Milk Kefir Poolish Lehmann dough with added dairy whey 1/11/2011

This milk kefir poolish Lehmann dough was going to be baked at market on Tuesday, but since I had to have my water heater at home repaired, I couldn't go to market.  I was debating whether I wanted to freeze this dough and try it next week at market.


I guess I couldn’t wait another week to try this Lehmann milk kefir dough with the added dairy whey.  I decided Tuesday to try and bake the dough in my home oven.  The dough ball sat out at ambient room temperatures of 72 degrees F for 5 hrs.  The dough ball seemed a little drier than my other dough balls at market had before, even with this increase in a couple of percent in hydration with this dough ball. The dough ball was a little harder to open than the dough balls I had opened at market before. I don’t know why the dough felt drier, when it had felt wetter after mixing and forming the dough ball.

I was surprised to see how well the dough rose and also the crust did brown more than in my deck oven.  I don’t know if it is the added dairy whey or not, that added to the crust coloration.

The pH of this dough ball right before the bake was 5.22.

I have been hungry for another Buffalo Chicken Pizza with Frank’s Hot Sauce, so since I had the time today, I did make a Buffalo Chicken Pizza.  I used Ken’s Ranch Sauce for the bottom base, spread milk white cheddar on top of the Ranch Sauce and then added the Buffalo chicken.  The pie then was dressed with Blue Cheese Crumbles.  After the pie was baked I added fresh cut celery to the finished baked pie.  The added celery at the end was a good addition, in my opinion, because it gave this pizza a nice crunch when taking a bite.

What surprised me most about this crust is that it tasted even better than all the other milk kefir Lehmann pizzas I have attempted at market.  There was a slight crisp on the bottom and rim and a nice moistness inside the rim.  I never though I could get a crust that tasted this well out of my home oven.

I wonder since I am using milk kefir in the dough if this also affects the dough handling qualities with the addition of whey. The dough handling sure were different than my past experiments with milk kefir or other natural starters, but weren’t bad. Maybe after a few more experiments I will see if the dough hydration might need to go up more, when using dairy whey. The last two pictures of the slices were taken this morning after the slices were in the refrigerator overnight.

It also had snowed in our area, starting Tuesday afternoon until this morning.  I thought I would include some pictures of how our area of the world is cold now, with snow.  The snow looks so beautiful and glistens.  This snow was a dry snow.  Some of the pictures of the snow were taken last night and some this morning.

Norma