- 6
Ingredients
- 5 cups (22.5 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour
- 3.25 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon instant yeast
- 1.75 cups plus 2 teaspoons cool water (65 F)
Preparation
Step 1
. I was very pleased with the way the pizzas turned out. The recipes is as follows for 6 6-oz. dough balls each will make a 9 inch pizza. (I made a half batch)
I mixed the water and salt together in my Kitchenaide and then slowly added the flour and yeast. After the mixture came together, about 4 minutes on low, I let the dough sit for 5 minutes. I then mixed the dough for another 2-3 minutes on medium-low. The dough was then scraped out onto a floured surface and hand kneeded into a ball. The dough ball was placed in a covered bowl and lightly coated with olive oil for 30 minutes. I then divided the ball into 3 smaller balls (remember I'm making a 1/2 batch so if you follow the recipe above make 6 balls). The dough then was retarded in my fridge for about 20 hours. The dough was allowed to warm at room temp. for about 2-2.5 hours before baking.
The dough balls were a little sticky but very pliable and reasonably easy to form into 9-10 inch skins. I topped the pizza with a crushed tomato sauce (1 can of San Marzano tomatoes from Trader Joes, 1 teaspoon basil, 1 teaspoon oregano, 2 teaspoons wine vinegar, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon sugar, 1 teaspoon olive oil, and a bit of cracked pepper) and a 2:1 mix of mozz and provalone cheese plus some prosciutto di parma. After baking, I topped the pizza with a bit of Parmigiano-Regianno cheese.
The pizza was baked on tiles that had been preheated to 550 F for about an hour.
The problem with the Caputo 00 flour is that it is not especially well adapted to the standard (unmodified) home oven, and the best you can hope for is a compromise. From my experience, if you want to make a same-day, room-temperature fermented Caputo dough, you perhaps want to keep the hydration on the low side (say, around 55-57%) and use some oil in the dough. Otherwise, you can end up with a cracker-like crust by the time the crust develops some browning (which can take 6 or more minutes) and the toppings are properly cooked. You might also use a thicker dough to help reduce the risk of getting a cracker-like crust. Using the broiler element might also be a good idea to help develop more color in the top crust. In some respects, I think you end up with a better product if you don't try to force too much browning of the crust by the use of an extended bake time. Ideally, you want a soft crust, even if it isn't as brown as you'd really like. This isn't an issue with a wood-fired oven at around 800-900 degrees F (or thereabouts) because a pizza can be out of the oven in a minute or two--long before the crust can become crispy or crunchy. Even then, the browning of the crust will be different--with a mottled effect rather than uniform browning as is achieved in a standard home oven.
Thanks for the advice. I have your same day recipe and plan to try it. How long do you think I can go with a room temp. rise? I see in the thread you started you went around 15 hours. Is it feasible to use commercial yeast and go closer to 20-24 hours? Ideally, I'd like to mix the dough the night before, say around 9 PM and make the pizza around 6 PM the following day. I can also move this to the Basic Caputo 00 Same-Day Dough Recipe Using Commerical Yeast thread if you'd like.
I believe you can get to the roughly 20+ hours you have in mind. However, the tricky part is to determine how much yeast to use relative to the temperature of the room where the dough is to be fermented. Using small amounts of yeast and cool water will help overcome a high room temperature during fermentation. The ideal room temperature is around 64-68 degrees F (18-20 degrees C) but that range may not be easily attained where you are if you happen to live where it is warm at the moment. For example, my kitchen is around 77 degrees F at the moment, which would require that I reduce the amount of yeast used by, say, a third or a quarter, if I had to guess. I could also use a lower hydration, which would also have the effect of slowing down the fermentation process a bit. As you can see, there is a fair amount of art involved in addition to the basic science.
What I have said above is not new, so there is no need to move your post. However, if you decide to make the same-day Caputo pizza and wish to post the results, feel free to do so at the same-day thread.
I tried following the Reinhart recipe above using Caputo 00 flour. I did add about 1/2 teaspoon olive oil to the recipe. The dough retarded for about 18 hours in the fridge and sat for about 2 hours at room temp. before shaping. The dough was a little tough to work with, it ripped while shaping. I made 2 12-inch skins using the equivalent of 3 9-inch ball specified in the recipe above. Because it was stretched pretty thin, one of the pies stuck on my tiles (big mess). I used a screen for the second pie and got out the fan to air out the kitchen
The pizzas tasted pretty good, but didn't get that brown, I only preheated my tiles for about 30-40 minutes.
If you could try both places and report back I would love to read about it.