Proofing Issues Pizza Discuss Proofing Issues in the Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart forums; Hey, every body goofs some time. Most times you can salvage your dough. Baking soda, baking powder and some buttermilk, ...

[Archena]

Hey, every body goofs some time.

Most times you can salvage your dough.

Baking soda, baking powder and some buttermilk, and you can get some decent biscuits out of it. Even as is you can make homemade crackers. A dough is a terrible thing to waste...

[egalecki]

I store my IDY in the freezer in an airtight container. It keeps virtually forever...well, as forever as I've needed so far!

[Marcos]

So I threw out all of my dead yeast and bought new. I stuck to the recipe as is, which specifies 1/2 teaspoon yeast for a full 500g of flour. With the new yeast I got a great first rise (finally!) after 90 minutes, so I divided the dough and put most of it into the fridge. I made one pizza two hours later using dough left out. It was pretty good, although the rise wasn't as much as I wanted.

Tonight (48 hours later) I took inventory of the dough balls in the fridge. I put one out on the counter to warm up while the oven came up to temp. After 10 minutes it blew the lid off the tupperware! I've never seen that before... The dough had a bubbble in it as well -- over-risen, apparently. Thirty minutes later I heard the same thing happen in the fridge! Weird... Anyway, the pizza was fantastic. Very easy to handle, and the crust came out as thin as I've ever seen. It was a pleasure to make (and eat!).

We live at 8,200 feet, so I usually cut back on yeast by about 20%. I didn't this time since 1/2 teaspoon seems like so little to begin with. I would like to hear other high-altitude perspectives, though. Maybe I need to let it rise only 24 hours?

[Frances]

If it tasted good, maybe you should just put it in bigger containers?

[Dutchoven]

If you are going to cold proof a good rule of thumb is to cut the yeast in half. Some commercial pizzerias even use cold water and divide and refridgerate directly from the mixer. Now that you have good yeast you can start to use your own experience! When the pizza ball is a bit overproofed you can just re-round it and let it rest before shaping...
All the best!
Dutch

[DrakeRemoray]

Hey Marcos,
I am in the Denver area, so not as high as you but slightly above a mile...

I use cold water when proofing and I also have a set of tupperware with a small slit cut in the lid to keep the lids from popping off. I use a pretty tiny amount of yeast, but I don't have the recipe here at work...

Hope that helps,
Drake