Doug D
TVWBB Hall of Fame
WWW = Whole White Wheat
I had come up with a WWW dough that I thought was pretty good a couple years ago, but over time, it has proven a bit fickle. Not in the taste, but in the handling. Even after following my pizza waiter's suggestion to make it up 24 hours in advance and do a slow ferment in the refrigerator, I was never quite sure, week to week, if I would end up with a large thin pizza or a medium thick one-- it depended on what the pizza maker was able to do with it. And it was especially frustrating since I had come to exercise a great degree of precision on the ingredient ratios.
Last week, after the dough was especially uncooperative, our waiter and I had an in-depth talk about what steps I might take to remedy things once and for all. Armed with his tips, I digested everything I could in a day's time from the Specialty-Grain forum at pizzamaking.com. A member there, named Charbo, seemed to be very familiar with the King Arthur Whole White Wheat flour I had been using, so I adapted a couple of his/her recipes into what appears to have been very successful for the first try at a new dough.
From my readings, I knew I needed to do a few things differently. One, raise the hydration, two, rest before kneading, and three, knead less. I was really afraid that I was going to have a sticky mess with the increased water, but it didn't turn out to be the case.
This is for two 400 gm. dough balls that each made one 16" thin-crust pizza skin:
375 gm. King Arthur Whole White Wheat Flour
325 ml. water
60 gm. vital wheat gluten
1 tsp. instant dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 rounded tsp. salt (DC kosher)
1 Tbl. olive oil
Additional (~2 Tbl.) King Arthur Whole White Wheat Flour for kneading
Combine well all ingredients except oil in mixer bowl, and let rest for 30 minutes. Add oil and work into dough until incorporated (I used one of my PVC pork pulling gloves). Mount dough hook on mixer and knead on #2 for 2-3 minutes (I thought the dough would hang up on the hook more than it did, due to the high hydration, but it didn't). Remove dough and split into two evenly-weighted pieces. On floured board, knead each piece for about another minute each (I used only about 1 Tbl. of the bench flour for each). Form into balls and refrigerate covered for 24 hours.
As expected, they didn't rise as much as they did with my old recipe-- I was using 1/3 the yeast and giving it only an extra tsp. of sugar-- but they had a look and feel to them that told me I was on the right track.
I was disappointed I wasn't paying closer attention and didn't see the the pizza maker working the dough, even though we were sitting right across from the big kitchen window. But I gave him the big "Well???" sign, and he smiled broadly and gave a big thumbs up. When the pizza came out, it was clear I was on the road to success, as we had a full 16" pie with a razor thin crust. The waiter sat down with us and cut himself half a slice to try. We agreed it was good, and the only other thing we should have done was alert the oven tender. He gauges doneness somewhat by edge color, and didn't recognize our pie since it was so stretched out. As a result, the slightly darker raw dough color led him to pull the pie out about 2 minutes early.
I tweaked the ingredients into the Expanded Pizza Dough Calculator at pizzamaking.com to see what my percentages were:
Flour (100%):390.53 g* | 13.78 oz | 0.86 lbs
Water (83.5%): 326.09 g | 11.5 oz | 0.72 lbs
IDY (.8%):3.12 g | 0.11 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.04 tsp | 0.35 tbsp
Salt (.5%): 1.95 g | 0.07 oz | 0 lbs | 0.57 tsp | 0.19 tbsp
Olive Oil (3.5%):13.67 g | 0.48 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.04 tsp | 1.01 tbsp
Sugar (1.05%):4.1 g | 0.14 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.03 tsp | 0.34 tbsp
Vital Wheat Gluten (15.5%): 60.53 g | 2.14 oz | 0.13 lbs | 7.29 tbsp | 0.46 cups
Total (204.85%):800 g | 28.22 oz | 1.76 lbs | TF = N/A
Single Ball: 400 g | 14.11 oz | 0.88 lbs
* includes the bench flour (2 Tbsp.)
I had come up with a WWW dough that I thought was pretty good a couple years ago, but over time, it has proven a bit fickle. Not in the taste, but in the handling. Even after following my pizza waiter's suggestion to make it up 24 hours in advance and do a slow ferment in the refrigerator, I was never quite sure, week to week, if I would end up with a large thin pizza or a medium thick one-- it depended on what the pizza maker was able to do with it. And it was especially frustrating since I had come to exercise a great degree of precision on the ingredient ratios.
Last week, after the dough was especially uncooperative, our waiter and I had an in-depth talk about what steps I might take to remedy things once and for all. Armed with his tips, I digested everything I could in a day's time from the Specialty-Grain forum at pizzamaking.com. A member there, named Charbo, seemed to be very familiar with the King Arthur Whole White Wheat flour I had been using, so I adapted a couple of his/her recipes into what appears to have been very successful for the first try at a new dough.
From my readings, I knew I needed to do a few things differently. One, raise the hydration, two, rest before kneading, and three, knead less. I was really afraid that I was going to have a sticky mess with the increased water, but it didn't turn out to be the case.
This is for two 400 gm. dough balls that each made one 16" thin-crust pizza skin:
375 gm. King Arthur Whole White Wheat Flour
325 ml. water
60 gm. vital wheat gluten
1 tsp. instant dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 rounded tsp. salt (DC kosher)
1 Tbl. olive oil
Additional (~2 Tbl.) King Arthur Whole White Wheat Flour for kneading
Combine well all ingredients except oil in mixer bowl, and let rest for 30 minutes. Add oil and work into dough until incorporated (I used one of my PVC pork pulling gloves). Mount dough hook on mixer and knead on #2 for 2-3 minutes (I thought the dough would hang up on the hook more than it did, due to the high hydration, but it didn't). Remove dough and split into two evenly-weighted pieces. On floured board, knead each piece for about another minute each (I used only about 1 Tbl. of the bench flour for each). Form into balls and refrigerate covered for 24 hours.
As expected, they didn't rise as much as they did with my old recipe-- I was using 1/3 the yeast and giving it only an extra tsp. of sugar-- but they had a look and feel to them that told me I was on the right track.
I was disappointed I wasn't paying closer attention and didn't see the the pizza maker working the dough, even though we were sitting right across from the big kitchen window. But I gave him the big "Well???" sign, and he smiled broadly and gave a big thumbs up. When the pizza came out, it was clear I was on the road to success, as we had a full 16" pie with a razor thin crust. The waiter sat down with us and cut himself half a slice to try. We agreed it was good, and the only other thing we should have done was alert the oven tender. He gauges doneness somewhat by edge color, and didn't recognize our pie since it was so stretched out. As a result, the slightly darker raw dough color led him to pull the pie out about 2 minutes early.
I tweaked the ingredients into the Expanded Pizza Dough Calculator at pizzamaking.com to see what my percentages were:
Flour (100%):390.53 g* | 13.78 oz | 0.86 lbs
Water (83.5%): 326.09 g | 11.5 oz | 0.72 lbs
IDY (.8%):3.12 g | 0.11 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.04 tsp | 0.35 tbsp
Salt (.5%): 1.95 g | 0.07 oz | 0 lbs | 0.57 tsp | 0.19 tbsp
Olive Oil (3.5%):13.67 g | 0.48 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.04 tsp | 1.01 tbsp
Sugar (1.05%):4.1 g | 0.14 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.03 tsp | 0.34 tbsp
Vital Wheat Gluten (15.5%): 60.53 g | 2.14 oz | 0.13 lbs | 7.29 tbsp | 0.46 cups
Total (204.85%):800 g | 28.22 oz | 1.76 lbs | TF = N/A
Single Ball: 400 g | 14.11 oz | 0.88 lbs
* includes the bench flour (2 Tbsp.)