Hi Nick, the fermentation chart Craig (TXCraig) developed is a fantastic tool and provides a reasonable jumping in point when you are determining how long you want your fermentation period to be. The chart uses algorithms so it can be unintentionally precise. I believe this is more true for CF than room temperature (RT) fermentation. If you are doing CF you have an enormous window of opportunity (time) around the precise times detailed in the chart. The things you do (your process) will have more of an effect on the “best time to bake” compared to a shift on the chart.
Example. Person A uses really cold water and measures flour from a storage location in a cold garage. Mixes everything together and ends up with a cold finished dough temperature. Depending how person A handled the yeast, it could have been shocked - slowing down the dough even more. The dough is balled and goes into the fridge.
Person B uses room temperature water and measures flour from a bin stored inside the house which is a comfortable 73 degrees F. Mixes everything together and ends up with a warm finished dough temperature. Everything else is done exactly the same otherwise. The dough is balled and goes into the fridge.
Person A and B will experience major differences in their fermentation rate until the dough balls in the fridge equalize in temperature (which can take some time due to the insulating properties of dough and the dough ball size / shape).
As a general rule of thumb you are trying to ferment your dough until it doubles in size (or a bit more than that). The time to hit that sweet spot will be different for Person A and B (for the reasons I mentioned above). And there are other factors that can impact fermentation rate - in a negative or positive manner. Those items can be part of the workflow or ingredient amounts.
The reason I’m mentioning this is because there are countless workflows that will work perfectly - but if you are not consistent and change workflows and ingredient amounts you are going to have a hard time understanding what is going on with your dough - remember it is alive. It is best not to change more than one thing at a time.
Using multiple flours can help you for many different reasons like, taste, oven characteristics, texture, color etc. — But (IMO) not a good idea to jump into that until you get into a groove with a workflow and settle on a recipe you like. I have a deck oven in my garage and I use different flours to adjust for the unique properties of the oven - most others on this forum do it to adjust taste or texture of the final pie. BTW, for the last few weeks I have been building an online dough sauce and cheese calculator - I’ll give you the link later so you can check it out. It handles multiple flours.
I’m not sure how big a pizza you plan to make or what type of material your peel is made out of — or how big your landing zone (stone) is. You can find videos of people online using metal peels and launch in one quick motion. I don’t recommend metal peels for launching or launching in one quick motion for someone who has not gotten comfortable with the launching process yet. Wooden peels are many times easier to launch from - save your metal peel for turning and removing the pizza. The time your pizza spends on the peel (as you dress it) can be the difference between making pizza or making a calzone. Use some bench flour - work quickly and during the dressing process give your peel a little shake a few times - it needs to be sliding freely or you’re going to have a problem. I recommend placing the peel on the cooking surface about where you want the far edge of the pie to be - tilt the handle up a bit and give the peel a little shake. It should slide off the peel and the the small (inch or so) bit of the dough that hits the surface will stick a little. Then continue to shake while pulling the peel out. If the pie is not coming out round as it exits the peel, moving the handle up will make the shape wider, lowering the handle as the pie is sliding off will help it not bunch up and you can actually pull it into shape a bit by sliding the peel back while the front fo the pie is stuck on the surface. - not hard to do but it takes a few launches to get it down so it is easy and natural. You can practice with a slice of bread - that will not behave like dough but it will help you imprint some muscle memory. (Sorry - this is hard to explain - but really isn’t that hard once you do it - maybe someone can provide a link to a good video to illustrate it)...
One final thing - home ovens are not as powerful as real pizza shop ovens - try to limit the amount of time the door is open - door oven means your are pouring heat out of the oven. Don’t open the door unless you need to turn the pie or until you are ready to remove it.
To your questions, yes - colder means slower fermentation rate, yes, more yeast will make the dough move faster and your time to bake will be shorter. It is a balance. Other things can impact fermentation time - salt is a big one, we add salt for flavor but it also will slow your fermentation. Salt ranges are usually between 1.75% - to 2.75%, just know that adding more salt will inhibit fermentation rate. I don’t think anyone has a chart for that or at least I have not seen it….
One more thing - the scales you use - you really need two. One is a typical home food scale - use that one to measure out your flour and water. That scale will not be accurate enough to the smaller quantities like your yeast. You need a much more accurate scale for that - luckily you can get a small very accurate micro scale on amazon for 10-15 dollars. I measure everything else (beyond the water and flour) on my micro scale that measures down to a 100th of a gram. Using two scales is important for repeatability.
I hope this helps you - if anything was hard to understand, let me know, I’m happy to try again or answer any other questions you might have….
PS. Link to my dough, sauce and cheese online calculator below - there is also a thread on it here on pizzamaking.com if you are interested.
www.mypizzamaster.com
