Beer Dough

[Giggliato]

Greetings and delicious pizza to all of you!

Lately I have been trying to incorporate beer into my pizza dough. But I am having some issues. The dough is not baking how I would like it to. The crust is a bit dense. But my dough is 60% hydrated. 30/30 beer/water. I suppose I could go higher... What I want is the nice crumb of the neapolitan with flavors picked up from the beer. Do you think that is possible?

I have been mixing this dough with a kitchenaid mixer but yesterday I decided to make a batch by hand, below are some pictures. The first is a doughball after sitting for 24 hours in my fridge. The second picture is a picture of the doughball sliced in half and then opened up. Notice the weblike strands, I'm assuming that is the gluten matrix? The third picture is the cut dough stretched out to the see through state.

I haven't really seen those weblike strands in my other doughs and I am assuming that there is something in the beer that causes the dough to behave this way. The strands appear when using the kitchenaid and when mixing by hand.

Has anyone here tried using a beer in their pizza dough? Preferably a stout which is what I'm using.

I am wondering if I should not mix this beer dough at all and perhaps just combine my ingredients and let the dough sit at room temp for awhile.

[cobblerdave]

Re: Beer Dough

Gudday
I'm not sure that beer yeast is that suitable for bread use but heres how to bring the yeast to life (no its not pasturised in coopers)
Use to make a bit of homebrew....Sit the bottle upright for a few days till the yeast settles to the bottom. Decant the contents off till you leave the yeasty layer at the bottom ( dispose the rest of the contents "thoughtfully")
Add about 80 ml lukewarm water.....from your electric jugs good as its pretty sterile. Add 1/2 teaspoon of sugar and a pinch of citric acid and salt if you don't have that a tiny amount of Vegimite it gives the right salt and acid inviroment for the yeast to grow in .Plug the top of the bottle with a bit of cotton wool and leave in a warm spot. You should get some action within 24-36 hrs. Then start feeding it with sugar and flour like any other live yeast culture I suppose.

Regards Dave

[Giggliato]

Re: Beer Dough

Hi!

Thank you for the replies. Yes, one of the reasons I have been attempting this is that the dough does take on a few characteristics of a sourdough crust when using beer. I am trying to come up with a simple formula for this beer dough. I think I am going to try for a much higher hydration in my next batch of dough maybe 70-75%. Just to see if those strands still appear. Anyway below are some pictures of the pizza I made earlier. I cooked these in my home electric oven with a pizza stone and as always the temp is never high enough.

[petanque]

Re: Beer Dough

With the yeast in beer coopers do use a different priming yeast than fermenting yeast.

In home-brew the yeast will slowly lyse (die) this is what makes old home-brew go off.

If you want to try home-brew yeast in pizza there is often lots in the bottom of the fermenter.

[Giggliato]

Re: Beer Dough

With the yeast in beer coopers do use a different priming yeast than fermenting yeast.

In home-brew the yeast will slowly lyse (die) this is what makes old home-brew go off.

If you want to try home-brew yeast in pizza there is often lots in the bottom of the fermenter.

I might have to try some brewer's yeast in my pizza dough but I am mostly interested in imparting some of the finished beer flavors into my dough. At any rate I have a near infinite supply of beer to experiment with

[Giggliato]

Re: Beer Dough

The other day I made a small batch of beer dough. I used my standard recipe,

flour 100%
water 33%
stout 33%
yeast 0.3%
salt 2%

I combined all the ingredients in a bowl and then let it sit for about 4 hours. It was sitting in a fairly warm kitchen though. I used the stretch and fold technique a few times and then balled the dough.

I was actually surprised at how quickly the dough proofed. I was a bit worried about the flavor profile not developing adequately in this timeframe, but everyone seemed to enjoy the pizza. Some asked if it was a whole wheat crust, there might be some whole grain remnants in the beer...

Anyway, I'm going to try a batch today using the beer as the only yeast source

[RandyJ]

Re: Beer Dough

How did the all beer version turn out? It sounds like a cool idea to try. What brand of beer are you putting in, or is it home brew? Thanks for the info.

Randy

[PedroF]

Re: Beer Dough

I am a microbrewer and can tell you a bit about beer yeast. The yeast from the beer bottle will take some time to activate, possibly around 24 hours depending on how fresh the bottle is. I have plenty of fresh beer yeast from our fermenters (probably 20 litres!) to give away for the next 2 weeks, so PM me if you would like some.

Pedro

[kkgator]

Re: Beer Dough

I have made dough from both Guiness Stout as the liquid as well as using diastatic malt powder to impart a different flavor profile. I am located in Florida so this time of year I always reduce my yeast by 1/2. For a typical batch of dough which equates to 25-30 oz of dough I use:
4 cups 00 Caputo
1.5 cups H2O
1 tsp Sea Salt
1/2 tsp of yeast

I always mix by hand and use 18-24 hours of cold fermentation.

The Guiness changes the dough to a darker color. The diastatic malt powder (I guess that you could use liquid malt as well, just haven't) gives a slight sourdough taste to the crust and no noticeable color change due to the fact that I used a golden malt powder for crispness instead of a heavier stout malt. I've been able to impart more flavor when making beer bread instead of pizza dough. Still experimenting though.