July 8, 2010..Just another BBQ grill PIZZA-one more pizza attempt

I decided to take a small dough ball out of the freezer, to try again in the BBQ set-up.  I also  wanted to try the new formula with “00" flour, KASL, cake yeast and real sea salt. I made a dough ball with the new formula to see if I could measure out a small amount of cake yeast. I let the one dough ball defrost at room temperature.  I mixed the new formula by hand and did the best I could cutting the cake yeast with a X-acto knife.  I also wanted to try out my proofing box to proof the new formula.  I wanted to try and let the dough proof until it doubled in size or at least 3 hrs. at 120 degrees F to see how the crust would bake and also to see what the crust would taste like using the “00" flour, KASL, natural sea salt, and cake yeast.  I am probably going to experiment with this new formula letting it either proof longer or giving it a room temperature ferment to see how long it takes to double in size.  Those experiments will be in the future.

Both pies were dressed with my regular tomato sauce, pepperoni, Foremost Brand of blended cheeses.  The only difference was the one pie was topped with opal basil, arugula and the other was topped just topped with sauce, cheese and pepperoni.

I also wanted to test out something I had wondered for awhile.  That was in baking in the BBQ grill set-up with firebricks could get a airy crust, with a lower baking temperature.  It has made me curious for awhile whether it is the dough formula or the higher bake temperatures.  I only baked the first pie at 545 degrees F.  The second pie was baked at 645 degrees F.

For the first pie with the preferment for the Lehmann dough I was “over the moon”.  The second pie was great, too, but in a different way.  The taste of the crust was different and although it looks more bready, was soft and tasty.

Thanks Jackie Tran and Peter for telling me to use a pan, so my bottom doesn’t get dark.  It worked wonderful.

Peter (Pete-zza) helped me with this formula.


Norma,

I used the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html with the baker's percents from the dough formulation at Reply 72 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,11133.msg102626.html#msg102626 in order to come up with a modified dough formulation for your purposes. In arriving at a recommended amount of cake yeast you might use for your experiment, I relied on what I did in the opening post at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7225.msg62332.html#msg62332 and made adjustments to compensate for the desired 10-hour fermentation period (and hopefully a doubling of the dough by that time), the considerably higher hydration in your case (which means a faster fermentation), and the fact that you would be using cake yeast instead of the IDY I used. Most of the changes were gut changes and based on a combination of experience and intuition. The simplest part was tripling the amount of IDY I calculated for your purposes by a factor of three. In the modified dough formulation presented below, I assumed a flour blend of 60% 00 flour and 40% KASL. I did not use a bowl residue compensation, but there is no reason why you can't use such a compensation should you wish to do so.

Flour Blend* (100%):
Water (63%):
CY (0.062%):
Salt (1.5%):
Total (164.562%):
86.6 g  |  3.05 oz | 0.19 lbs
54.55 g  |  1.92 oz | 0.12 lbs
0.05 g | 0 oz | 0 lbs |
1.3 g | 0.05 oz | 0 lbs | 0.23 tsp | 0.08 tbsp
142.5 g | 5.03 oz | 0.31 lbs | TF = 0.1
*The Flour Blend comprises 60% 00 flour (51.96 grams/1.83 ounces) and 40% KASL (34.64 grams/1.22 ounces) KASL
Note: Dough is for a single 8" pizza; thickness factor = 0.10; no bowl residue compensation

As you can see, the amount of cake yeast recited in the above table is 5/100th of a gram. If you take your 17-gram (0.6-ounce) cube of cake yeast and divide it into 340 "little cubes", you want to use one of those "little cubes". I don't have any particularly good advice at this point as to how to do such a division, especially since I don't have access to cake yeast at any of the supermarkets near me to be able to visually scope out the problem better.

If you able to proceed, I suggest that you use water at a temperature of around 45 degrees F. You can rehydrate the cake yeast in a small amount of water at around 80-90 degrees F (the water at 45 degrees F is likely to shock the yeast), or you can simply crumble the cake yeast into the flour blend and stir it in the flour blend to more uniformly disperse it. You should note the finished dough temperature, the room temperature, and how long it takes the dough to double. Since I don't work with cake yeast and because of all the variables involved, I can't tell you exactly what to expect.

Peter