizzas evolve with the series of experiments he has been conducting. Hopefully, he will at some point try adding the IDY late in the dough making process. That is the "third leg" of the stool that I discussed a while back in Reply 188 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg311177#msg311177 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg311177#msg311177). In my experiments, I thought that the combination of the three factors--low temperatures, small amounts of yeast (although the principles seem also to work with larger, but still modest, amounts of yeast), and the addition of the yeast late in the dough making process--contributed to the sweetness of the finished crust, as well as other positive crust attributes. Those principles also seemed to play out well even at high hydration values that cause the dough to ferment faster than at lower hydration values.
It is hard to tell from the photos but can you tell me what size the pizzas were?
Peter
Norma,
It is up to you as to whether you should also try the late IDY addition. I had mentioned that more in the context of Walter's situation since he has already been able in his setting and work cycle to get 6 days of cold fermentation out of his dough, and maybe even another day or so. In reality, maybe the late addition of IDY won't be of much benefit to Walter if the window of fermentation is pushed out too far, which is what the late addition of IDY is prone to do. But it might be worth testing in a commercial setting to see if it has a place there. But, as I have mentioned before, I suspect it is the late addition of yeast, along with low dough temperatures, that allows Papa John's to make dough balls that can last from about 3-8 days in its stores. Domino's also has a commissary business model and while it dissolves the yeast (I suspect a fair amount of it) in water before adding the rest of the dough ingredients, it keeps the dough balls at low temperatures at pretty much all points along the way. That allows them to get up to about six days of cold fermentation but some stores have reported getting up to nine days. Clearly, that is not something that lends itself, at least not easily, to your particular one-day-a-week operation.
Peter
Pies look great Norma! I have given up on using my prep fridge for more than 24 hour dough. It just doesn't stay cold enough in these warmer days. Our kitchen has been in the upper 70's most of the day lately. Here is one of the leftover dough balls - 7 days- with oil in it. It worked beautiful and I bet I could get another day or 2 out of this recipe if need be. The flavor was great, the taste great too. We had a big rush today and I had to use some balls that were not meant to be used till tomorrow at the earliest. I didn't have time to warm them up. Straight from the fridge to oven. They came out great. I find there is more bubbling with doughes in between out of the fridge and not warmed some. Straight out my balls do great minus a little oven spring but the taste/texture is fine. My days in pizza were same day doughes and I never thought the cold dough (mid 30's at least) would perform so well right into the oven. It is nice having that back up when people walk in from the community and want pies without ordering ahead of time. Much thanks to you and Peter. I learn alot following your adventures :) Walter
I would like to try a late addition of IDY before I start doing a cold fermented 4-day dough for market all the time. I would be interested in seeing if the flavor of the crust is better, or about the same, using the late addition of IDY. How much IDY would you advised me to use and what final dough temperature should I try to achieve? If it is too much trouble for you to figure out what I should try that is okay. At least I know the lower final dough temperature and the low amount of IDY do work for market.Norma,
Norma,
It's no trouble. Since the objective of the late addition of the IDY is to extend the cold fermentation window and produce more byproducts of fermentation, I would use the same amount of IDY as you used for your last dough and try to achieve the same finished dough temperature as before. What you might consider doing is to make the dough tomorrow (presumably at home) so that the dough gets about five days of cold fermentation between tomorrow and next Tuesday.
Peter
Norma: Somehow I missed your photos and story from this morning. It is great when people really get into talking pizza with you like the RV people. You make it look easy because you are good at what you do. I wonder where you will end up with your dough management. I doubt I will ask Tom if I can get a decent bagel with ultragrain. Decent is a relevant word. To be honest a real bagel has to be made with bleached/bromated/high protien flour, and malt syrup. People out here are clueless to this so I can give them most anything and it will sell. Since I am tied to using whole wheat flour, no bromate, I will never get a bagel I would eat but know I can make something that they will like. It is like trying to make a Ferrari out of a VW bug. No way Jose can that be done and IMO using the flour I have is the same scenario. My goal is to get work and this will get us plenty. Bagels for non school customers are made traditionally with the good stuff/bagel boards/cooked direct on stones but we don't get many orders which is ok because we have more than enough diversity with products. I wish I could focus more on just one or 2 things but the market isn't there to keep 18 kids working all day. One of the things I look forward to with opening my own shop would be doing just pizza and maybe some bread, all my way. Carrying 18 people all day with having enough work makes for a lot of long days of making too many products for my liking. But it is for the cause and for now I am ok with it overall. thanks. Walter
that pizza looks great Norma! The crust looks killer for a 1 day dough and the camera captured it really nice. The lower oven temps seem to be serving you well. IMO you are better off getting solid overall cooking with lower temps than with higher temps that lead to irradict cooking results. Every oven has its sweet spot for the type of pie one makes and it is what it is. Home bakers fiddle with broilers, and all kinds of mods that would never work in a commerical setting. I think for what your ovens are you have them dialed in real good. You turn your fridge off during the week? I wonder if leaving it running all the time would be better? I only turn ours off for summer break which is like 9 weeks. The prep fridge now holds our sauce, cheeses, pepperoni. That frees up enough space to do the 4-5 day dough in the True upright and still leaves plenty of room for a 1-2 day dough in the prep if we run short and need 20 or so balls for the end of the week.
Soon you will have every RV passing through PA stopping in. We owned a 40 foot Monaco Dynasty desiel bus for years that we used for music and leisure. The RV community is real tight so be prepared for more to follow. I miss the community but when my music touring stopped the upkeep and 6mpg was killing us. I bet that customer figured if he got one of your dough balls he could turn out a pizza like yours. I love selling dough balls. I give detailed instructions and most everyone that comments on the results says they prefer to buy our pies. I figure it only increases their loyality to our pies :) Walter
The dough was made with the late addition of IDY. Cold water from out of the fridge was used and the final dough temperature was 66.2 degrees F. 0.17% IDY was used in the formulation. The dough dough looked a little scrappy, but it was mixed like I usually do at home for the same amount of time I usually mix my test doughs in the Kitchen aid mixer.
I used a container lid without a hole to see if speckling still occurs. I still am curious why speckling did not occur on the 4-day cold fermented dough balls that were in the plastic bags.
Norma
Norma: I have no idea why you didn't get specks. They tell me basically how flavorful the dough will be. I look forward to your results. Walter
So all this talk from you two made me miss Walter's NY style a lot. ;D So I mixed up Tuesday morningwhat I think is close to his recipe, but with 0.25% yeast. I used spring water that was on the pantry shelf. That night I understood why he advocated iced water, as the lid popped off my proofing container in the fridge.
I transferred the dough to a larger container, and let it age in the fridge until this evening, Thursday... so a 2 day cold ferment. It was a bit over risen I think, and I had a bit too much dough for the size of my stone. I have tuned the recipe card for my next try.
My oh my what a flavorful dough! I preheated the oven with the stone to 515 then reduced the temp to 485 when I loaded the pizza to keep the top element from going on hard. The cornice came out the best that I have ever had. A thin, crispy crunch, and a velvety, scrumptious center. This is one of the first times I have loved bare crust outside of Walter's shop!
Attached is a pix of the cornice. My thickness is too heavy, and my apologies that I did succumb to my habit and placed a few thin slices of jalapeno pepper on it... that is the "green stuff" in the pix. I am going to make a few more of these! ;)
Walter,
I did get the specks on the dough balls in the plastic containers. I am just wondering why the specks also did not form in the plastic bags. I could see fermentation bubbles in the bags. I might never know the answer but am always looking for answers. If I find time tomorrow I am going to purchase a dough tray to see what happens.
If the late addition IDY dough ball behaves it might have some different toppings dressings. :P I found where to purchase some Dragone part-skim mozzarella (cut from a block) near me today. I also purchased some Margherita pepperoni (that the butcher sliced) and some hot Sopressata.
Norma
I hope the dough works. The finished temp and yeast amount are right on. I never heard of Dragone cheese. That meat looks good! the picture reminded me of my grandfather. On weekends we would go to my grandparents house most of the day making food and eating. My grandmother made the meals and my grandfather was a butcher. He made all kinds of wonderful Italian meats. They never owned a home but always had an extra room to spread out the pastas on sheets and to hang his meats for curing. He would carefully slice them and the cheeses to make me a sandwich on homemade bread. We would sit in his backyard (with its 20 foot garden complete with a grape vine in Harrison NJ) under the fig tree. He would drink his homemade wine and I had would get a bit of it watered down for lunch. I would help him crush grapes and marveled at his still that he produced cordials with. They were happy days of being with people right off the boat from Italy that kept the old ways. Those days are all gone now for me. I keep a bit alive with my pizza making and wish I knew then what I know now. I would have studied with them a whole lot more. Judy and I often think of retiring to Abruzzi. Their family still has some abandoned farmlands there. I was lucky to have those days. Walter
Moose, Walter, Norma....do you guys use IDY or ADY in your pies?
I did get the specks on the dough balls in the plastic containers. I am just wondering why the specks also did not form in the plastic bags. I could see fermentation bubbles in the bags. I might never know the answer but am always looking for answers. If I find time tomorrow I am going to purchase a dough tray to see what happensNorma,
Norma,
You might want to take a look at Reply 118 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg42774#msg42774 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg42774#msg42774) . It is possible that your dough balls, which are tightly wrapped in the plastic bags with little or no space between the dough balls and the plastic bags, have little exposure to air (oxygen).
Peter
Moose, Walter, Norma....do you guys use IDY or ADY in your pies?
IDY for ice water. WalterDo you use ADY when not using ice water?
After reading a lot of this thread, Im thinking that I have to reduce my yeast levels and use colder water for my 2 day cold ferment. My last batch
was overfermented/blown out and the only thing I can attribute this to is the water temp, yeast level and dough temp after mixing. It was only the 2nd time using my 20 quart Hobart....with the new hook I might add :-).
Chaze,
If your last 2 day cold fermented dough batch was overfermented/blown out, it could have been the water temperature, yeast level or your final dough temperature that made that happen. It also could have been the temperature where you store your dough balls. I am glad you like you new spiral hook for your Hobart mixer.
Norma
What are you using these days? I would ask Walter that same question, but he has WAY more experience than I do and doesn't really measure, but goes more by look and feel. With practice, I will get there as well :-)
Do you use ADY when not using ice water?
After reading a lot of this thread, Im thinking that I have to reduce my yeast levels and use colder water for my 2 day cold ferment. My last batch
was overfermented/blown out and the only thing I can attribute this to is the water temp, yeast level and dough temp after mixing. It was only the 2nd time using my 20 quart Hobart....with the new hook I might add :-).
Thanks for your detailed reply Walt. I've been using ADY for as long as I can remember because I bought a nice size bag from costco a while back. Why do you say you wouldn't trust it with cold ferment? I've used it for Jim Lahey's no knead bread which calls for cold water and never had a problem.
Ps....I will take experience over schooling any day!
Just for kicks I ordered some fresh yeast that will be delivered Monday. I want to go back to using it in my artisan breads where we hand knead more than use a mixer. I started with fresh yeast and kind of miss it more for memories (feel/smell/crumble) than for any real benefit. From what I have observed IDY works as good as any yeast once you figure out your amounts/temps/fridge habits. Plus with ice water ferments I would not trust ADY or fresh yeast.Walter,
My next batch will be with chilled water and 0.25% IDY. If that over rises, I'll do chilled water and 0.17% IDY. In fact, my daughter is coming home on Sunday for a visit, so I will do another batch of dough this morning and will report back.
...reporting back. I cold fermented for 3 days my "Walter dough" with 0.25% IDY and chilled water out of the filtered fridge water dispenser. The rise was perfect at 3 days. Made the pizza for my daughter yesterday, and she said: "This is the best pizza I every had!" She never eats the cornice crust, but devoured like 1/2 the pizza after saying, "I'm not hungry and don't be offended if I don't eat much..."
I did notice my two doughs were not as easy to open as Walter's were in his shop. I will make another today, chilled water, 0.25% IDY, but I will increase my knead time. I am using GM Full Strength flour.
So have you now made the "ultimate" Norma pizza dough?
...reporting back. I cold fermented for 3 days my "Walter dough" with 0.25% IDY and chilled water out of the filtered fridge water dispenser. The rise was perfect at 3 days. Made the pizza for my daughter yesterday, and she said: "This is the best pizza I every had!" She never eats the cornice crust, but devoured like 1/2 the pizza after saying, "I'm not hungry and don't be offended if I don't eat much..."
I did notice my two doughs were not as easy to open as Walter's were in his shop. I will make another today, chilled water, 0.25% IDY, but I will increase my knead time. I am using GM Full Strength flour.
Jonas,
I have no idea if I have made the ultimate dough yet. I do like both of them though.
Norma
Norma: Those pies look great! I am happy you have found the cold water to your liking and figured it out for your crazy weather market set up (for this week at least :)). I figure the prep table refrigerators are so small and a lot of thier juice is going to the keep the rail cool, that it must add to the struggle they have to keep temps down. My next one will be a La Rosa. I have heard great things about them. I will be working a 14 hour day today- going to Columbus to be in the studio of the TV station with some students after school. They are airing our segement at 5:30 and we are bringing the french bread, sourdough bread, pizzas, cookies, brownies, dog biscuits,as a thank you. We have a big breakfast to cater first thing so I gotta jet! See you. Walter
Dave: ... How long did you let the dough warm up before opening? Norma has inspired me to add oil to my dough (1.5%). I really like it and it opens up easier as well. WalterWalter, I let it sit on the counter 2.5 hours before opening. It did still feel just a bit cool still. Do you think I should let it room temp acclimate/rise longer? Thanks for the other comments, but all I know I learned from you, Larry, Norma, Pete, and all the others on the board... and my Italian Grandma!
Walter, I let it sit on the counter 2.5 hours before opening. It did still feel just a bit cool still. Do you think I should let it room temp acclimate/rise longer? Thanks for the other comments, but all I know I learned from you, Larry, Norma, Pete, and all the others on the board... and my Italian Grandma!
Norma,
I agree with Walter. The pizzas look terrific.
Out of curiosity, I calculated the increase in volume of the two types of dough balls (4-day and 5-day) based on the poppy seed spacing. The four-day dough ball you showed was just shy of doubling in volume. That is nicely positioned in a safe zone. The five-day dough ball with the late addition of the IDY increased in volume by almost 68%. Although the five-day dough ball was started at home, if we assume just for calculating purposes that the two types of dough balls performed pretty much the same through their fermentation periods, the 4-day dough ball increased at an average rate of about 25% a day. By contrast, the 5-day dough ball increased at an average rate of about 13.6% a day. That leads me to believe that that dough ball could have lasted at least another day and possibly even longer. Unfortunately, unless you go for something like a Tuesday to Tuesday dough making window at market, or a Monday to next Tuesday dough making window, that is, a 7-day or 8-day dough, you may not be able to use the delayed IDY method at market. But it was good nonetheless to see your delayed IDY results and confirm its utility. The other day, while I was revisiting the thread at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg33251#msg33251 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg33251#msg33251), in which I discussed the late IDY addition method at length, along with using below average finished dough temperatures, I couldn't help but notice that that thread has close to 83,000 page views. Even for an old thread (started in late 2006), and especially one that is highly technical in nature, that is a lot of page views. I don't know who is reading that thread or why, especially given that there has been little new posting activity in that thread, but someone must be reading it.
At least for now, it looks like a 4-day cold fermented dough should work at market, along with using the lower bake temperatures and longer bake times. That combination looks to be a good one. Also, you have some of the nice benefits of the oil and sugar.
Peter
Norma, I bet your customers are gobbling those slices up. They look delicious!
Hi Norma - what temp did you turn your oven down to?
pete
FWIW, one of my favorite places here in Los Angeles, Slicetruck Pizzeria (which is now in a physical building) has always used cold water and a 3-day fermentation. They make American pizzas using Kamut khorosan flour, so it's difficult to make apples to apples comparisons, but their crust has always been tasty.
Norma: I am glad to hear you turned the heat down and got such good results. Finding the sweet spot with oven temp is worth the experiments. My blodgett1000's sweet spot is 540-560. Higher than that and the pies burn on the bottom. I also have cooked them at 450, by mistake, and they came out great. Gabolgo (Sp?) who is a member here and owns a shop in Conneticut talked about lower temp bakes and how good pies can come out. IMO much of the NY pizzas pictured on this forum are too burned for my taste. I grew up with typical NY style pies and they baked at 500-550 with little to no rim/bottom burnt. That to me is a classic NY pie. I think most here focus on the coal oven pies of NY and back in my day there were only a few and I never ate there. Walter
Another thing is there is almost no bubbling in the middle even if the dough balls are opened almost cold from the prep fridge. I know Walter also reported on that before. Do you or Walter have any ideas how that can be?Norma,
Gabolgo (Sp?) who is a member here and owns a shop in Conneticut talked about lower temp bakes and how good pies can come out. IMO much of the NY pizzas pictured on this forum are too burned for my taste. I grew up with typical NY style pies and they baked at 500-550 with little to no rim/bottom burnt. That to me is a classic NY pie. I think most here focus on the coal oven pies of NY and back in my day there were only a few and I never ate there.
Norma,
If I had to guess, I would say that it perhaps was the use of a small amount of yeast and the cold water that limited the fermentation after four days to the point where bubbling was avoided. You will also recall that Walter was able to extend his fermentation out to seven days or so, so that would suggest that there was more fermentation left in his dough balls before things started to fall apart. I also learned from the De Lorenzo dough experiments, where we were trying to prevent bubbling from occurring, but where the finished dough temperatures were around 80 degrees F, that the amount of yeast had to be small and the hydration value had to be less than about 57-58% to keep the bubbling from forming, even after a decent temper time.
Peter
Norma, that is so great that the people at your mother's house settlement were fans of your boardwalk style pizzas. It's always nice to receive some recognition after all of your hard work!
Best regards,
TinRoof
Walter,
I am glad I did the experiments too. It is so hard to know really how any pizza will bake in different ovens, different formulations and so many other variables. I know you have found your sweet spot. I can't believe it has taken me so much fooling around for so many years to find something that works okay for the pizzas I want to make for market. I appreciate your posting about using cold water to make pizza dough. I did not know that gabaghool used lower bake temperatures, or least did not recall that he posted about that. Thanks for posting that you used 450 degrees F by mistake and the pizzas still came out great. I posted before on this thread that my customers are not fond of darker rim crusts or bottom crusts. I think that is classic NY style pie too with lighter rim crust and even browning on the bottom crust. I really liked the pizzas yesterday but would like to get a little more rim rise. I guess I am asking for too much when using lower bake temperatures. I should finally stop fiddling around and be satisfied.
Norma
Norma/Scott: Gabaghool bakes in blodgett 1000's and at the same temps I do. He told me he has had great pies at low bakes as well.
Norma: All your fiddling has made you very smart with dough. Most people want a recipe that is reproducable right off with great results. To fiddle like you do teaches the depth of the process of making pizza. Great cooks are forever learning, changing, and failing. You can teach a person to make pizzas in a few weeks in a commercial setting but put in all the million other things that go on in making pizza's in a pizzeria and it takes a lifetime to really get good. That is why 99% of all pizzerias turn out crap IMO. They are maned by people with no depth and they think they are masters. It is typical of our info age where anyone can become an expert in 10 minutes. To really get it you have to be born into it, or in your case, just go way deep into trying all sorts of stuff. That is old school and old school is fading out quick. Walter
Walter,
Thanks for telling us that Gabaghool also bakes in Blodgett 1000's and at the same temperatures you do and told you he has had great pies at low bakes as well. Do you think it is the deck ovens that produce better pizzas if the temperatures are right for the formulations? I am starting to believe that is the case and no really high temperatures are needed in deck ovens to make really good NY pizzas.
I know a lot of people want a recipe that is reproducible right off with great results. I might have became somewhat smarter about dough but I still have a lot to learn. I think your analogy of great cooks are forever learning, changing and failing is a very good one. I think it also applies to pizza. I know about the many things in a commercial setting that can change but did not figure everything out yet. I also believe that old school is fading fast and that is why more NYC pizzas aren't better and have declined.
Norma
And his oven temperature and bake time at Reply 3 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=15411.msg151877#msg151877 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=15411.msg151877#msg151877)
550 is the STANDARD for pizza places....or at least GOOD pizza places.....WITHOUT PANS. But it ISN'T OPTIMAL. For the pie I WANT to do.
Norma: IMO ovens are critical as you really get deep into making a great pie. Conversely one can make an oven like yours work, as you regularly show, if they are willing to experiment to find the sweet spot. Thanks for those links too. It confirms what I do and see with our ovens and recipes. Walter
I posted before on this thread that my customers are not fond of darker rim crusts or bottom crusts. I think that is classic NY style pie too with lighter rim crust and even browning on the bottom crust. I really liked the pizzas yesterday but would like to get a little more rim rise. I guess I am asking for too much when using lower bake temperatures. I should finally stop fiddling around and be satisfied.Norma,
I sure don't see any char on their pizzas.
Norma,
Can you remind me again of the hydration value you used for the above pizzas, and also the amounts of oil and sugar and the type/brand of flour?
Peter
I do :)
That's too much char for me, and, if I'm hearing Walter correctly, it's too much for him as well.
I do :)
That's too much char for me, and, if I'm hearing Walter correctly, it's too much for him as well.
I used this formulation.Norma,
Flour GM Full Strength bleached and bromated
Hydration 62%
IDY 0.17%
Salt 1.75% Morton's Kosher
Oil 1.5%
Sugar 0.85%
Size of pizza was 16.5”, but I stretched bigger than that size. Dough ball weights were 1.07 lbs.
Norma
Norma,
There is a delicate balance between the hydration of a dough and the bake temperature and time used to bake the pizza made from that dough. For example, an increase in the hydration might lead to a softer and more expandable crumb but you may need a higher bake temperature to benefit from that characteristic. But the higher bake temperature may mean that the bottom crust bakes up and browns too fast before the top crust is of the desired color. So, you may lose some of the benefits that you might ordinarily get using a lower bake temperature and a longer bake time. In your case, to get a larger rim you could increase the hydration by a percent to 63% and lower the oil to 1%. You might also try sifting the flour. This is something I did when I was conducting my late IDY addition experiments. I found that sifting the flour increased the hydration capacity of the flour and allowed me to use a few percent more water (a total of 65%) than I would have otherwise been able to use with the particular flour (high-gluten flour) I was using. The improved hydration also meant that the dough didn't feel as wet as it would have had I not sifted the flour. I was reminded of the sifting possibility recently when I was reading an article about how Domino's makes its dough in the UK. The article mentioned the use of sifters from Great Western that presumably sift the flour, and maybe even other dry ingredients. There are perhaps many reasons for doing this but one of them might be to achieve better hydration of the flour. You might recall that member November always sifted his flours and he was not the type to do something without a good technical reason.
At this point, you are perhaps in the tweaking stage and you don't want to go too far with the changes. But a tweak here and there might get you closer to your end game.
Peter
Today I made a few dough balls with cake yeast like back in the old days........... It rose on the bench for 3 hours and we baked it. It looks a lot like the pies I grew up eating but the camera made the crust look much lighter than it was. The flavor was passable but not near as good as a multi day cold ferment. No one noticed that ate it but Paige and myself. The cake yeast imparted a bit more flavor than IDY or ADY to my taste buds. Walter
I am wondering what will happen at market with my regular customers and if they will be able to taste any differences in 4-day cold fermented dough pizza crusts compared to the one day cold fermented crusts. That one RV man told me he could notice the difference but then he was a chef.Norma,
Walter,
Your cake yeast dough pizzas look very good. I find that interesting that no one noticed the differences in taste from your longer cold fermented doughs except Paige and yourself. I am wondering what will happen at market with my regular customers and if they will be able to taste any differences in 4-day cold fermented dough pizza crusts compared to the one day cold fermented crusts. That one RV man told me he could notice the difference but then he was a chef.
I want to ask you question about the cheese you put on after the bake. Did you ever try not putting it on to see what the cheese pizzas taste like? The reason I am asking is because the pizza I made with spicy soppressata and Parmigiano-Reggiano on Tuesday changed the whole flavor of my sauce. The sauce still tasted good, but there was a whole different flavor profile and it was thicker.
As I posted before my camera does not take the best photos of my pizza either under artificial lighting. My daughter just purchased a much better Nikon camera today but I don't think she will let me take it to market.
Norma
Norma,
You have been making very good pizzas at market for some time. I would imagine that the average visitor at market who wants pizza isn't expecting a pizza of the high quality that you produce. But I don't see that as a good enough reason to lower the quality of your pizzas. But, that said, I might think differently if, say, it took a disproportionate effort on your part to make the four-day cold fermented dough as opposed to a one-day cold fermented dough. If the difference in effort is slight, I would rather go with the better quality product even if few perceive it. In the long run, I think quality wins out.
Peter
Norma: I bet I could do same day, 3 hour rise dough, and sell as many pizzas as we do now with the multi day dough. The main problem for me woul be what do I eat for lunch? If I don't like it I can't make it. That was a constant problem when I found a pizzeria hiring back in my music days. This was in TX and CA. None made a decent pie and I just wouldn't work there. I snuck in making pizzas in the bakeries that had deck ovens and many did have the old ovens back then that they baked breads direct on the stones and we even baked cakes in them.
I have eaten my pizzas without the Parmigiano-Reggiano or grana padano on them. They taste more traditional to a NY/NJ pie- more bland tasting. I haven't noticed the sauce taste changing or the texture of the sauce. I grate those cheeses (use whatever one we have at the moment) as soon as the pies come out of the oven and before slicing. Most places would not add any cheese to the pies other than mozz. Some would sprinkle romano because I think it was the cheaper than the ones we use. I am glad you got a potentially better camera to use. The 3 hour dough pie I posted above looked very close to the ones you and scott posted. A good camera and proper lighting makes a huge difference in how realistic the pie will look. I read somewhere that you should hire a top photographer for pictures of your products. Walter
Do you sift your flour? I never have.
Norma,
In rereading your last post, I think the roughness you referred to in respect of the dough made with the sifted flour may have been due to the improved hydration of the flour, leading to a somewhat drier dough, even with the slightly higher hydration value. I think the use of cold water may also have contributed to a tighter dough because a colder dough is harder to knead than a warm dough although I think the colder dough might have have had a secondary effect on the tightening of the dough since your other dough was also on the cold side and didn't ride up on the hook.
In my experiments using sifted flour, albeit using all three agitators (whisk, flat beater and C hook) with my home KitchenAid stand mixer, I found that I could increase the formula hydration by several percent above the rated absorption values of the flours I tested. Yet, the dough was not wet and it handled well. To cite an example, if you read Reply 56 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg39803#msg39803 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg39803#msg39803) , you will see that I was able to use a hydration value of 65% with a basic all-purpose flour without encountering handling problems. I should add that I did not use the delayed IDY method for the experiments discussed in Reply 56. I also did not use any oil. The experiments basically tested the three agitator method using sifted flour with a high hydration value.
It will be interesting to see what results you get with the dough using the sifted flour.
Peter
What's your normal mix time? 630-7 minutes?
Yeah that's what I figured. I forgot to time my last few mixes. Like you said, you can see when is just about done by the looks of it. Kinda gets smooth and shiny. Do you find your mix times are in the same ballpark regardless of water temperature? ie..cold water for 2 day cold ferment.
Norma,
Can you identify the dough balls in the last three photos of your last post, and when the photos were taken? I can see that one of them is for the sifted flour dough but I am not sure what the other dough balls are.
Peter
The first photo is of the sifted dough ball when it was taken out of the prep fridge. The time it was taken out of the prep fridge I really don't know. When I first looked at the time I thought it said 2:48 PM, but now when I click on that photo in my pictures it says 2:48 AM. My camera must be off-kilter somehow in the time it took all of the photos.Norma,
The second photo is of the same sifted flour dough balls and the time says 4:50 AM. The third photo is of the 4-day cold fermented dough ball with the formulation I had used before. That photo says it was taken at 4:51 AM.
Norma
Norma,
Thank you for the dough ball information.
According to Reply 419 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg314660#msg314660 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg314660#msg314660), it appears that you made the two different dough batches sometime in the afternoon of May 2, which was last Friday. If that is correct, the total fermentation time, including the temper time, was about four days. From the poppy seed spacing for the sifted flour dough, it looks like the dough ball increased in volume by about 67.5% up to the time of tempering and then increased to something just shy of doubling by the end of the temper time. By contrast, the regular 4-day cold fermented dough ball had increased in volume by about 67.5% as of the time that you took the photo of that dough ball.
It is hard to suggest changes to the dough formulation for the sifted flour dough ball to increase the oven spring. And normally I would recommend repeating the experiment to get more data points, especially since you and Steve were so busy yesterday making all of the different pizzas. However, since the sifted flour dough ball behaved nicely and was not overfermenting, it occurs to me that you might get a better oven spring by increasing the amount of yeast. I am thinking of something like 0.22% IDY rather than 0.16% IDY. Everything else would be the same as before as much as possible. Whether that change will improve matters is hard to say. Your environment is subject to many variables that can change from one day to another.
Peter
Norma: the pies look great! So it sounds like your regular customers like your 1 day dough and you and Steve were hard pressed to tell a difference between those and the multi day. Which way you gonna go :) ? I made some 3 hour dough yesterday and used only some of it. It had blown out so I reballed and put three back in the fridge. Today I cooked them. They were now a 24 hour dough. They came out looking great and tasted ok but I could tell a big difference in the crust flavor with the 3 day dough we used today winning hands down over the cake yeast 1 day reballed. I say go with what you love the best. That is what will shine through. Here are some pictures of the 3 hour dough that was reballed and put in the fridge overnight. They looked a lot like the pizza I grew up with. Walter
Interesting that you think I might get better oven spring by increasing the amount of IDY to something like 0.22%. I am not sure what temperature the weather is supposed to be at market. Usually this time of the year inside of market is very cool (in the lower 50's). Right now I probably won't have to use ice in the cold water from the deli case, but probably would have to do that when it gets a lot warmer. The flour at market and other ingredients are ever changing depending on the ambient temperatures at market.Norma,
Norma
Norma: Good luck with getting your floor fixed. Hopefully it will be a fairly painless experience. Tell the guy if he fixes it quick and right you will keep him fed in pizza for a long time. I always bribe our maintaince men with food and it works great and I enjoy doing it. You add sugar to your multiday ferments right? I don't and think that must have something to do with the dough development. I think the ovens do play a role in the crust for sure. I don't like making pizza/bread/bagels in my home oven. It is one big hassle compared to the blodgetts. Most of the old pizzerias ran my ovens back in the 70's and many still do today. That speaks volumes. The biggest pro I find is they are as steady as a good watch. They perform the same day after day with little to no recovery time. Also the high ceiling in them IMO has something to do with the cooking. When I run them at just the right temp for the given dough, the tops will start to burn before the bottoms. This allows for a nice looking pie in that you can get the top looking just right with a decent browning and the bottoms are not charred at all. I did notice with the pies that I reballed and baked today (I put a tad of sugar in that dough because it was a 3 hour dough) is that the bottoms started browning way to early for my liking. This was the first time I have put sugar in a pizza dough. the lack of sugar, at least with my ovens, makes for a perfect cooking scenario. With the 63% hydration we get a very easy to chew crust. I must say though I like my crust to have some chew to it. I was raised on chewy crusts and bagels. So our ideal of chewy may be different. This is what stinks about this internet communication. We need to sit down and eat and then compare/critique. Also the original stones are the holy grail of deck oven stones. They radiat heat better than any of the new ones. Maybe a bigger space will open for you and you can pick up a 1000 oven. They go for next to nothing in conveyor land pizza like we have out here in OH. Walter
Norma,
As you know, there are many factors involved in the creation of oven spring and its effect on the size of the rim. In fact, to refresh my own memory, I went back to the list I created on this subject at Reply 515 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9908.msg104559#msg104559 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9908.msg104559#msg104559). Going down that list, I would say that the factors involved in your case are those numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 15. Several of these can be dismissed fairly quickly as potential areas of improvement in your case as far as oven spring is involved. For example, your Full Strength flour and its hydration are already reasonably conducive to oven spring, although a higher hydration value would improve oven spring if the oven temperature is high enough to cause the moisture in the skin to be quickly driven out of the skin to cause it to form an elevated rim. Also, the amount of oil that you are using is not high enough to be a material factor in oven spring. Your temper time and duration seem to be fine as far as I can see, and it appears that your forming and shaping of the skins are in good order. The remaining fermentation factors are related to the amount and type of yeast and the duration of cold fermentation. From what I can see, you have not been overloading your pizzas with copious amounts of sauce, cheese and toppings such that there is too much energy imparted to those ingredients and less to the crust to elevate the rim.
As I see it, and assuming that you would not be using an elevated temperature to rapidly cause the moisture in the skin to be turned into steam and thereby form a raised rim, increasing the amount of yeast may be one of the few remaining tools to use to cause the skin to rise faster and also to ferment faster and have increased gas content. However, another thought crossed my mind as I went down the above list that you might also consider. And that is the degree of mixing and kneading. If the dough is kneaded too much, that can also affect oven spring and the size of the rim. I don't know if that is an issue in your case, given that I do not work with commercial mixers, but one way to cut back on the knead time is to let the dough rest midway during its preparation. The rest would be similar to an autolyse rest period, and its effect would be to soften the dough (through protease enzyme activity) and reduce the overall production time.
As between a one-day and multi-day cold fermentation, that is something that you will have to address for your particular situation at market, along with what your customers appear to like. However, I would want to have enough feedback upon which to base any decision as to how you should now proceed.
Peter
Norma: AT can be too chewy/tough for me on the multi day ferments. I had some doughes come out ok and others way too chewy/tough. I tried FS on Scott's reccomendation and liked it a lot thus haven't used AT in a while for pizzas. Our school commercial accounts are just about done for the year so I have more time on my hand to fool around with things. I might make a few 3 day AT dough balls friday with oil (never used AT with oil) and see how they compare to the FS. Today I made some challa bread. The dough came out great and we braided it and as we were brushing on the egg wash I realized I forgot to add the sugar. Rather than toss it we baked it. The most obvious visual was the lack of browning and the taste was way too egg flavored without the sugar. I recently got the Molly Goldberg cookbook and am going to retry it tomorrow using her recipe instead of mine. Judy and have fallen in love with her shows from the early days of radio/tv. Anyway, I wonder if the sugar is affecting your finished dough differently with the 24 hour vs. multi day. I bet Peter could answer that. Walter
When I mix the first time I let the dough sit in the mixer bowl until I weigh out the ingredients for the next batch in my regular one day cold fermented dough. At this time of the year I let the dough balls sit out until I mix, scale, ball and oil the next batch of dough. Is my letting the dough sit until I weigh out the ingredients for the next batch like resting it, or do you think I need to do more resting in the middle of the second mix? Maybe I am not resting at the right time to see if that would help.Norma,
Norma,
I was looking at what you have been doing much like an autolyse where the dough is allowed to rest for a brief period to allow the protease enzymes to attack and soften the gluten matrix. One of the benefits of this approach is to shorten the total dough preparation time by reducing the total amount of knead time. This means that you want to introduce the rest period midway through the dough preparation process. I believe that you have been doing something like this, but for a somewhat different reason, with the "double kneading" of the Detroit style doughs.
Peter
It's funny how our tastes change... ;D I am coming over to NY style. I love the texture and flavor you get in the cornice. I now have a dough ball fermenting with 1.5% oil in it.
Now this may be old hat for all of you, but I thought I would share a "tip" I stumbled upon. I hate cleaning up things, and measuring oil is particularly messy. I have been using squirt plastic bottles for my oils and vinegars for while. I finally figured that I could tare out the olive oil bottle on my scale, squirt some around the dough ball in the KA, then re weigh it on the scale. The scale goes negative, but indicates the gram amount of oil that I squirted into the KA. Best to under squirt then do a little more to bring it up to the recipe amount. It results in no extra clean up required!
I thought what I was doing with letting the water hydrate the flour after the first mix would be something like I do with the Detroit style doughs. Do you think I should stop mixing as I do and maybe add the oil at a different time and then introduce the rest period midway though the dough making process. Maybe you have something else in mind. How long should the rest period be?Norma,
Norma,
For now, I think I would make the dough as you have been making it in your Hobart mixer based on your intimate familiarity with that mixer. I think I would let the dough rest after the initial mix/knead but before you add the oil. That rest period might be, say, 10-15 minutes at most. As a frame of reference, if you read Reply 15 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3220.msg74624;topicseen#msg74624 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3220.msg74624;topicseen#msg74624), you will see the autolyse rest periods that Prof. Calvel used for various ones of his dough creations, and those rest periods were for dough batches of around 75 pounds.
I think the factor that most governs the matter of oven spring in your case is the oven temperature. Once you set that variable to a particular value, along with the accompanying bake duration, that pretty much limits what you can do thereafter to essentially two possibilities: modifying the dough formulation itself and/or the way the dough is made. Increasing the amount of yeast and trying to keep the dough from overkneading are two such possible changes. If those changes don't yield the desired results, as reflected in a nicely risen rim, then you have to look for other solutions. For example, you might consider using a classic Calvel autolyse. Or you might add the oil to the water, as member November advocates, not after the initial mix/knead. But, either way, 1% oil is not going to be a game changer.
Peter
I wonder why my one day cold fermented doughs do have more oven spring than the experiments I have been trying, even at lower oven temperatures. The rim crust is not as moist, but there is more oven spring. I don't like the big rim that the one day cold fermented doughs make though. I have tried every which way of opening them differently and they always come out with bigger rims. Steve even opens some of those dough balls and his techniques are different than mine. Steve rims still get big too. With the same amount of sauce and cheese applied on the regular one day cold fermented skins, and the experiments I have been doing, I found the rim usually on the experiments get smaller. I guess that is for another discussion though in why that happens.Norma,
Norma,
I believe that you are referring to the one-day cold fermented dough that you have been using to make the Boardwalk style of pizza. If that is correct, then there are several possible explanations for the greater oven spring for the one-day dough.
First, if I recall correctly, you have been using 0.375%-0.55% IDY for the one-day dough, with the actual amount being based on prevailing market conditions. That is about double or triple what you used for the recent 4-day cold fermented doughs and would cause a faster and more pronounced fermentation with more gas.
Second, I suspect that you try to get a finished dough temperature of around 80 degrees F, not something in the mid-60s degrees F as with the recent 4-day doughs. The higher finished dough temperature will also speed up the fermentation process.
Third, it is possible that the way that you knead the much larger dough batches for the one-day doughs may be producing a more developed gluten structure that can better capture and retain the gases of fermentation and yield a more open crumb structure.
Fourth, you are using more oil for the Boardwalk style of dough, which should allow for a looser and more open crumb structure. However, this may not be a major contributor to the oven spring if you are not using a lot of it (I think you have been around 1.5% oil most recently).
Finally, it is possible that the protease enzymes in the dough, and also acids formed during fermentation, are having little impact on attacking the gluten structure and weakening it, as they might for long, cold fermented doughs. So, the gases and moisture will be retained in the dough and yield a higher oven spring when the oven heat hits the dough and causes the moisture to convert to steam and elevate the rim.
Peter
If the protease enzymes in the dough, and also the acids formed during fermentation are having little impact on attacking gluten structure in a one-day dough then how much of of chance do you think I have of succeeding with a 4-day cold fermented dough in better oven spring in the variable conditions I work in?Norma,
Norma,
You are always going to be confronted with challenges because of the unusual and unorthodox conditions under which you are called upon to perform at market. You are highly unique in that regard. But even with almost perfect conditions, even the best of professionals will have problems from time to time with their doughs and their performance. So you can only do the best that you can do. As for the effects of protease enzymes and acids on gluten, I am not particularly worried about those factors for a 4-day cold fermented dough. But I can't say whether the changes you plan to make will give you improved oven spring. All we can do is try things that seem plausible and assess the results, and go from there. For now, I'd rather focus on the dough formulation itself and related dough making methods and steer away from solutions that might call for using pizza screens as a crutch.
Peter
| Full Strength Flour (100%): Water (63%): IDY (0.16%): Morton's Kosher Salt (1.75%): Olive Oil (1%): Sugar (0.85%): Total (166.76%): Single Ball: | 1483.13 g | 52.31 oz | 3.27 lbs 934.37 g | 32.96 oz | 2.06 lbs 2.37 g | 0.08 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.79 tsp | 0.26 tbsp 25.95 g | 0.92 oz | 0.06 lbs | 5.41 tsp | 1.8 tbsp 14.83 g | 0.52 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.3 tsp | 1.1 tbsp 12.61 g | 0.44 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.16 tsp | 1.05 tbsp 2473.27 g | 87.24 oz | 5.45 lbs | TF = 0.0816 494.65 g | 17.45 oz | 1.09 lbs |
| Full Strength Flour (100%): Water (63%): IDY (0.22%): Morton's Kosher Salt (1.75%): Olive Oil (1%): Sugar (0.85%): Total (166.82%): Single Ball: | 1482.6 g | 52.3 oz | 3.27 lbs 934.04 g | 32.95 oz | 2.06 lbs 3.26 g | 0.12 oz | 0.01lbs | 1.08 tsp | 0.36 tbsp 25.95 g | 0.92 oz | 0.06 lbs | 5.41 tsp | 1.8 tbsp 14.83 g | 0.52 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.29 tsp | 1.1 tbsp 12.6 g | 0.44 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.16 tsp | 1.05 tbsp 2473.27 g | 87.24 oz | 5.45 lbs | TF = 0.0816 494.65 g | 17.45 oz | 1.09 lbs |
| Full Strength Flour (100%): Water (63%): IDY (0.22%): Morton's Kosher Salt (1.75%): Olive Oil (1%): Sugar (0.85%): Total (166.82%): Single Ball: | 296222.72 g | 10448.77 oz | 653.05 lbs 186620.31 g | 6582.73 oz | 411.42 lbs 651.69 g | 22.99 oz | 1.44 lbs | 72.12 tbsp | 4.51 cups 5183.9 g | 182.85 oz | 11.43 lbs | 359.99 tbsp | 22.5 cups 2962.23 g | 104.49 oz | 6.53 lbs | 219.42 tbsp | 13.71 cups 2517.89 g | 88.81 oz | 5.55 lbs | 210.52 tbsp | 13.16 cups 494158.74 g | 17430.64 oz | 1089.42 lbs | TF = 0.0816 494.65 g | 17.45 oz | 1.09 lbs |
Norma,
For discussion purposes, here are the two dough formulations, one using 0.16% IDY and the other using 0.22% IDY:Note: Dough is for five dough balls; pizza size = 16.5"; nominal thickness factor = 0.08; bowl residue compensation = 2%
Full Strength Flour (100%):
Water (63%):
IDY (0.16%):
Morton's Kosher Salt (1.75%):
Olive Oil (1%):
Sugar (0.85%):
Total (166.76%):
Single Ball:1483.13 g | 52.31 oz | 3.27 lbs
934.37 g | 32.96 oz | 2.06 lbs
2.37 g | 0.08 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.79 tsp | 0.26 tbsp
25.95 g | 0.92 oz | 0.06 lbs | 5.41 tsp | 1.8 tbsp
14.83 g | 0.52 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.3 tsp | 1.1 tbsp
12.61 g | 0.44 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.16 tsp | 1.05 tbsp
2473.27 g | 87.24 oz | 5.45 lbs | TF = 0.0816
494.65 g | 17.45 oz | 1.09 lbsNote: Dough is for five dough balls; pizza size = 16.5"; nominal thickness factor = 0.08; bowl residue compensation = 2%
Full Strength Flour (100%):
Water (63%):
IDY (0.22%):
Morton's Kosher Salt (1.75%):
Olive Oil (1%):
Sugar (0.85%):
Total (166.82%):
Single Ball:1482.6 g | 52.3 oz | 3.27 lbs
934.04 g | 32.95 oz | 2.06 lbs
3.26 g | 0.12 oz | 0.01lbs | 1.08 tsp | 0.36 tbsp
25.95 g | 0.92 oz | 0.06 lbs | 5.41 tsp | 1.8 tbsp
14.83 g | 0.52 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.29 tsp | 1.1 tbsp
12.6 g | 0.44 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.16 tsp | 1.05 tbsp
2473.27 g | 87.24 oz | 5.45 lbs | TF = 0.0816
494.65 g | 17.45 oz | 1.09 lbs
As you can see from the above, you are correct that on a weight basis the two amounts of IDY come to 0.01 lbs. The reason for that is that the dough calculating tool (actually, all of the tools) rounds the numbers in the tables to two decimal places. Technically, 2.37 grams of IDY converts to 0.0052248 lbs, and 3.26 grams of IDY converts to 0.0071869 lbs. On a rounded basis to two decimal places, both numbers round to 0.01. Most people don't use weights for very small amounts of ingredients like IDY. You would have to be making very large amounts of dough to use weights in pounds for something like IDY. For example, if you wanted to make 999 dough balls (the maximum that the dough calculating tools can handle), the dough formulation using 0.22% IDY would look like this:Note: Dough is for 999 dough balls; pizza size = 16.5"; nominal thickness factor = 0.08; bowl residue compensation = 2%
Full Strength Flour (100%):
Water (63%):
IDY (0.22%):
Morton's Kosher Salt (1.75%):
Olive Oil (1%):
Sugar (0.85%):
Total (166.82%):
Single Ball:296222.72 g | 10448.77 oz | 653.05 lbs
186620.31 g | 6582.73 oz | 411.42 lbs
651.69 g | 22.99 oz | 1.44 lbs | 72.12 tbsp | 4.51 cups
5183.9 g | 182.85 oz | 11.43 lbs | 359.99 tbsp | 22.5 cups
2962.23 g | 104.49 oz | 6.53 lbs | 219.42 tbsp | 13.71 cups
2517.89 g | 88.81 oz | 5.55 lbs | 210.52 tbsp | 13.16 cups
494158.74 g | 17430.64 oz | 1089.42 lbs | TF = 0.0816
494.65 g | 17.45 oz | 1.09 lbs
You can now see that the amount of IDY on a pounds basis makes more sense. Even then, you might use one of the other measurements, such as ounces or cups.
For a bit more background on the design of the dough calculating tools as respects the number of decimal places, see http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=13694.msg137152#msg137152 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=13694.msg137152#msg137152).
Peter
Norma: Here is an oven note I realized today after looking at your pies. My ovens give a very even browning to the bottoms. I notice yours are more light/dark areas. I figured I share that for reasons I have no idea of :) Walter
Walter,
Thank you for posting the photos of your very even browning to the bottom crusts. I know mine at not like yours. :'( I think it is your type of oven that gives you such good results. You also don't have all the slices going in and out of the oven like I do for reheats. My stones are nothing like yours are either.
Norma
Norma: We have been allowed to sell to the students during the 3 back to back lunch periods. This amounts to about 10-30 pies per day sold as slices. So our oven doors are opening a lot. Luckily the design of the oven -120k btus, the stones, and and dimensions, all add up to it holding heat for whole pies and slices without any bad effects. If I hit the lottery I will send you a stack and build out your space to accomodate them. As deep as you are into pizza you deserve them :) Walter
Norma,
I don't recall seeing the name Luis in any of your posts. Is he a new assistant?
You didn't mention whether the latest experimental dough with the increased amount of yeast resulted in a taller rim. It is hard to tell from the photos. Also, did the experimental dough ball open up easily after tempering?
The photos showing the spacing of the poppy seeds suggest a below average rise. If the spacing is true, then future dough balls may hold up well even as the temperature at market rises as it gets warmer.
Peter
Peter,Norma,
Luis is my granddaughter's boyfriend. I posted a photo of Luis with my granddaughter at Reply 22 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=26483.msg268977#msg268977 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=26483.msg268977#msg268977) Luis also helped me a few weeks ago when Steve had other things he had to do on a Tuesday. Luis can not make pizzas, but he is good at waiting on customers, reheating slices, doing dishes among other things. Luis had to go to his regular job at 9:00 PM last evening until 5:00 PM this morning. That is one problem with having a pizza business that is so small. If Steve is ill, or has something else to do I can have problems finding someone to help me. If I am sick then the pizza stand has to be closed. Luis is not my regular assistant. Steve was given a new grandchild yesterday by his one daughter.
The latest experimental dough with the increased amount of yeast and the rest period did get a little better (taller) rim crust. The experimental dough balls did open very easily after tempering.
I agree that the spacing of the poppy seeds suggest a below average rise. Isn't that the same thing you experienced in your experiments? I also tend to think that future dough balls might hold up well at market as the temperatures get warmer.
Norma
Norma,
Thank you for clarifying who Luis is. Before I had mentioned Luis, I did a search of your posts to see if you had mentioned him before. Other than your post about Luis this morning, I did not find any other posts where you mentioned him by name. Maybe you should train Luis to be a pizza maker and open up a full-time pizza shop where all you have to do is sit in the back room and count all of the money and sip on limoncellos with Steve as Luis makes all of the pizzas that you have mastered over the past several years :-D.
The matter of how much a dough should rise has always been the subject of discussion and debate. Some people want the dough to double or even triple in volume before using. Some might even want the dough to be at death's door before using, in order to maximize the byproducts of fermentation as much as possible. Others, on the other hand, may prefer that the dough rise but not to the doubling point. When I experimented with the DeLorenzo clone doughs, I came to the conclusion that it was not possible to have the dough balls reach the doubling point and not have any bubbles in the skins made from those dough balls, as we saw in DeLorenzo photos and videos. Of course, it is possible that I was missing an important piece of information, but at the time and after much thought I could not discern that missing piece of information.
When I was looking for a post of mine this morning that previously addressed the above matters, I found this one that I think does a pretty good job of discussing the matter of how much a dough ball should or might rise before using: Reply 1 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=8533.msg73807;topicseen#msg73807 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=8533.msg73807;topicseen#msg73807). As far as I am concerned, whatever amount of rise gets the job done and you are happy with it is the amount of rise that you should feel comfortable using. I don't see it as a right or wrong or good or bad issue.
Peter
Looking good Norma! Personally I like the dough to be at deaths door coming from the dough box to shaping. At that point it has to be bench/hand stretched. Tossing would result in tearing. For my money that makes the most flavorful and best looking crust. Most commercial shops prefer to use the dough while it is still very easy to work with and is very forgiving. It is near impossible to pull off the death door dough pizza in a commerical setting with consisitency. We tend to be all over the map from right out of the fridge to oven when the bench dough was used up and a customer wants a pizza, all the way to almost blown out beyond use (best taste/look IMO). I aim to push the dough as long as possible and end up on that end of the spectrum vs. the perfect looking dough balls that are easy as pie to toss. For my lunch of 2 slices everyday (cheese) I let the oldest dough ball we have sit on the bench till it gets to that state. For my regular NYC metro area customers and ones that know good pizza, I save doughes like this for them when they order at least 3 hours or more in advance. Walter
Looking good Norma! Walter^^^ Those are fine looking pies. You either have really soft hands, or the windowpane is better than anything I've seen.
Thanks Walter! I can understand why the taste of the crust would be better when the dough it right about at death's door. I know it would be nearly impossible to pull that off in a commercial environment all the time. It will be interesting to see what state of fermentation dough balls you will use when you own your own pizzeria someday. At least until then you can have everything figured out what you want to do. Some of my regular dough balls yesterday wanted to ferment too fast when sitting out to temper.
Norma
^^^ Those are fine looking pies. You either have really soft hands, or the windowpane is better than anything I've seen.
I suppose the coloration still isn't even enough for you. :-D
Dave
Norma: The challenge with the dough balls when they get towards death in dough boxes is they tend to bleed into each other/fill in the perpendicular corners(you get a 1/4 square and 3/4 round ball) and are difficult to get out, form and handle, without tears and uneven dough thickness. I am not talking the big bubbles but while the dough is still pretty much solid but getting near that state. I dust them with flour so the bench knife/my hands don't stick to them when getting them out of the dough boxes and then gently put them into the pan of bench flour. Our 63-64% hydration makes for very gentle handling. Paige doesn't like the dough in that shape so I let her make the dough balls that are more forgiving and she tops when I work on the more difficult doughes. I think when I open my own shop I will lean towards the far end of the dough life as I do now. Figuring out the flow of customers and orders will help develop that. Right now we do 15-40 dough balls per day and next school year I hope to be closer to 40 per day regularly. With your set up it is an ever going extreme challenge to figure things due to the room temp differences you deal with. With that said, your pizzas are doublely amazing IMO.
We have 3 large A/C vents in the ceiling. I took the covers off and this results in a noticable breeze of cool air when standing under them. Our classroom opens to the high school cafeteria. It has a huge wall of glass windows about 40 yards long and 20 feet high. This is my second spring in the room and am figuring it out. In the warm weather the system can't cool the cafeteria and with us leaving our 2 doors open, our cool air is replaced with the warm cafeteria air and temps have averaged the upper 70's under these vents and well into the upper 80 within a few feet of the ovens. I place our dough under these vents to start out the day and then gradually move them to a few feet from the ovens as we progress with demand. I love the puzzle of figuring this ever changing temp puzzle out. In the fall we have similar conditions and the winter brings us down to the mid-upper 60's in the room and we put the dough near the ovens at least a couple hours before using them. You have a much harder puzzle than me. When I open my own shop a good a/c system will be a must. Walter
Do you know of any other ideas for me to try for an experiment this Friday?Norma,
Norma
Norma,
The last test dough you made, with the sifted Full Strength flour, 62% hydration, 0.22% IDY, 1.75% Morton's Kosher salt, 1% olive oil and 0.85% sugar, was intended to provide a taller rim without having to increase the oven temperature to the levels you previously used. If you feel that that objective was achieved to your satisfaction, then I don't have any other experiment in mind for you to conduct. However, if there is something else that you would like to make better, or improve upon, then maybe we can come up with something else for you to try.
Peter
I liked the results on the last 4-day cold fermented dough balls when they were made into pizzas. The only thing I would like to achieve would be a little taller rim rise. I don't know if that is possible though since I am using the lower bakes temperatures. Maybe the combination of the dough balls being so easy to open, with the lower oven temperatures I am using, would make that impossible.Norma,
Norma
Norma,
Most recently, we have been nibbling around the edges of the dough formulation you have been using to get around having to raise your oven temperature in order to get an increased oven spring. However, below I will propose a future experiment with your oven to determine if it is your oven or your dough formulation that is the problem.
For your next dough batch, you might try increasing the formula hydration some more, maybe by one or two percent. If the flour is sifted, I think it should handle the increased hydration but the dough might ride the hook more than your most recent doughs that also used sifted flour. I do not wish to increase the amount of yeast because that might cause problems down the line when the weather at market starts to heat up. I think you should still get the benefits of the longer bake at the lower oven temperature (the Maillard reactions, caramelization and protein denaturing) but I don't know if some other problem will rear its ugly head, such as excessive crispiness or chewiness or maybe an overly brown bottom crust.
If the above change does not improve matters, then you might want to conduct an experiment with your oven. Specifically, you would use the last dough formulation that you reported on this morning, or the one before that, but with your oven at the higher temperature that you were originally using. The purpose for doing this is to see if you get a noticeably improved oven spring because of the elevated oven temperature. For this experiment, you will also want to have a few pizza screens on hand to slip under the pizzas as soon as they set up, but after the initial oven spring. The screens will serve to allow the pizzas to continue baking without burning or overly browning the bottoms of the crusts, thereby allowing more time for the crusts to develop the flavors from the sources mentioned above (Maillard reactions, etc.). I do not intend that this method become a standard one for you at market. It is only to see if the oven or your dough formulation is the problem. If we get the answer to this question, then it tells us where to look next to address the problem.
Peter
Norma,
My comment about the dough climbing the hook was based on what you recently reported at Reply 421 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg314831;topicseen#msg314831 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg314831;topicseen#msg314831) where you mentioned that a second dough batch using unsifted flour did not climb the dough hook whereas the dough batch using the sifted flour did. You said the second dough batch also used cold water and that the dough batch size (five dough balls) was the same as the one using the sifted flour. My assumption was that increasing the hydration might cause the wetter dough to climb the dough hook more.
It is true that increasing the amount of oil might result in improved oven spring. This is because the oil lubricates the gluten structure and seals in the gases and moisture so that the dough rises more during baking. However, to have this effect, you may need a fair amount of oil. If there is too much oil, it can have a tenderizing effect that may not be desired in a NY style pizza. If I recall correctly, you originally used 2% oil and that did not give you the rim height you were looking for. That would suggest using more than 2% oil. Maybe at some point you can try doing that. However, as you can see from Scott's post at Reply 18 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=21951.msg231191#msg231191 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=21951.msg231191#msg231191) , he considers oil at above 3% to be outside of the realm of the NY style. He has voiced this same sentiment in several other posts.
Regrettably, designing a dough formulation to produce a pizza with a specific desired set of features and characteristics can be difficult and time consuming, especially if all of the features and characteristics are not mutually compatible. Also, the design has to be compatible with the equipment that is to be used to make the pizza, and there are usually certain time constraints that must be satisfied. In your case, you also have to contend with an environment that is uncertain and largely unpredictable from one week to the next. That is why it can take a lot of experimentation and testing and tweaking and time to achieve the desired end results, and to do so on a consistent basis.
Peter
Norma,
I find your latest dough making results quite interesting. One of the things that I discovered when making cold doughs is that it is considerably harder to make cold doughs than warm doughs. This applies not only those ice-based doughs that member Les and I worked on or those that I discussed in the thread at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg33251#msg33251 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg33251#msg33251), but also to those that I made with the intention of freezing, much like is done by commercial producers of frozen dough balls. Generally speaking, it takes longer to make the cold doughs and, because of that, the finished dough temperature can rise during the kneading process (because of the heat of friction) to a point higher than might have been desired or intended. Commercial producers of frozen dough balls are well aware of the difficulties in kneading cold dough and, to make the process easier, they usually add a reducing agent such as L-cysteine or glutathione (dead yeast). That softens the dough and is something I read about in a PMQ Think Tank post by Tom Lehmann and that I reproduced in Reply 26 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9121.msg84545#msg84545 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9121.msg84545#msg84545). I would imagine that one could also use PZ-44 even though that would add a bit of whey to the dough.
As an aside to the above post by Tom, note the finished dough temperature that was cited in that post for the dough to be frozen: 65F, with a variable tolerance of just +/- 1F. Your finished dough temperature--64.6 degrees F--fell within that range even though you will not be freezing your dough balls. It seems that you and Walter and I have all ended up in the mid-60 degrees F as finished dough temperatures when using cold or ice water.
From your recent report and from the videos, it appears that the hydration of the sifted flour proceeds slowly at the beginning, and results in some sticking to the dough hook, but improves once the dough is rested. This improvement may be due to the protease enzymes in the dough that soften the gluten structure during the rest period, much as what happens with a classic autolyse, while still allowing the flour to become more fully hydrated. Also, the fact that your dough did not feel sticky, despite an effective hydration of 65%, appears to be a benefit of using the sifted flour. That is a result that I also experienced when I used sifted flour, although I was also using all three attachments to my KitchenAid stand mixer, including the whisk.
Once you get more data from your experiments, you may well decide to dispense with sifting the flour to simplify the entire dough making process. You might even be able to substitute using cold water from your cooler rather than ice water so long as you can get a finished dough temperature in the 60s. For now, the goal is to see if we can increase the hydration of the flour without ending up with a sticky dough, and hopefully getting an improved rim height.
Peter
Norma,
In my last post, I forgot to mention that there are mechanical ways of getting an increased rim height. One way would be to make a bit more dough and push the skin outwardly to physically increase the rim size and height pre-bake. You could also do that with your regular dough but that will result in a thinner skin within the rim. Another way would be to use your regular dough but let the skins sit for a while so that they can rise (proof). Then you could press and flatten the areas within the rims but not touch the rims themselves. Of course, you would need pizza screens or something similar to hold the skins while they rise, and the hydration of the dough would have to be such as not to stick to the screens or other carriers while the skins rise and to be able to transfer the skins to your peel for dressing. You would also need space within your work area at market to accommodate this added step.
Peter
Thanks for mentioning there are other ways to get an increased rim height. I could try a pizza screen with parchment paper and let the skin rise to see if that helps. How would I keep the skin from drying out though? I tried something similar to that before, but that was just to get dough skins ahead when I was not as fast at making pizzas. I had food grade plastic bags then to put on my one side rack to cover those skins. I don't have those food grade plastic bags anymore.Norma,
Norma
Norma,
In your case, you might try make a skin and let it sit uncovered for about a half hour. The actual time may vary depending on the temperature of the dough ball when it is opened to form a skin and thereafter on the ambient room temperature. So you may want to keep an eye on the skin, and if it looks like it wants to dry out, I would cover it with something, such as a large container if you have one or with a sheet of plastic wrap. If you were to make and hold several skins at one time, you would perhaps want to use a rack as is often used by pizza operators when they think they are about to be slammed.
Peter
Norma,
Now that you have explained your situation with the fans at market, it looks like you would have to cover the skins with something. Actually, I think it would be better to avoid proofing skins altogether unless you can find a way to do it efficiently. Even using more dough and pushing it to the outside to make a larger rim isn't a guarantee that you will get the desired rim. It might be bigger but with a texture that you might not like.
Peter
Norma: Have you tried letting the dough sit on the bench till it has reached maximum rise? This is what I aim for and then if you do not mess with the edge of the crust you should get a nice rise on the rim. Also if the dough balls start to dry out on top while in the dough boxes I spray them with a bit of water and in a few minutes they are nice and moist on top. A damp cloth would work as well This usually happens when I pull dough right from the fridge to get it to warm up quick on top of one of the ovens with a spacer between it and the oven so as not to give too much heat or directly on top of our proofing box(the dough boxes won't fit in the racks due to me setting them up for full sheet pans for our breads/bagels and the height between shelves is too low for the dough boxes). I always use the top of the dough ball for the bottom of the pizza. Walter
Norma: The photo shows them at near peak. A bit more time and they would start having big bubbles. I like to catch them just before that happens. Make sure you buy a cambro dough box. I have bought the cheaper knockoffs and they do not fit together tightly and the dough dries out in the fridge. I never used plastic bags to rise dough. Will they fit in your prep fridge? I know depending on where the compressor unit is set affects that. Ours is mounted to the side of the fridge cabinets which allows for full sheet pans/dough boxes to fit in. Walter
I guess you are stuck with the bags for now and are doing all you can with their limitations. Walter
Bobino and I tried to make NY pie today on my Blackstone to see if we could help Norma. I’m not sure we achieved the goal, but everyone walked away full. Here are the results.
All pies were 270g Kyrol. Bobino will have to fill in hydration (60ish) and other dough questions.
NY1 – Included 2% sugar. Launched at 530 stone temp, baked 8 minutes. Flamed turned up toward the end for color. Result – meh.
NY2 – Also 2% sugar. Launched at 550F stone, baked 6:30 minutes. Flame turned up after 30 seconds for color. Result – Ok.
NY3 – No sugar. Launched at 530F stone, baked 6 minutes. Flame turned up at launch and color added for 1 minute, followed by 5 minutes on low. Result – yum – nice spring, good color, love the crisp.
Dave
I would have never thought just a different dough ball opening technique could make so much of a difference in oven spring. Maybe it wasn't just the opening technique but it sure seemed that way to Steve and me.
Norma,
It looks and sounds like you and Steve had a lot of fun and interesting times playing around with the five dough balls. Can you tell us if you liked the pizzas, and which one you liked the best? And what surprised you the most and was there anything that you wanted to make better?
Peter
Norma: So which one was the winner? Did some sit out longer than others? My dough changes as it sits on the bench. I always use the top of the dough ball for the bottom of the crust and also only work that one side. I have seen people flip the dough over and work both sides. Our dough is always a bit wet. I like it that way. It makes a better crust for my taste. Walter
Norma
As noted above Dave and I did some experiments to help you get your desired brown bottom with some crisp. I think we achieved this on the third bake. To start out we zeroed in on the dough where we would add additional sugar for browning and eliminate oil to decrease softness. If this didn't work we would then lower the hydration of the dough.
We made 270 gram dough balls to fit in the BS. Kyrol, 60% hydration, 2% sugar, 1.75% salt, .53% IDY, mix 7 minutes in Bosch, rest 1 hour, scale and ball, refrig(38-41 degrees) 2 days, room temp 1-2 hours prior to bake.
The first pie with sugar sucked. The second pie without sugar sucked. We tossed the third sugar dough in the garbage. Third bake was a dough without sugar and I think we ended up with what you want-darkish crispy bottom. The rest of the pie had San Marzanos, Grande whole milk and Supremo Italiano(Restaurant Depot) part skim.
I think opening technique is very important to having a puffy cornichone. Notice how in the video at 2:13 Diana demarcates the edge; she pushes down and away from the center causing the rim to roll toward her. If you combine this motion with side stretching you will end up with a puffy crispy crust.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbkfDqA8yKg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbkfDqA8yKg)
So if you follow Dave's NY3 bake method I think you will be happy.
Bob
Norma,
It is hard to say why the second dough ball produced the best pizza in your opinion. Even with identical, or nearly identical, dough balls, there can still be a lot of subtle variables from one pizza to another at market to lead you to wonder how that can be.
From a post mortem analytical standpoint, it is possible that the way you formed the rim for the second dough ball resulted in the increased oven spring, and that the resultant increased openness and rise in the dough made it have increased insulative properties such that the oven heat was directed more to the bottom crust rather than passing through it to the top side of the pizza. To the extent that that allowed a longer total bake time, the sugar in the dough might also have contributed to the increased crust coloration. Although it is always nice to know why something happened, what is perhaps more important from your perspective is to be able to reproduce the results you achieved with the second dough ball. If you can do that, then the reason is not all that important. Even then, there can be some variations. Even the best and most successful pizza operators cannot turn out identical pizzas every time.
As far as a comparison of the pizzas made with the four-day and one-day cold fermentations, it is hard for me to imagine that a pizza made with a one-day dough would be better than one made with a four-day dough. Maybe your taste testers were acclimated more to pizzas with much shorter fermentation times. After all, tHere really aren't many pizza professionals who make a four-day NY style pizza. In your case, it is good to know that you can have two options (one-day and four-day) for your pizzas that your customers like even if they can't agree on which is better.
In any event, it sounds like your pizza business is doing considerably better and that your pizzas are resonating with your customers. That is good news.
Peter
Norma: That is a lot of cheese and work for your oven! I still am amazed you guys can't really tell the difference between a 1 and 4 day feremented dough. I am not doubting your taste buds but I wish I could have you come out and taste our 4 day and 1 day dough as well as bring your 1 and 4 day dough. Maybe the ovens do have a bigger influence on the taste than I think. I never worked with an oven like yours so I have no real idea if this is so or not. The only difference I see in our doughes with ice water is you add sugar and I don't.
This week we are also getting busier each day and my normal 20 dough balls a day are running out in under the first hour of the the 3 hour lunch period ( 3-50 minute lunch periods a day we have). I think with school ending June 3rd is making people buy it up while they can. Today I had to take about 10 dough balls right out of the fridge that I wanted to ferment another day or 2 to keep up. Some were out long enough to warm up. Both the cold and warm doughes tasted much blander than the 4 day dough. Tomorrow is the last day of the week for us and today I had to make 15- 24 hour dough balls to hopefully keep us in dough tomorrow. It sounds like to me if the 1 day dough is easier on you it is the way to go because nothing is jumping out and saying the 4 day is smoking better. I wonder why Steve had to hand grate cheese. I thought you had a pelican shredder for you mixer. Walter
PS: Peter posted while I was typing. He is right in that most NY pizzerias do same day or 1 day dough. I was raised on that but since I found the multi day ferment I don't like the same day/1 day dough anymore. I did a french bread dough today that was mixed with ice water and sat 2 days in the fridge. My wife had some tonight and said the flavor was much deeper than my traditional same day french bread.
I like a moist rims, and as you might know I do like oven spring in rims. I agree with your post mortem analysis. I didn't time any of the bakes though. I guess I will do another experimental 4-day cold fermented batch of dough to see if I can reproduce the same results. Since I don't think I stretched that pizza to the full 16.5”, or a little more, do you think I should increase the TF for the next batch? I also have the nagging feeling that non sifted flour won't work out as well as sifted flour did in controlling the stickiness of the 65% hydration dough.NormaNorma,
Norma,
When I suggested in Reply 488 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg316346#msg316346 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=30641.msg316346#msg316346) that you might want to consider increasing the amount of dough a bit to allow for a larger rim, I was concerned that you might not like the finished texture of the rim. However, when you stretched the skin made from the second dough ball to less than the full 16.5", you in effect increased the thickness factor for that skin. And, as it so happened, you liked the results. So, sometime you might want to increase the thickness factor up front to allow for a bit more dough. For example, if you are currently using a thickness factor of 0.08, you might increase it to 0.09 to see if that does the trick.
As for sifting or not sifting the flour, the reason I suggested that you try sifting the flour was not only to better hydrate the flour but also to try to "squeeze" more water into the dough and thereby increase its hydration but without ending up with a final dough that was on the wet side or hard to handle. The hope was that the higher hydration would translate into increased oven spring and, hence, a larger rim, without having to increase the oven bake temperature. At some point, you might go back to using unsifted flour if one of the physical methods of increasing the size of the rim pans out.
Further to the matter of the one-day dough versus the four-day dough, there will be differences in the final crust flavor, apart from the Maillard reactions and caramelization of the natural and added sugars and the denaturing of the protein, due to the fact that the fermentation byproducts of the one-day dough will be different in terms of quantity and form than those for the four-day dough. My recollection is that you were using around 0.55% IDY for the one-day dough and, if that is true, that would produce byproducts of fermentation that have a different flavor in the finished crust than if you used a lot less IDY. It's much like how emergency doughs with a lot of yeast and using high water temperatures will yield finished crusts that have a unique flavor profile. Some people might like that flavor profile but others may find the flavors to be "off" or too unusual.
As I mentioned previously with regard to the one-day and four-day doughs, I consider it useful to be able to make both such doughs just in case you arrive at market on some Monday and see that there was a power failure or something else that rendered your four-day dough unusable. Unless it was a power failure that was not restored, you would still have enough time to make the one-day dough.
Peter
Norma: Your dough box balls look right on schedule. That is what I mean when I have told you they will bleed together on multi day ferments and not rise much upward. I predict you will get the same results you have been getting with your bag/container dough balls of the same recipe. Walter
Norma,
Based on my test dough over the weekend - I'll take a stab at why the poppy seeds did not move. In my dough & dough containers, it seems that the doughball does not stretch or grow equally from the top center out. It seems that as the dough expands it flattens from the top and grows at the sides. It seemed counter intuitive to me too - but that's what I noticed as I had taken many pictures of doughballs throughtout cold & warm fermentation in this test and was looking specifically for changes related to how two different yeast types were effecting the balls. Regardless of ADY or a sourdough - the top of the ball did not change it's appearance. However, the edges and bottom of the ball clearly did.
Just my observation. Hope it helps.
Norma,
From what you reported, it appears that you made three variable changes for the most recent dough batch: 1) you used unsifted flour, 2) the water temperature you used increased the finished dough temperature several degrees, and 3) you used the DoughMate box for four out of the five dough balls. If this is correct, you may want to go back to the dough formulation and related processing methods that gave you better results to see if those results can be repeated.
Also, did you mention how the single dough ball with the poppy seeds worked out?
Peter
Near the start of a day at market. The second boardwalk style pizza baked that was made from a one-day cold fermented dough.Too Cute - that photo of you holding the pie! Who could resist that sale. Not me.
Norma
Norma,
As you can see from member Kirk's (kdefay's) post at Reply 65 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=31619.msg317507#msg317507 (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=31619.msg317507#msg317507), you aren't the only one to have to deal with temperature variations at the workplace and the challenges they pose. I'm sure you could each learn a lot from each other on how to manage in such situations.
Peter
Norma,
Last night and again this morning, I revisited the photos of your most recent dough balls. To my eye, they look like they were pretty far along the fermentation curve. If so, they may have been wetter than usual if the water in the dough was released form its bond, and that might have affected the bake and resulted in soft or underbaked centers. I know that Walter is able to work with dough balls at such a stage but he perhaps has the advantage in that his Blodgett ovens can deliver results that your oven cannot to the same degree. It is also possible that his refrigeration is more efficient than what you can achieve at market.
I agree with you that it would be nice to avoid having to sift the flour and to use rest periods and the like, especially if you were to go to a lot more dough balls than the five dough ball samples that you have been testing. As you know, these steps were implemented only to see if it they would solve the problem you were having with small rims. So, you might skip these tests but still strive to achieve a lower finished dough temperature. If that doesn't work, or if something is lost by making the changes, then you will have to decide which methods and dough fermentation period are best for you at market.
Peter
Norma: Have you thought about this- put a bucket of water in the cooler a few days before making dough, bring some ice cubes with you on mix day,add it to the cold water, stir it really good, mix your dough with the ice water, cut off a 1/3 or 1/4 of the dough at at time while the main lump is in the cooler staying cold. That way you could come in with a well under 70 degree dough in even hot conditions. I had to do that before we moved in to our a/c's space 2 years ago. When I worked in bakeries in Austin TX we had to operate like this with icing wedding cakes. We would do a small part of the cake, put it in the walk in for a bit, and repeat till the cake was done. We also used a bowl of ice under the bowl with the icing in it as we worked to keep it from turning to liquid and would return that to the walk in as well to firm up. The temps were well over 100 degrees in the work area. I wonder why your dough was soggy in the middle? Did your sauce go on heavier or was it more watery than normal? Yes my ovens are great for turning out great pies one after another. If I had to give them up I might quit making pizzas :) Walter
Norma: If you really can't tell a difference in the 1 day or 4 day dough I would stick to what you have been doing. There is no point in doing all that extra work for no noticable return. One thing is for certain. If you are turning out a bunch of pizzas in a commercial setting they will vary quite a bit to the maker. Walter
Walter,
Thanks for your thoughts. I wish I could say I could taste at least a noticeable difference between my 1-day and 4-day cold fermented dough pizzas. That is still puzzling me. I am not sure of what I want to do tomorrow. Thanks for telling me that if a bunch of pizzas are made in a commercial setting they will vary quite a bit by the pizza maker.
Norma
Norma: The only differences I can figure are the sugar you add and the oven differences. The fridge differences are minimal I think judging by the way your dough balls look. Have you tried a 4 day dough without any sugar? Walter
Peter,
I read Kirk's reply this morning. Thanks for the link to his post! I am sure I could learn a lot from Kirk since he also has to deal with varying temperatures and the problems that go with them. Since Kirk is doing a 2-day cold ferment at 61% hydration and still has some problems I don't think I ever will be able to master a 4-day cold ferment and not have problems with the dough or the final pizzas. I sure would not be in the mood to sift flour for bigger batches of dough all the time, and if the final dough temperature has to be really low, that is something I don't think I can achieve consistently when it is warmer. I don't know what I am going to try tomorrow.
Norma
I guess I'll jump into this one late...
Last night, with an air temp of about 85F, I made about 20lbs of dough with water that was 30.5F (salt allows it to go below freezing) when it went into the mixer. At the end of mixing, the dough read a temp of 68F. I let it sit until it hit about 72F and then I made my balls. There are a few things that I think could be helpful to you on a 4-day cold ferment.
Ice- I use cube ice because it’s what we have, but I think that using crushed ice would be a better option because its smaller size means that you can begin mixing before it has completely melted and it will finish melting during the process, thus keeping your dough colder.
Refrigerator – Be sure you have it set cold. Mine has a target temp of 2C (35.5F). This cools the dough balls down faster and ensures a slower ferment.
Yeast – My opinion is that your yeast should be no more than .3% (probably less) if you want to hit 4 days. I’m just slightly over that and I won’t use dough balls after 3-days. The characteristics of the crust on a 4-day dough are just not to the liking of my Asian customers. They get turned into bread or thrown away if they make it to 4 days.
Balling – Cut off portions from the larger mass of dough for balling and keep the rest in the fridge until you need it so they can remain cold.
Taking all of that into consideration…If you have a hard time telling the difference between a 1-day and a 4-day, why go the all the trouble and expense (refrigerator space costs money) if you don’t need to. I went through this process early where I was trying to push farther and farther to make my crust better and I came to realize that my customers didn’t care and aren’t discerning enough to have really high standards. I settled into a simple 2-day straight dough that is very consistent. My customers are happy and so am I.
Kirk
I don't begin mixing until the cube ice is almost completely melted. If there's a few big chunks, I turn on the mixer (spiral mixer) with only the ice water for a bit to break them up into smaller pieces before adding the flour.
There's another method I use occasionally when we have needed to close for a few days that might be something you can try. When we decide to take a few days off, I will make a normal batch of dough and let it cold ferment for one day and then freeze those balls. When we return, I immediately take those balls out of the freezer, place them into dough boxes, and allow them to thaw at room temp. When they are sufficiently thawed but not rising, I move them into the fridge to get one more day of cold fermentation. This allows us to open for business the day after we return instead of two days later. The pizzas are still very good using this method. They may not be the prettiest balls i make because they tend to get placed where there is room in the freezer instead of nicely arranged. This method also requires that you have enough room in your freezer to hold as many balls need.
As to why I don't use 4-day dough in my shop, Asians are not sophisticated bread connoisseurs. Their bread tends to be very sweet, soft and spongy. A 4-day dough has flavor and texture characteristics that really push the boundaries for many of them. Another thing I have found is that by the time my dough hits three and four days, the fermentation level is such that gas bubbles are more likely to develop when the pizza is baking. For many of us, this can be desirable, but to Asians it is scary. They think those black bubbles mean that you have burned their pizza.