Weight vs Volums

[vitoduke]

Hi James---I actually use King Arthur Sir Lancelot HI-Gluten flour. The water is 63% hydration. I'm really happy with the oven performance now that I have learned to manage the fire. I can make as many New York 18 inch pies in a row and not have the hearth cool off. It's amazing to be able to make a pie taste like the ones I ate as a kid growing up. ---Mel

[james]

That's great. For folks who don't know, Mel has a Forno Bravo Premio.

I'll bite. Where did you get your 18" wide peel? It it wood?
James

[vitoduke]

Hi James-- I got the peel at Castino Restauarant Supply in Rohnert Park. It's wood, 18" wide, and the oven opening is 18.5" For our crush party in October I made 6 18' pies as an appetizer. People were very impressed with the oven and pizza. I'm looking forward to your cooking class, I'll let you know how many people I can get. THANKS---Mel

[CanuckJim]

Video Demos

Parsley,

Thanks for the detailed dough recipe on your web site; I'll give it a try. You mention that you want to actually see a pro ball pizza dough. Why not go to pbs.org/juliachild/video. There is at least one streaming video there of Julia with a pizzaola (sp), and he goes through the whole thing. Unfortunately, I can't remember his name or which episode, but it's an easy site to navigate by subject. There's lots and lots more, including bread demos by people like Nancy Silverton. Great resource.

Jim

[parsley]

Balling dough w/ Julia

Jim,
Wow, thanks for the Julia reference! I watched the dough balling at work (cool), and I'll have to bring my laptop home to watch the rest over the weekend.
David

[Richard]

Baker's %

James,

Can you share any new pizza recipe you have developed using baker's percent?

Are you using the weight of the water as a % of the flour? Are you using grams or ounces

[james]

Richard,
I do grams because the math is easier. I only started using the scale a week or so ago, and it is great. My dough is better, more consistent and it's fast and easy. I can't recommend it high enough.

My basic VPN pizza dough is 65% hydrate, which gives me:

500g Tipo 00 flour
325g water
2 tsp yeast
1-2 tsp salt

(I still do those by volume because it's easy).

You can push the hydration up a little at a time to get it right where you like it. The recipe is roughly a pound (or roughly 4 cups), which makes 5 dough balls. I also use this recipe, plus olive oil for focaccia.

James

[jjerrier]

James - are you using instant yeast, active dry yeast, or bread machine yeast? I have been using active dry - can't find a good source for yeast. I also just bought a digital scale... FB should carry those too!

[CanuckJim]

Yeast

I use both instant and active dry yeast depending on the recipe. SAF is a good company to deal with. You can find it on the web. Buy in bulk because it's much cheaper. Store it in the freezer in a lock and lock airtight container. It'll last a year in the freezer.

Jim

[parsley]

Dough ball weight

James,

... The recipe is roughly a pound and roughly 4 cups, which makes 5 dough balls. ...
James

YOW - that's only about 5.8 oz. per dough ball (165 g). How big a pizza do you make from that? How thick is the finished crust?

I've only just started to make thin/cracker crust at home (previously american traditional), and I'm trying to get a good sense of what I'm aiming for.

[james]

Parsley,

Nice idea. I will run a batch and take measurements, from the recipe, dough ball weight, pizza size and thickness. Remember, I'm the guy who never used a recipe before, so this should be instructive. I'll take photos.
James

[vitoduke]

New York Style Pizza

This is the recipe I've been using for New York style pizza.
15.15 oz King Arthur Sir Lancelot Flour[High Gluten]
9.50 oz. Water[63% hydration]
.28 oz. salt
.16 oz. olive oil
.04 oz IDY

It comes out to a 25 oz. dough ball for an 18 inch pie. The dough has a thickness factor of .10. The way to determine dough weight is to take the radius of the pie squared, times 3.14, times thickness factor .10

9x9 squared x 3.14 x.10
81x 3.1425=254x.10=25oz.

[Richard]

Easier way to calculate dough weight is simply to add all the weights, which equals 25.13oz, round to 25 ounces

A lot simpler that pie squared etc etc

KISS method

[james]

500g recipe

Here is what I found with the 500g, 65% hydration recipe.

I used the Caputo Tipo 00 flour in the blue bag.

500g = 3 1/2 cups flour
325g = 1 1/4 cup, plus 3-4 tablespoons water (a little less than 1 1/2 cups)
8 g = 2 tsp yeast
8 g = 2 tsp salt

745g (+/-) recipe, that made 5 150g dough balls (I measured -- which was a big step for me).

Each dough ball stretched into a thin crust pizza roughly 11" -- which fits nicely on a 12" wide peel. The hands in the photo are our daughters'; they actually said "nice dough Dad". One of the peels is the one with detachable head. Pretty nice. Other than my frustration with my old oven, everything worked great. http://fornobravo.com/forum/showthre...=2544#post2544

James

[jjerrier]

Armed with my trusty digital scale - I just made dough by weight per the recipe in the post above. Boy those dough balls look small!

Also made some pain a l'ancienne using weight instead of volume. I used the Caputo for the pizza and King Arthur Bread for the bread. Firing the oven tomorrow - so we'll see how it goes. The scale is pretty cool though.