dough problems

[skan]

Hello

I've just tried to make a pizza and I had several problems:

The dough was impossible to stretch, it kept shrinking back. It was too elastic.
I baked it in a home oven at 260ºC and the resulting crust was too hard.

How could I solve these problems?

I used high protein flower, 60% water, 3% fresh yeast, one spoon of olive oil and salt, and I kept the dough on the fridge for 24h.

[wotavidone]

Skan,
I find that if I knead the dough too much it gets tough. Something to do with over working the proteins.
I mix it by hand as gently (and as little) as possible, rise for 24 hours in the fridge, then tear off the pizza portions and gently shape it by hand. I know others say to "knock it down" and stuff like that, but I always end up with dough that's very hard to stretch out if I do that.
Regards,
Mick

[skan]

Hello

I you want a longer explanation of what I did....

I made the pizza at my girlfriend's house and she doesn't have any scale. But more or less I tried to follow the Napolitan recipe. with 3 cups of flour, 1 cup of mineral water, half tablespoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of oil and 10g of fresh baker's yeast

I mixed most of the flour with the water and let it rest for 20 min.
In a glass I dissolved the yeast in few water (and 1 teaspoon of sugar).
Then I mixed all the flour, water and yeast and knead it by hand for 10min,
I let it rest for 20min
I added to this dough the oil and salt and mixed again for 15 min. As hard as I could, also bumping it against the table.
I've added a llittle bit more water because it didn't look as wet as the the pictures I've seen.
Then I left it in the fridge for 24h covered with a plastic film.
It grew maybe 2-3 times.
Again it looked dryer than other's picture but didn't add more water.
I kept it out of the fridge for half an hour.

I didn't reknead it after removal from the fridge, though I had to spread it and stretch it a lot. It kept shrinking back or breaking. It was too elastic and tearable.

I halved the dough and put one part on a small oven, getting a not very thin layer. Even though the final result was not too bad, though a little bit hard.

With the other half... I added more water, getting a much more viscous dough and I baked it, but the final result was even harder.
Maybe I touched (stretched) it too much the dough trying to stretch it.

I couldn't try a high Tª on the oven because I still don't have a stone and this oven is very bad (it's supposed to be 250ºC).
My flour is 13.5% protein.

Maybe crispy doesn't mean the same for me than for others. Or maybe a crispy pizza is only good if you get to make a thin crust, and I couldn't.


Next time I'll try by kneading for a shorter time at lower temperature and, after removal from the fridge, I'll leave it 2 hours at room temp. I'll also try with lower gluten flour.
Somebody told me I used too much salt.