You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Now I have a pizza oven (and had a pretty successful first attempt at the weekend), I have been reading up a bit more on dough recipes (up until now I had always used the same recipe I got with a bread maker years ago) as one thing I took from manually launching pizzas was that my dough was a bit wet and fluffy. This led me to finding that there is more than one type of yeast - 'active' yeast and 'fast acting' yeast. One recipe I found expressly says not to use fast acting due to how much it makes the dough rise and this reflects my experience at the weekend.
Can anyone corroborate this recommendation - should I just be using active yeast rather than fast acting?
Thank you.
Make a poolish, yeast doesn't really matter imo.
200ml water, 200g 00 flour, 5g yeast, 5g of honey.
Mix it up, leave it out for 1 hour, then put it in the fridge for 16 hours.
once that is ready. Just make the dough up to 65-70% hydration using the poolish.
Wet dough is good, can be difficult to handle though, need to use flour or semolina for shaping. Semolina is better. Doesn't burn like flour.
To up-level your pizza oven experience, you should probably look to getting your own special sourdough culture from either natural cereals in your local area, or a local artisan. Having a hand-made pizza apron also helps.
In all seriousness, using sourdough is good way to get a decent pizza base, but it does mean you have to maintain the culture and also be prepared to spend more time waiting for the dough to prove.
Any yeast will realistically work. Sourdough is just wild yeasts, often with various bacteria thrown in which is what gives it it's tang.
My last batch of pizzas was made with girvin burgundy wine yeast, because it's all I had in the house.
Doesn't work the other way arround, beer made with bread yeast is rank 😂.
You can make a 'starter' from normal yeast and keep it in the fridge to re-use again and again if you want to. The yeast quicky evolves to suit the conditions so whatever you start with will optimise itself to munching through whatever you feed it (flour, sugar, honey, etc).
FYi, to make up the hydration.
just base it off the total flour count btw.
for example. using 200g for the poolish. So if you add 500g of flour to that. base the 65% off the 700g.
So 700g of flour = 455ml total of water (just add another 255ml to the poolish mix). Salt, I like 2.5%, so 17.5g of salt. add in a glug of olive oil too, about 20ml tops.
As per seosamh, I just make a poolish with a small amount of yeast (either type of dried stuff works). And semolina makes shaping easier
Also, cover your hands in olive oil when working with the dough prior to final shaping works too. Semolina is just for the final shape of the actual pizza, after you've made the dough balls.
Vito Iacopelli is the youtube channel you want btw.
add in a glug of olive oil too, about 20ml tops.
Not if you're cooking in a proper pizza oven at 350-450°C, all you'll do is burn it more.
That's not my experience. Olive oil is optional though.
My last batch of pizzas was made with girvin burgundy wine yeast, because it’s all I had in the house.
We’ve all been there 🙂
We’ve all been there
First world problems!
😊
Semolina rules for pizza shaping and cooking though. Even for those of us with just one oven for everything.
Soft and craunchy.
Vito on YouTube is your man.
I just use instant dry yeast. PizzApp on your phone has the various yeast types and will give the quantities for the type you're using and the time you've got before cooking. Can take a bit of getting your head around (quite a few acronyms) but works well. Or just follow a Vito recipe.
I'm currently using Caputo Dried Yeast, though looking at date code printing on the tin it appears it's identical to Allison's Easy Bake.
I've experimented with sourdough in the past, but the hassle of keeping a starter vs. very slight difference in flavour profile isn't worth it in my opinion. Plenty hipster points though...
I've tried to workout a poolish method, but not working from home I can't make the timings work.
I've currently settled on Saccorosso at 67% hydration for a 24hr proof, 30mins or so autolyse, 20hrs in the fridge, then balled and left at room temp (covered) for 4hrs.
I did pick up a bag of Nuvola at the weekend, I'm looking forward to giving that a go to see if I can get some super puffy crusts.
Oh, and +1 for PizzApp!
Semolina rules for pizza shaping and cooking though. Even for those of us with just one oven for everything.
I've gone off using semolina, I wasn't keen on the texture it adds- too reminiscent of Dominos! Now I shape the ball in a gert big pile of flour and shake most of it off before placing on the wooden peel.
Personally, I use Caputo yeast with Caputo Blue flour.
Ooni app to calculate, 280g balls for 12 inch pizzas, 65% hydration, 3.5% salt. Just flour, yeast, salt and water. No sugar, oil or honey.
24 hour total prove time. Best results with 21 hours bulk prove overnight, 3 hours balled up.
Caputo semolina to stretch.
Stretch and build pizza on wooden work surface thing from IKEA. Careful not to stretch too thin. Move pizza to peel at last minute to launch. I find building on the peel encourages sticking, less time on the peel the better IMO.
Caputo blue flour is good, what I use, cause it already comes with some manitoba flour in it, think that's the difference from normal 00 flour. I've been using caputo yeast too.
Should add as well, after you've made the final dough with your poolish, nothing to stop you letting that lie for a 24/48 hours proof too.
I find building on the peel encourages sticking, less time on the peel the better IMO.
A wooden peel is also so much better for launching.
Slight deviation, but does anyone have a good reference on the chemistry of dough? If you don’t know what’s happening it’s hard to fix problems and all the explanations I’ve seen tend to lapse into non-scientific gobbledygook!