Personal Best Pizza

[BackyardPermaculture]

Re: Personal Best Pizza

robs,

I don't really get how you would have bubbly dough if you followed Rossco's method on here? Can you confirm that the only yeast used was the small amount in the biga? And that the biga underwent a retarded fermentation in the fridge? If so, really confused why you got bubbles.

Cheers,
Mick

[robs]

Re: Personal Best Pizza

The idy packagin says to use 4 teaspoons per 1000g of flour, i only used 1/2 teaspoon for 1000g of flour. Roughly 400g of flour used used in the bigga, 300g water then in the fridge overnight. Next day mixed in the remaining flour, 1 1/2 tablespoons of salt, 2 tablespoons of olive can't remember how much extra water but it was quite wet and back in the fridge overnight again.

[texassourdough]

Re: Personal Best Pizza

Hi Robs!

Instant yeast weighs about 3 grams per tsp so you are using about 1.5 grams in 400 of flour or about .4 percent at that stage which is about four times what Rossco indicates he uses and only about half the normal dose - so you aren't all that "short" on yeast.

Salt is a significant retardant to yeast acivity so not having the salt will allow the yeast to multiply quite rapidly during the biga stage. Among the key variables, Mick is the time on the counter before going into the fridge and the temp of the refrigerator - which as I recall neither Rossco or Robs have specified. When normal rise time for IDY dough is only an hour or so, even ten minutes will have the yeast multiplying aggressively.

Given a whole day to multiply, the yeast level in Robs dough could easily be high enough to be ready to give a final dough that is very similar to the norm but there are LOTs of variables. It could still technically be somewhat underproofed or pretty dramatically overproofed depending on the details.

At least, that's my take on it!
Jay

[robs]

Re: Personal Best Pizza

Thanks for the reply will play some more in a few days, reduce the yeast some more, reduce bench time.

Cheers.

[texassourdough]

Re: Personal Best Pizza

Hi Robs!

I was not criticizing your approach - just trying to explain why your dough might be similar to norm.

When you make a biga you are effectively making bread dough - only in your case without salt. It can have lower than normal yeast because you are going to let the yeast multiply up to some "normal" level and then expand it again - much like a sourdough. The expansion ratios in these stages is critical to how quickly the dough will be ready to bake (or in the case of pizza for shaping for pies).

As an example, my sourdough starter expanded four times (i.e. add 400 grams to 100 of starter) will just about peak in activity after about 12-13 hours at room temp. If I drop it to expanding two times (200 to 100) my peaking time goes down to six to seven hours. IDY is much faster than wild yeast which is why you want to retard it if you are going to let it go overnight - or you would have to go to really low doses of IDY.

If you want to reduce your yeast activity in the biga you can easily add some of the salt. Your 1000 grams of flour will want a total of 20 grams of salt. The 400 in the biga would need 8 grams to be at "full" salt. More will drastically slow the yeast and is almost certainly undesirable. However, you could easily add 1, 2, 4, 6, or 8 grams of salt to the biga to slow it down some (and reduce the final amount of salt by the same amount).

There are lots of ways to modify the process.

Good Luck!
Jay

[Mitchamus]

Re: Personal Best Pizza

Hi Rossco,
thanks for documenting another one of your 'experiments' - they're always a great read.

cheers,
Mitch.

[BackyardPermaculture]

Re: Personal Best Pizza

Jay,

Thanks for your very informative posts on here - I've been learning a lot. One thing I should note about my results is that it's currently winter here and my kitchen is quite cool right now, as was the tap water used to make the biga and final dough. I also have my fridge at 2 degrees C.

As I understand it, warmer water may well kick off the yeast in the biga quite dramatically?

Cheers,
Mick

[texassourdough]

Re: Personal Best Pizza

Temperature is a big factor. General rule of thumb is that the rate of multiplying for yeast doubles for every 17 degrees in the range of say 40 to 100 F. While that may not sound like much, five degrees increases the rate by about 40 percent so a biga that peaked in ten hours would take about seven to peak...

(For my sourdoughs I compensate for temperature by reducing my expansions from four times (adding 400 grams to 100) to three times (adding 300 grams to 100). The lower expansion allows the yeast to max out its rate (as it is limited by the amount of food) sooner - well except for the slower rate of multiplication due to colder temps. That way my levain is still peaking the next morning when I get up - instead of over the hill..

Bake On!
Jay

[robs]

Re: Personal Best Pizza

I was not criticizing your approach

I didn't take it as criticism. I'm very new to playing around with the dough proportions and probably don't have enough knowledge therefor the question on reducing the bubbles. Didn't realise that salt retards the yeast so will definitely remember that.

Thanks for the reply. Should of posted somewhere else instead of hijacking this thread on heliman.

[texassourdough]

Re: Personal Best Pizza

Hi Robs!

Agreed on the hijack but there is an ongoing logic to this thread so...

I think it is important to experiment until you find what you want. With only four or five ingredients (flour, yeast, water, salt, and maybe oil) and two key other variables (time and temperature) the "practices" of the maker can have big influence which is why I suggest people change only one item/factor at a time (as best possible). Even things like when and how you add the salt and mix it in has an effect that impacts on both proofing time and resulting texture. (For example, sourdough experience suggests that adding salt AFTER forming the dough encourages uneven hole structure - which I think arises from the difficulty in getting full mixing and the local retardation of the yeast in the saltier areas). (Too little mixing and you can get really uneven texture that is bad - it seems hard to get enough mixing to get uniform texture in my experience).

It is all a complex dance!

Be well!
Jay