Silky, Stretchable Dough - How?????? Pizza Discuss Silky, Stretchable Dough - How?????? in the Brick Oven Cooking forums; Originally Posted by tgm ... I doubt any of our guests would even know the difference as for most it's ...

[heliman]

Originally Posted by tgm

... I doubt any of our guests would even know the difference as for most it's their first experience tasting wood fired pizza...

I second that - most of the guests I have around offer very positive feedback (though they have to or else no future invite!!). The thing is that they are probably used to Dominos or Pizza Hut "pizzas" so anything would really be a step in the right direction!!!!

Rossco

[heliman]

Originally Posted by Stan

Rossco,

When you finally get your sourdough culture up and running, I want you to try the following...

Thanks very much Stan - my starter is looking pretty good (day 4 today) and will be transfessing it to another container and adding normal white flour. This info will definitely come in handy - will report back on the results...

Rossco

[heliman]

Made a new batch of dough ... this time with 67% hydration. It does sound extreme but I thought that as there was some talk about Aussie flour being "hard" etc I may have been too dry at 65%. The dough looks VERY close to the FB video and it handles very well. Here's hoping that this will be the sweet spot I am after.

Pizza on the menu for lunch!!!

Rossco

[heliman]

Outcome:
=======

May have been a bit too wet (base not cooked through completely) so may scale back to 66% and see what happens. It may have just been that the electric oven that I used wasn't hot enough or something. Really needs to be checked in the WFO.

Observations:
==========

The dough handled quite well during the stretching process though I experienced the same issue as I have had all along:

The dough gets thinner in certain spots and doesn't uniformly stretch.

In order to fix this problem I need to push the thin areas back together and try and spread dough from other areas to that spot to strengthen the base.

Million dollar question: What causes thin spots in the dough when stretching??? I have tried out pretty much every permutation possible for dough making and still that problem persists, albeit at a lesser or greater degree.

Enlighten me O wise ones!!!!

Rossco

[Stan]

The million dollar answer:

Assuming your dough is correct and the gluten net is fully extensible, your shaping procedure can thin the dough unevenly. How are you shaping?

Stan

[heliman]

I stretch flat on a granite surface by working my way around the edge stretching small sections at a time and working in a circular manner.

I'm wondering if in doing that the thin spots are caused by pockets of gas caused from the yeast that maybe burst during the handling process?

Rossco

[texassourdough]

Hi Rossco!

I don't think your dough failed to cook through because you had wet dough. I think you simply didn't have the stone/hearth hot enough and/or undercooked it. Wetness of the dough is not a factor. I can bake 74 % dough and have it cook through. It's far more about time and temp than water.

Dough shaping is a skill that will evolve. Bread is the same way. When something bugs you enough you will find a solution that works and the thin spots are a good example. It has far more to do with how you handle the dough than the dough itself. IF your dough is wet it is less strong and more sensitive to improper handling which is why I tend to suggest people start with 62% hydration dough until they get comfortable with it and then move up slowly.

I have been to a lot of highly rated WFO pizzarias and a large number of them have a very simple approach to forming the pie that I have never seen in video and that makes what I consider fabulous pies.

Take a sheet pan or jelly roll pan and put about a cup of flour in it - quite a bit - and spread it around. Take the ball and drop it on the flour to coat it. Flip it over to coat the other side. Flatten it gently to disk maybe an inch thick. Then using your finger tips start punching it down around the outside edge and work your way to the middle - poking and gently stretching (but poking more than stretching). Flip it over again at some point. A 250 gram ball should make about a 8 to 9 inch pizza that way that has an uneven suface of dimples with lots of bubbles. You can stretch it a bit if you WANT to at that point and get it up to maybe 10 inches with no danger of thin spots. NOTE: the dough need never leaves the bed of flour until it is moved to the peel except for the flipping over. Now...there are some more advanced techniques that get slightly more refined finish but try this approach and the weird New Zealand shaped pies should be a thing of the past. And you can handle really wet, sticky dough this way.

With a good coating of flour you can also fold the dough over on itself to pick it up with out it sticking!

You will want to knock off the excess flour at some point, but...I like the pies I make this way! Not as exciting as flinging dough in the air or stretching over the back of your hands but very reliable - especially when you have troublesome dough.

Good Luck!
Jay

[heliman]

Thanks Jay .... Will be cranking the WFO up on Sat night so will modify my technique and see how that goes.

So to clarifiy, how do I get the dough to be a bit more "rubbery" for lack of a better word. My dough I think is still a bit too floppy? More/less water ... less yeast?

BTW - New Zealand shaped pizzas sound scary ... that would mean 2 skinny 30cm x 8cm ones!!!!!!!

Rossco

[heliman]

Latest batch of dough made this evening as follows:

66% hydration
Fresh yeast (double instant grams) activated for 10 mins in warm water.
Will sit in the fridge overnight, ready for some action tomorrow.

Will this be the dough that I have been chasing for so long now?

Rossco

[heliman]

Latest dough results:
================

The dough was very nice to handle on the bench. It stretched quite well and wasn't as prone to "going thin in spots" as the predecessors were.

On the second pizza I slipped my hand carefully underneath leaving the bulk of the pizza's weight on the bench. When I slowly lifted the pizza up to start the back hand stretch technique. It was obviuosly too soft to do that with and started looking a bit thin in spots so I had to abandon the process and finished the stretch on the bench.

I have asked the question before, but may have done so in a convoluted manner so I will try again...

What is the correlation (if any) between "firmness" that is, rubberyness of the dough that won't stretch too thin when say the dough is lifted off the bench on the back of the hand and the following:

a. hydration
b. flour type
c. yeast amount
d. kneading time

So, what I am trying to achieve is to make the dough more rubbery/firm. what I am asking is HOW do I get the texture more firm/rubbery so it can be stretched on the back of my hand. It must be possible to get it more firm as when I have rekneaded dough in the past it goes like solid rubber and needs be be rested before use (I don't do that in the pizza dough preparations BTW).

Hopefully someone will be able to shed light on this very pressing problem...

Rossco