Peter,
That's once again very interesting. I've been reading a lot about sourdough and bacteria recently, do you think it could also be possible that lactobacillus and yeast naturally present in the flour also activate like when starting a sourdough? I know that white/refined flours don't have a lot of them as they are mostly in bran (or in organic flours), and I never made the experiment, but that would seem possible.
Yael,
After I had made pizza with so little yeast, one of our members, widespreadpizza (Marc), who lives in New Hampshire, asked if there might have been enough naturally occurring yeast in the dough to raise it. You can see Marc's post where he raised this issue, and my reply that followed it, at Replies 62 and 63 at:
https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7225.msg78700#msg78700On the assumption that maybe wild yeast was at work, we both then made doughs that had no yeast added, in any form.
You can see Marc's finished pizza at Reply 82 at:
https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7225.msg78756.html#msg78756 Maybe your thesis has merit but in my case I did not detect any sourness in the finished crusts. If there had been even a mild sourness, I would have mentioned that. Marc commented that his guests liked his pizza (and better than other pizzas he made) but he did not mention sourness as a component of the crust flavor. Also, in retrospect, I wonder if the salt may also have inhibited yeast performance.
To the above, I would add that I made a dough ball using stale Caputo flour as a further "no yeast" experiment. However, while I made a skin out of the dough ball, I did not make a pizza out of it. You can see the details for that experiment at Reply 96 at:
https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=7225.msg78952;topicseen#msg78952Maybe Marc and I made salted natural preferments in amounts large enough to make pizzas out of them, but without going through the usual multi-day procedure of multiple feedings
. Also, as an afterthought, I went to one of Didier Rosada's articles to see how he described a biga in terms of its hydration and prefermentation temperature. This is part of what he wrote:
Biga originally was a very stiff pre-ferment used by Italian bakers to reinforce the strength of the dough. A traditional biga is prepared using flour, water, and yeast. The hydration is around 50-55% (very stiff). Unlike the poolish and the sponge process, the quantity of yeast, the fermentation temperature, and the fermentation time are constant. Usually, .8 to 1% of fresh commercial yeast is used. The biga is then held at around 60°F for about 18 hours.Source:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040814193817/cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food3_apr2004.htmYou will note that I used a hydration of 57%. Marc used 62%. For the most part, we both used high room temperatures for fermentation purposes in order to make the doughs usable in about 20-24 hours. Marc felt better than 99% certain that it was the wild yeast in the flour that was responsible for the results we achieved. However, I am not sure that we can rule out bacterial fermentation.
Peter
