First attempt at home ground, whole wheat dough

[pnj]

It's been awhile since I've made pizza. I picked up some red wheat and used my vita mix to grind it. It worked fairly well but the flour is still pretty course.

I mixed 2.5 cups of the flour, 2.5 cups of water and 2/3's of a packet of IDY. I let this sit over night at 'room temp'. It's about 60 degrees in my house.

next morning I mixed 2 cups of KA white whole wheat flour, 1 tsp salt, 2 tbs sugar and the rest of the yeast packet with my 'sponge'.

I mixed by hand and weight out six dough balls at 170 grams each. I'm letting them sit out at room temp and I plan on cooking them tonight on the stone.

I can't wrap my head around the whole percentage thing but I'm curious what my hydration is.

2.5 cups home milled red wheat
2.5 cups water
2/3 packet of IDY

2 cups KA ww flour
1 tsp salt
2 tbs sugar

I'll keep you posted....

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39380852/Photo%20Dec%2028%2C%2012%2024%2039%20PM.jpeg

 

[buceriasdon]

I recalulated and got a equally high hydration, the numbers just don't add up to the picture. 
Don

[parallei]

Based on your info:

4.5 cups WW Flour is about 543g
2.5 cups water is about 591g

So Hydration is (591/543)*100 = 109%

Seems a bit high and the photo didn't look that hydrated.......Maybe I screwed it up.  Are your volumes all correct?

I used KA WW flour and this calculator:http://foodsim.toastguard.com/

[parallei]

Don, Yeah I agree.  Water is about 8.3 oz (weight)/cup (volume) which makes it even worse (from the recipe making sense point of view).  You're right Don, scales are where it is at......

[pnj]

I didn't weigh my flour, so I know the weights are just guesses. The home ground flour was sifted and the KA was just used right out of the bag.

Initially, I mixed 2.5 cups of my ground flour with 1.5 cups of water and the dough was so thick it wouldn't lay flat in the bowl. I ended up adding another cup of water, along w/ the yeast and it finally looked and acted like a poolish.

I tried to keep the dough as wet as I could because it seems that dry, whole wheat dough has a hard time rising. The pics are dry looking because they have flour on the outside. Inside they were still very moist. So moist that when needing, it would stick to my hands very easily.

The dough has nearly doubled in size now.

I'm simmering my sauce right now and I'll be attempting to make some mozz. cheese shortly...

[buceriasdon]

I look forward for the results
Don

[pnj]

My oven only goes up to 500. Heated the stone up for an hour and shaped the dough.

The balls had doubled in size and were still really wet. They want to tear easily so I was very careful about stretching them out. I used a small amount of flour on the counter and shaped by hand. I did 8 minutes in the oven.
 
That is with a homebrewed pale ale. The dough rose evenly in the oven. Usually I have a thicker outer crust. It TASTED great. which is most important to me. I would have liked it to be easier to shape though.

Shown below with a homebrewed pale ale. oh, the cheese turned out great too.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39380852/Photo%20Dec%2028%2C%205%2045%2035%20PM.jpeg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39380852/Photo%20Dec%2028%2C%205%2047%2003%20PM.jpeg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39380852/Photo%20Dec%2028%2C%206%2020%2026%20PM.jpeg

[pnj]

I'm trying to figure out what I can do to help with elasticity.

Did I use too much yeast? not enough yeast? Did I let them rise for too long? was the temp I did the at rise too warm?

Does the grain need to be milled more/better?

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

[barryvabeach]

While many posters here use scales, and I am addicted, I think you will benefit the most from using scales since the volume may change based on how finely you mill the flour, while the weight will stay the same.  I have done a lot of comparisons with various combinations, but I have been so all over the map with cold fermentation vs room temp,  pizza stone vs steel plate in oven and in bbq grill, and electric pizza ovens, ischia v. yeast,  I haven't drawn any real firm conclusions, though in general I like a mix of white and red berries, usually around 35% or more, up to 65% white hard berries.  

[pnj]

I will be weighing out my ingredients for the next batch but I don't think this will solve the issue I'm currently trying to fix. That is, the dough, while it rose very well, tore very easily.

I interested in using as much whole grain as possible. I know how to make dough do what I want using other mixtures of flour but I want to get away from store bought flour.

[charbo]

The coarseness of the home-milled flour is probably contributing to your problem.  If you want to continue home-milling, a better mill would help a lot.

[barryvabeach]

PNJ, I have had lots of problems with tearing too easily, and haven't sorted them all out, but a common cause for me is overfermentation when using a natural starter ( Ischia) and a long room temp rise.  I usually shoot for hydration in the 70 to 75% range, I think Villa shoots for 80 or maybe even slightly higher. Once you get your scale, make enough dough for several small test pies, then put the dough into several separate containers, and try fermenting diff times, and see how easily it tears.   When I did a similar experiment, I could not even get the ones that fermented the longest out of the container without shredding.   

[pcampbell]

stupid question but pnj are you in NJ?

[pnj]

not in jersey. the 'nj' is part of my initials.

[pcampbell]

how do you buy the wheat.. is it in berries?  we are trying to fully localize our food.  I can get pretty darn local organic milled  whole wheat but I wonder if it'd be better to even go less processed than that and mill ourselves.  It should taste better since it is more fresh I would imagine?

[pnj]

yea, they are 'berries'. I get them at the 'hippy' store.

[WheatandFire]

I really like milling my own flour it takes a bit more water and is best with a natural sponge starter... you can find our more about our natural dough here: http://wheatfire.com/mobile-wood-fire-pizza-catering-dough/
A great interesting way to make pizza!

[debroodmakerij]

Hello guys, interesting to read this (old) topic. I'm new at milling at home and now I want to have a go at whole grain sourdough pizza making After making thousands of batches of fresh pizza dough with store bought flour. Last night we had a whole grain dough with 2% starter that had fermented at room temp for 48hours. The dough wasn't elastic at all, ripped terribly easy and was hard to shape. Think it was a little over-fermented too because it started to come down again in the container. Didn't taste as fantastic as my first attempt the week before, that was with a much higher % starter, shorter room temp fermentation and overnight in the fridge. But that too was a non-elastic dough. Now my question is, what can I do to make it more elastic? I started (a bit too enthusiastic maybe) at 96% whole grain with 4% of the larger bran particles sifted out. Should I aim for a much lower % whole grain and sift out more? Or is there another way to approach this? All input welcome!