Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

[Tscarborough]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

Tusr18a, I would say that that is a kitchen oven recipe and that you would do much better with a higher hydration and a longer ferment, either warm or cold, and cut out all of the kneading, other than a stretch and fold or 7.

[tusr18a]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

Jay, great thread. I have recently had some problems with the cornichon being pale in color. I have been scratching my head wondering why it was happening. Never thought that it might be over-proofed. I seem to be using a different dough recipe than most here. First I use a standard AP flour. I find that it creates a softer crumb than when I have used bread flour. Second, I knead the dough for half hour and then let it rise for 90 minutes. I do not use the cold ferment methods that I hear most using. I use the dough immediately. It is usually in the wood fired oven shortly after the 90 minute rise. Could the dough over proof in 90 minutes?

[lwood]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

Hi Ten,
Great looking Facebook page. Your place really looks professional.

[texassourdough]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

Hi Tenorio!

in your pics you have a close up of a cut pie and slice. The crust it browned but it doesn't have the "golden" look of properly proofed dough. It isn't as gray as I would expect it to be given your description but it definitely looks overproofed. (Again, as I often point out, over is not disaster with pizza.)

By 12 hours after mixing final dough the sugar is mostly gone which is why it doesn't get color in a hot oven and isn't golden (more like less yellow/gold) than it could be.

Without a cooler you are kind of caught in a bind. Longer gives more flavor, but without temp control you are overshooting. A key point - you can only do what you can do. Without a cooler and wanting longer fermentation, and with timing limitations you get what you get. And that is clearly not bad...

So...I think it would be a good experiment for you to make a small batch and get it to whatever state you refer to beginning your 12 hours (which I think is balled) and then baking a pie at 4 hours, 6 hours, 8 hours, and maybe 10 hours and see how the dough changes in color, taste, and feel across that time span. Taste should be inferior in the early pies but color should be better. With a cooler you should be able to get both - color and flavor.

The 13.4% protein bread flour should be good. I usually prefer to add a bit of oil to my bread flour dough.

Sounds like you are doing about as good as you can!
Jay

[Tenorio74]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

Tenorio,
My cook times are under 2 minutes. I usually make about 3 turns during the bake when it looks like the side closest to the fire is getting charred. In an effort to get less burnt botom I have been finishing the pie on my peel held up close to the oven dome for about 15 seconds.
Jim

Jim,

Your times sound fine to me. Please tell me what IR thermometer you are using, or how you're doing on the flour/semolina test to gauge the floor temp (how many seconds to blacken).... And how proofed do you consider your dough??

Tenorio

[Tenorio74]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

Are you cold retarding, Tenorio, or simply doing a long rise at ambient? I have to assume the latter. I can 't imagine your being able to get the dough you show in photos with a cold retard and .1 or .2% yeast? Long ambient rises get tricky because the yeast can multiply faster than the enzymes can create sugar so you get pale dough. A cold retard is useful for it slows the yeast more than the enzyme so when you go back to ambient the yeast has sugar to feed on and can have a growth "spurt" to inflate the dough. And, at two hours the dough should have a small amount of residual sugar to give a more golden crust. If you are ambient and go cold retard you will need higher yeast. And you should get better dough flavor. But I question that will work well with pastry flour. It doesn't have a lot of gluten to begin with and the enzymes break down the starch and the dough gets soupy with extended retards...

As a professional you need good oven management skills and in a "hot" oven your suggestion is IMO valid and reasonable - to not move pies to bare spots. But amateur oven management is far more uneven and moving to a bare spot can be useful in a cool oven!

Good luck!
Jay

Jay, you are correct on the ambient temp rises. Unfortunately I don't have a walk in cooler yet and my cambro dough trays don't fit in any of my cold storages.... So ambient it is. I decided this on certain neapolitan pizzeria ambient temp rise procedures.

My dough after 12+ hours is very relaxed and gassed up, very easy to open. I am not sure if sugar has been created... I thought that my browning came from the point where the water had been evaporated from the crust hence browning. I will get this at 2:15 - 2:45 mins (I assume 'cause I don't time my pies).... But when I do what I call "vera napolitana" for friends, and have a HUGE fire covering the whole dome, I do 75-90 secs. There, I get leoparding but not browning.

Please check out some pics (taken by my GF) at my FB page Spizza - Specialisti Della Pizza | Facebook
and maybe you'll spot something you can shed some light on (although they really aren't pizza shots, they're more social).

Hopefully one day I'll be able to cold retard my dough trays.... but I'll have to make some more money first!! At least these first weeks have been above expectations

ps. I am using 100% bread flour with the highest protein content there is down here, 13.4. My dough has improved significantly (not to mention the daily weighing routine!)

Cheers!!!
Tenorio

[PoolishJim]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

Tenorio,
My cook times are under 2 minutes. I usually make about 3 turns during the bake when it looks like the side closest to the fire is getting charred. In an effort to get less burnt botom I have been finishing the pie on my peel held up close to the oven dome for about 15 seconds.
Jim

[scottz]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

Hi,
I had a cook up last night, and after oh lets say 18 months of cooking I had my first no burnt bottom pizzas. I used the dough rec on here, but the difference was I put in the fridge for 3 hrs before taking it out for 2 hrs before using it. I also got the oven up to pizza temps before I cooked in it. When I was ready to go, I dumped the balls in normal plain flour and stretched them out. Always had trouble getting them on to the peel as I was worried about having too much flour on the base and having that burnt flavour. But none of this happened...and I did use a lot of flour in stretching the dough out. So the problem may not be in using normal plain flour to stretch the dough instead of corn flour or others...it just may be that you need to wait for your floor to cool down enough.

[texassourdough]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

Are you cold retarding, Tenorio, or simply doing a long rise at ambient? I have to assume the latter. I can 't imagine your being able to get the dough you show in photos with a cold retard and .1 or .2% yeast? Long ambient rises get tricky because the yeast can multiply faster than the enzymes can create sugar so you get pale dough. A cold retard is useful for it slows the yeast more than the enzyme so when you go back to ambient the yeast has sugar to feed on and can have a growth "spurt" to inflate the dough. And, at two hours the dough should have a small amount of residual sugar to give a more golden crust. If you are ambient and go cold retard you will need higher yeast. And you should get better dough flavor. But I question that will work well with pastry flour. It doesn't have a lot of gluten to begin with and the enzymes break down the starch and the dough gets soupy with extended retards...

As a professional you need good oven management skills and in a "hot" oven your suggestion is IMO valid and reasonable - to not move pies to bare spots. But amateur oven management is far more uneven and moving to a bare spot can be useful in a cool oven!

Good luck!
Jay

[Tenorio74]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

I have to offer alternative comments to Tenorio. Never is too strong a work for moving a pie. His logic is right but...depending on your oven firing you may need to.

Jay!

Maybe never was too strong a word... but I did manage an unless in there!!

What I was trying to say, is that when I'm at proper heat on the oven floor, I can't move the pies' location or they will immediately char (except if I've just taken a pie off said spot). My next to fire pies always come out first, so I put them in last, I do about 4 pies at a time tops, and if the ones on the far side are slow, then I'll give them the newly opened spot.

Margheritas always cook best for me. Their lightness allows them to float a bit, while heavier pies get pushed down by the weight of the ingredients (accelerating bottom cooking). I loooove doing margheritas but people don't order them that much (they're about all I eat pizza-wise).

With fresh yeast I was working at 0.27%, and when I switched to instant I went to about 0.1% and do fine with 10 hours + (using about 38?C water plus about 5 mins activation). I guess I could just use more yeast and room temp water, just haven't done the numbers yet!

PoolishJim,

You should tell us your cooking times and turning times, maybe thats got something to do with it. I have never put sugar in my dough (for no particular reason), maybe you could experiment without?

I also find that if my dough is underproofed, it WILL burn at lower temps because of the lack of bubbles in the dough, which allow it to float a bit off the oven floor. Try proofing more and see if it helps...

Best of luck!
Tenorio

[PoolishJim]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

Jay,
You're right in that I do put some sugar in my dough 1.5%. I noticed after I made the post that I forgot to include it. I have been cutting back on yeast as I go, but I still get too big a rise with the refrigerated ferment. I'll cut back on the yeast and eliminate the sugar on the next bake which will probably be Derby Day.

Tenorio,
Thanks for the oven management tips. I will keep my pies in one place as I turn and see if that helps me out. My set up makes it hard to do dough balls during the refrigerated ferment. I simply don't have enough room for the number that I do. I'll need to look into getting some other type of setup to solve that problem.

Thanks all,
Jim

[texassourdough]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

Tenorio!

Your .2% yeast is too low, even with a bulk ferment, IMO. I think you will find you get airier dough with better texture with higher yeast. Your 80% pastry flour feels odd also and is likely contributing to your gluten/mixing problems. Why not just use AP?

Good luck!
Jay

[texassourdough]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

Poolish Jim!

You have something strange going on. There is no way you should be burning pizzas on a 680 degree hearth unless there are details you aren't telling - like using sugar - nor should it be sticking. Period. You need to examine your process and figure out what you are really doing. Your quoted dome temp seems way low for an oven with a significant fire in place. (The dome should be 30 degrees or so warmer in an equalized oven for baking bread. Quoting suck a low dome temp makes me suspect your temps are way off). IF your temps are accurate I am forced to guess in absence of photos or detailed comments that you are badly overloading your pies and thus requiring overly long cook times. Thin pies need sparse toppings. And thick pies do better in the indoor oven at lower temps IMO.

I have to offer alternative comments to Tenorio. Never is too strong a work for moving a pie. His logic is right but...depending on your oven firing you may need to.

WRT balling of dough and retardation, that is IMO a fuction of your dough. I find bread flour and 00 based doughs prefer to be balled before retardation to give them a longer relaxation period before pie forming. With AP I prefer balling at the 2 hour point. Since you are using Caputo I would suggest balling early. IMO it makes the dough easier to work with and gives better pie texture.

You will probably do better if you drop the yeast to more like a half a percent.

Good luck!
Jay

[Tenorio74]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

Jim,

To manage my problem I have been cooking at 700-740 without burning... Haven't been able to experiment yet with 800+ again, my pizzer?a open to business already.

Two things stand out from your post (post a pic of the bottom of the crust to see what level of burning you're at)

1. Never move your pizza to a different location, UNLESS you have just removed a pizza from said spot (usually closer to the fire, because they will brown quicker). Empty spots have a higher temp and WILL burn the bottom (I only do this when working a cold floor, if my oven wasn't ready at opening for one reason or another).

2. You form 2 hours before bake? Your cold rise should be balled and ready, not bulk. Formed balls should have had ALL the cold time PLUS the time to come to ambient temp (2+ hours depending on your local temperature). Or do you mean opening out the dough balls?

I do (for now) aprox. 12+ hour ambient temp rises, so I can't be much help in the cold department (which I do with recycled dough for bread and such)... Maybe someone else can jump on board (also IMO, with/withou oil, my refrigerated dough doesn't stick together. I just pull them out with loads of flour and care)..

Best of luck!

[PoolishJim]

Re: Help - Burnt pizza bottom!!

I've been having the same problem and came to the Forum for help. I am so happy I found your post and the numerous replies. I made pizza on Friday night in my Alan Scott oven with a dome temp of 760F and hearth 680F. Burnt bottoms and some sticking to the hearth were and issue.

My usual bake is 14 pies using a 65% hydration dough with Caputo 00:KA AP flour 75:25, 3.5% salt and 1.25% fresh yeast. I make the dough the evening before and do a cold rise in the refrigerator overnight. I form my dough balls about 2 hours before I bake and let them rest at room temp until making the pies. I put the dough balls in litte salad bowls I got at a restaurant supply shop. These are coated with a spray of oil before the dough goes in and I give them a spray on top to keep them from drying out (could this be a source of the burnt bottoms?). The dough can be strethed very thin and gives a very nice cornice when it hits the heat. The problem is the burnt bottoms and sometimes crust. I've thought about too much flour being the problem and hence maybe the oil is holding flour on the dough. Also, when I rotate my pies I have been moving them to new locations. I thought I saw this technique in some book so I do it. Anyhow, any help or advice you can give me will be much appreciated.