Thanks for the response - I'll try to give you a solid blend of "teach a man to fish" vs. "give a man a fish" (either way, massive post incoming):
Flour: 600g, plus unknown quantity more
(Note: Bread Flour, the one you posted was 12g protein content, this is okay but if you can ever get your hands on one which is even higher go for it)
Water: 530ml = 530g weight
Salt: 18g
Sugar: 12g
ADY: 9g
Oil: 30g
So, if you haven't had a chance to read through some of the threads here on the Lehmann dough recipe such as this one:
https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=576.0, I'd highly recommend looking through them - there is some really insightful information to pick out even in those 17 year old threads. When I originally came here I lurked through a lot of those threads and it helped sort of guide me through the do's and don'ts, and if there's any question I can't answer I guarantee Pete-zza has, it's really a treasure trove of information going through some of the stickies in the dough clinic and ny style sections of this board.
Anyway, on to the post -
Recipe SuggestionsOne of the things I mentioned about Ragusea's video being imperfect for learners is the difficulty in replicating it multiple times in a row, diagnosing issues, and tweaking it. If, for example I wanted to try out the dough recipe you gave me, it would be impossible for me to correctly duplicate your efforts myself, since who really knows how much flour you added after the original mix. Perhaps a very experienced pizza maker who has been making his dough the same way for years can easily tell by feel via Ragusea's methods, but we're not there yet so it's more important than ever to be precise.
It looks like you're measuring everything by weight more or less - this is also a crucial thing to do, since a well packed cup of flour might take up the same volume as a loosely packed cup of flour and throw your actual flour to water ratio way off without you knowing it. When I am making my dough I weigh my flour and water every time. The smaller ingredients I will often use measuring spoons, since I don't trust my scale's sensitivity on 6 vs 7 grams of yeast for example, and its less likely that the volume of salt or yeast will be far off from its actual weight like flour could be.
So let's talk baker's percentage for a second - this is how we standardize our ratio of four to other ingredients. Beginning with the weight of the flour (which always represents 100% in this case), we weigh out other ingredients, and their weight in relation to the flour is their percentage. Hydration percentage, which is something you'll see talked about a LOT around here is the weight of water in the dough mix relative to the weight of your flour. So for example, with no other ingredients, 100g of flour + 60g of water would be a 60% hydration percentage. Other ingredients affect this calculation, and most people on here will use something like this:
https://pizza-dough-calculator.herokuapp.com/calculator in order to calculate the right ratio of ingredients for a new crust they're testing. Since your original weights were so even in terms of flour to water (which would result in a super high hydration %) we can only know that you brought that ratio down, but even if you added 200g of flour while kneading, it would only bring the total hydration % down to maybe like 70% which is still pretty high - I know Ragusea says he favors high hydration doughs, but whether or not you really want high hydration depends on a bunch of other factors. At the minimum, if you have a solid reference point by measuring more accurately, you can adjust this later to match your own tastes/goals with the dough.
I'm rambling but my suggestion to you would be on your next attempt, try out that dough calculator and go with the following settings:
Thickness factor: 0.1
Dough Balls: 2
Shape: Round
Size: 12
Hydration %: 64
Yeast Amount: .5
Preferment: None
Salt: Regular/Sea Salt
Salt Amount %: 2
[Add Ingredient]
Olive Oil %: 2
Bowl Residue Compensation %: 1
This will give you the following amounts:
Flour: 384g
Water: 245g
ADY: 1.9 g (1/2 TSP)
Salt: 7.6g (1 1/3 TSP)
Olive Oil: 7.6g (1 3/4 TSP)
Single Dough Ball = 323g
I'd suggest starting out with that recipe, since it's a strong baseline. If you try it and don't like something about it, it will be easy to tweak it wherever you want by simply adjusting the percentages or adding ingredients (like if you wanted to use sugar or honey, different kinds of yeast, small amounts of yeast, etc.)
Process Suggestions (Making Dough)Step 1: Your first step is correct for ADY, add the water and yeast together and give it 10 minutes to activate/bloom. Make sure your water isn't too hot, since super hot water can kill the yeast - should be 29c to 37c range I believe.
Step 2: Weigh out your flour in a bowl, add in your salt.
Step 3: Once the yeast+water mixture is ready, if using a stand mixer (I'd recommend this if available just to save time/mess/effort) make sure the water is in the mixing bowl, then add the flour. Some people add this in two stages, but I find that when working with small quantities it doesn't turn out differently if I add it in stages (like half, then knead, then half) or if I do it all at once. Add the flour to the water. Its been proven that adding the flour to the water helps the flour absorb slightly faster, especially when using a stand mixer, so it's a habit I keep. If kneading by hand, just make sure the water is in whatever bowl you want to start mixing in, then add in the flour.
Step 4: Mix or knead the dough until it starts getting pretty solid and smoothing out - add the olive oil and continue kneading. After a few minutes, transfer the dough to a work bench - you shouldn't need to flour your bench at this stage, and I'd recommend against it since it can throw your hydration off especially when working in small quantities. With 64% hydration and 2% olive oil, it shouldn't stick too badly and you should be able to knead until the surface is looking nice and smooth.
Step 5: I skip window pane tests and other things of that nature. If it's looking pretty smooth and I don't see any unincorporated ingredients after a while mixing I move on to portioning - portion your dough balls out, weigh them. The exact amount for the recipe posted above is 323, doesn't have to be flawless, but try to get each close to 320 - don't worry if you have to cut chunks off one and add to the other.
Step 6: Ball the dough. There are a lot of different techniques for doing this. I think Ragusea covers one of them in his video, and it's probably sufficient as long as it produces a smooth ball.
Step 7: Oil your fermentation containers lightly, I like to get a little coating of oil on the dough balls themselves, and then pop them into the fridge.
I'd suggest with that formula a 24+ hour rise in the fridge, 48+ if you want the dough to be really easy to work with. While it's fermenting over the next day or so (can be in there probably 4-6 days) check on it - assuming you have clear containers. You'll see air bubbles start to form all over the dough, which is an excellent sign that the yeast are doing their thing. If those bubbles are totally absent after hours and hours in the fridge, it's a sign that the yeast are not doing their job (they could be dead, they could have been killed by a mishap in any of the pizza steps - for example one time early on I accidentally misread TSP for TBSP and added way too much salt and it was R.I.P. for my poor yeast - that dough did not ferment, it was a total loss).
Process Suggestions (Day of pizza cook)1. You mentioned that you took the cold dough out of the fridge on the first pizza and made your pizza then put it straight in. For the second pizza, you used warm water to bring the temperature up quickly. I'd recommend neither of these things. When you pre-heat your oven (which you're doing for ~1 hour, right?) take your dough out a bit before you begin that process and just let it sit on your counter top for that hour or so. Once your steel has preheated for long enough, make your pizza and pop it in.
2. How are you opening up your dough when you're making your pizza and prepping for the oven? There are a few techniques for stretching (I know Ragusea uses the gravity stretch, which is okay but there is more to it all) and I could provide some youtube videos from good pizza makers that have a few good examples of some things to try.
3. I didn't see you address your peel or how you're prepping/transferring the pizza to the steel, I might have suggestions for you if you've had any difficulty with this step (which is very common when you're starting out)
Oven/Bake SuggestionsSo with your oven as you've described it, I would suggest trying the following:
1. Cook the entire time using your broiler (grill I guess is the UK term?). It should be on the highest setting (usually they default to whatever the hottest possible temp is)
2. Leave your rack position where is it - many pizza steel companies out there will recommend cooking with the broiler and the oven rack on the 2nd position from the top. This has two effects - the surface of your steel will of course absorb the heat from the broiler when pre-heating, so you should be fine there in terms of getting it to temp. and having good oven spring for your pizza. Secondly, since a piping hot steel should cook the bottom of your dough quite quickly, having your cheese and the top of the crust close to the heating element usually helps you get the cook to turn out pretty evenly.
3. Cook time itself is less of a factor, I assume you were not closely timing it originally which is not a problem - watch your pizza closely while it bakes (try not to open the door way too much and let all the heat out of course). A lot of the rules for the oven apply solely to your oven in your home. My electric oven behaves far differently from the gas oven at my brother's house which is night and day different from the gas oven at my parents' house, etc. Watch your pie and make sure to take it out of the oven before the cheese gets uncomfortably burnt. From there you can assess how the bottom cook went, etc.
You're going to need to experiment with your oven and dial your pizza cook in. For example, if you follow the recipe well, cook as I've suggested and the cheese is burning like crazy - forcing you to take the pizza out, but the crust isn't done enough on the bottom yet - move the rack lower and try again. This will put your pizza top farther away from the heating element, and allow it to char slower on top, giving the bottom more time to get crunchy. Likewise, if the bottom is burning quickly before your pizza top is cooked, consider moving it up a notch.
SummaryAlright, my pizza dissertation is complete. Sorry for the longwinded post, but I saw in your pizza some of the things I've worked to correct over the past few months and it's been extremely rewarding to see my efforts come to fruition and great pizzas to start rolling out of the oven, I only hope that you can get there too. For reference, in my home I have an oven that maxes out around 500, it's electric and I'm baking with a 1/4 inch steel using All-Trumps flour and a recipe similar to, but not exactly like the one I posted above and getting excellent results.
My other tip would be to worry about your cheese and sauce second. At a glance, the Tesco mozzarella looks like it's probably pretty decent. Different cheeses in particular may change the character of your pizza quite a bit. After months of hemming and hawing I pulled the trigger on trying out some Grande brand cheese, which is only really sold to restaurants via distributors. It's not even a uniformly loved cheese by the actual restaurant operators on here but the difference vs. the grocery store cheese I was using prior was night and day. The melt changed my bake times and allowed me to get my crust a bit crispier on bottom because it's a more resilient cheese to the heat of my oven. Point is, if I started with the great cheese but hadn't nailed down my crust I really wouldn't have known what I had or appreciated the upgrade to my overall pizza. Get your dough just the way you like it and the pizza world is your oyster - good luck! If you have any questions I'll try to answer. There is always a smarter and more experienced member of this forum around though - my word is not gospel, seek out the advice of others here and find out what works for you.