Weight vs Volums Pizza Discuss Weight vs Volums in the Brick Oven Cooking forums; James, Can you share any new pizza recipe you have developed using baker's percent? Are you using the weight of ...

[Richard]

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]

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]

James,

Originally Posted by 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]

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]

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.