From the Baker's Notebook

I keep a plain, black sketchbook in the kitchen and use it as a notebook to prepare and record each days bread dough formula, temperature calculation, and kind of flour used, etc.

My goal for yesterday was to make enough dough for about 12 pizzas. Because I do a hand mix, I've been needing to add a lot of flour once the bread hits the bench, so I decided to try a lower-than-usual hydration of 72.5%.

Here are my notes transcribed from my notebook:



First the target recipe for the dough:

5.5 lbs dough = 88 oz.
@72.5% hydration baker's percentages are:

51 oz flour (100%)
37 oz water (72.5%)
0.44 oz. salt (05%)

Next I did a calculation to find out how much water and flour are in the levain:

2 lbs levain @ 80% hydration
(fed 8hrs before with Giusto's UHP & Caputo 00)

2 lbs = 32 oz composed of:

17.8 oz. flour (100%)
14.2 oz. water (80%)

Then the water and flour in the levain are deducted from the total in the recipe to find out how much flour to add. My scale's display is in lbs. and decimal oz. so the extra math is to convert the ounces into that format.

5.5 lbs total dough - 2lbs levain = 3.5 lbs

51 oz. total flour - 17.8 oz. levain flour = 33.2 oz.
33.2 oz.= 2 lbs 1.2 oz. new flour

37 oz. total water - 14.2 oz. levain water= 22.8 oz
22.8 oz = 1 lb 5.5 oz. new water

Now the calculation for the water temperature was done (from Bread); I use a friction factor of "10" for the hand mix and that seems about right.

target temp 76°
76*4 = 304

levain temp = 64.4°
flour temp = 65.3°
ambient temp = 67.1°
friction factor = 10°

calculation:
304 - (64.4 + 65.3 + 67.1 + 10) = 97.2 water temperature.

I started mixing at around 9:00 AM. I did the initial mix in a bowl with a wooden spoon for 3 minutes stirring vigorously. Then the dough is poured out onto a counter dusted with flour. I do a 20 minute hand mix and add additional flour as needed. This time I weighed the flour can before and after to estimate how much additional flour was added during the hand mix. It turns out it was around 6 ounces. After mixing, the dough temperature was 72°. The final hydration, with the bench flour included, was 65%.

The dough was transferred back to the bowl where it rested for about 1 hour, covered. Next I did a fold and degassing (see Bread for details) and returned the dough to rest for another hour (or what was supposed to be another hour). Of course life interrupts sometimes, and I didn't get back to teh bread for something more like two hours. The dough had doubled in the interim.

I turned the dough out onto a lightly floured counter and degassed it again, and preshaped it into a batard-like shape. The dough was portioned into 8 oz. pieces and then each pieces was shaped into a ball and placed into individual olive-oil coated, covered containers. The containers were placed in the fridge to ferment around 12:00 noon, where they remained until 3:00 PM.

At around 3:00 I took the dough out of the fridge, and went out to light the fire -- I mentioned it had been raining for three days, right? Everything was a little damp, and it took a few tries to get even the paper to light. The fire started off quite slowly, but I kept piling on wood and after an hour or so, the roof of the inside of the oven started to whiten -- meaning it was reaching cooking temp.

Meanwhile, kitchen helpers have been prepping toppings and guest have started to arrive. at around 5:00 I popped in the first test pizza, which cooked in about 90" in the hot oven.

This batch of dough came out a bit differently than past batches. It was very chewy, and the dough was very elastic and kept wanting to spring back instead of stretch. and I suspect one or more of the following were contributing factors: the flour was the Caputo, instead of the Giusto's; the extended bench rest after the first fold caused the dough to peak too soon; or the lower initial hydration.

Anyway, 12 more pizzas made and consumed (along with Gluhwein and squash soup) and some friendly, outdoor fun was had by all under a dark and broken sky.

Pizza of the night: a classic Margherita.