Great job and great looking pie there SB!
I have never tried the repeated rises and punch downs on Silician type style. Can you comment on what difference this makes for you?
Thanks for sharing,
Hog
I believe that it's done primarily just to accomplish the stretch necessary to fill the pans corner to corner & edge to edge. With every successive rise it becomes easier to stretch. I also normally do a cold ferment overnight. I use polycarbonate containers that I spray with cooking spray, seal them with lids, and stack them in my garage fridge overnight. Because the containers are square, it also gives me a head start on the stretch to rectangular shape when I put them in the pans. I generally try to put the dough into the pans at least 4 hours before baking. Pictures of the containers are in one of my earlier posts in this thread.
If I were running a pizza restaurant serving this pizza, the weighed dough balls would go right into the oiled pans , given the initial stretch as in the video, and then into a proofing cabinet to sit before a final stretch, topping, and bake. I'd probably get about 50 trays ahead to start the day. The real VP restaurant uses several senior ladies (italian grandmothers?) to do the stretching & topping. They only make pizza on wednesdays, fridays, & saturdays from 4:00 until 10:00. That's the only time they're open and they have made a fortune over the years (and they're cash only).
