Pizza Dough Mixing

For those of you not taking notes at the workshop on the 18th, here is the mixing schedule that we used for the pizza dough:

• mix pre-ferment + flour + water (no salt) on low for 4 minutes
• 20 minutes bulk ferment, covered
• add salt and mix on medium 6-8 minutes
• 45-60 minutes bulk ferment
• One fold
• Return to bowl for 30-45 minutes
• Quick shape & divide
• shape into 10oz. balls, cover and retard at 40° for 90 minutes
• pull the dough from the retarder 1-1.5 hours before baking.

And here are some other notes:

• Desired dough temperature is 76°
• Hydration was 70%
• Salt was 0.5% (a scant tablespoon)
• Friction factor for the KitchenAid mixers is about 20°

We rushed the retard part on Saturday.  As a result, our dough developed a little less flavor than it might have with a longer retard, but gluten development didn't suffer at all, so, yes, you can push the times.

I usually do a 70% hydration with high-protein flour (Central Milling High Mountain, Giusto's Ultimate Performer, or Tipo 00 pizza flour will all work).  Avoid adding flour after the first mix; it's okay to adjust consistency by adding water during either mix.

I posted the XLS file that I use to calculate specific dough proportions on the LA Bread Bakers meetup page under "files."

Oven up and running again

Saturday night I made 100 ounces of dough for pizza with these proportions:

pounds	ounces
1	0.0	levain
3	1.3	Flour
2	2.7	Water
0	1.0	Salt

Which was almost the same as the focaccia dough (75% Hydration) I described in the earlier post.  Because of time constraints I had to make the dough the night before, fold, divide, and shape it, and put in the fridge overnight.  The dough was in the fridge from 12-midnight until about 2:30, when I pulled it out and started the oven fire.

I wasn't too happy with the results.  It was just too wet to easily work with -- especially for kids and neophytes.  The extensibility was fine, but  something was amiss.

Also, the oven took FOREVER to heat up!  It wasn't ready for the first flatbread until almost 5:30 -- it took nearly 2 1/2 hours to reach full temperature, and then I had trouble keeping it hot.  This is only the second weekend since the holidays that we used the oven, so it's probably drawn a lot of moisture into the insulation.  Last year it took three, successive firings to get the oven to behave.

Luckily, the pizzas tasted great and we had cake friends and wine, so who's complaining!

Focaccia al Silverton

Thursday was my daughter's Jr. High School graduation.  A party was held at one of the graduates homes to celebrate.  Originally the plan was to make pizza in their wood-fired oven, but under the influence of Nancy Silverton's recently published focaccia recipe, we decided to try that instead.

I did some calculations based on the LA Times article and determined that her hydration was 75% +/- with about 2% olive oil, salt, and about 3% rye flour added.  I swapped whole wheat for rye (as I didn't have any rye in-stock) and using my standard starter (levain), mixed up two batches of dough the night before for a total of 180 ounces of dough.  I let this ferment on the counter for an hour and a half, then did a fold, and put in a dough tub in the fridge overnight for a retarded ferment.


My friend Andrea did something similar, but an 80% hydration and 30% wheat flour.


In the morning I pulled the dough from the counter, let it warm up, and then did another fold. I trucked the dough over to her house about three hours later and divided it and did quick shapes into 18-ounce balls.  


The balls were placed seam-side down into 12" pans that had been filled with about a quarter cup of olive oil.  After resting for about 30-40 minutes we started topping them with onions, peppers, olives, tomato, and herbs.  all in all, we made about 30-40 focaccia, and then cooked them over the next few hours 6 at a time in her oven.


The flavor was great -- but I think next time, we will cut back on the olive oil, significantly. 

photos: K. Labby

Got a Mixer!!

Electrolux Assistent; Ebay.  It was just delivered today.
I'll try it out this weekend with a little test mix.  Looks, and runs like new.

Going short on Levain

Finally found a day to invite my neighbors over for pizza: Today.

However, I was out all last night and got home late and.... forgot to feed the starter and take it out of the fridge!!

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:

Cold Front

Approaching weather (yes L.A. has weather) is pushing our now-customary Sunday night bake ahead one night to Saturday. It's 60° in the backyard now, and it will probably drop into the 50s by the time I am ready to bake, so the plan is to go for a big, hot fire that will bake pizza and keep us warm.



Today's dough recipe (by weight) was as follows after the jump:

Pizza Encore

We had so much stuff left over from Friday night, that we decided to do another pizza night on Sunday. I had to make up a new batch of dough and prepare a couple of gluten-free crusts for some of our guests.

I was pretty much out of the (pricey) Caputo 00 flour and the only bread flour I could find in the neighborhood market was Gold Medal.

Pizza!

I spent Friday morning picking up last minute supplies: Surfas for a new metal peel, and a wire brush/scraper combo thingy; cheese, toppings, and firewood from the grocery store; Baller's for a dowel and hardware to extend the handle on my old wooden peel.

At around 1 PM, I mixed dough, then went back out to work on the peels and brush.