What to do with Preferment Lehmann dough poolish from Tuesday??????

Since my water heater was broken and I had to stay home Tuesday, I had poolish to do something with.  I did throw away some poolish, but I didn't want to throw it all away.

I did make a failed attempt with just using poolish as the dough and decided to make a couple of other dough with the extra poolish.  I made one dough, just by adding ingredients I thought might need to be added.  That dough was made with an Italian flour and other ingredients.  The second dough was basically the poolish in the amount of 792 grams that I only added 125 grams of flour.  That dough sure was sticky.  I did stretch and folds on that dough many times, but the dough still was sticky.  I never made a dough like that before.  The third dough was another formula I had tried before, but this time I used AP flour.

I thought there was no harm in trying out these doughs, because if one of them worked I could take small slices to my great-granddaughter's birthday party tomorrow.  I have to cook other foods tomorrow morning for her birthday.  At least these pizzas could be reheated and I could take along some of Les's sauce for the guests to dip the slices in.  It seems hard to believe that a whole year has gone by so soon.

This is what I posted on pizzamaking.com.


Since I didn’t like to see all the poolish go to waste from my preferment Lehmann dough I had decided to do a few experiments on the poolish in different doughs.  The first experiment with the poolish pizza was a failure, so I thought what harm could it do to mix different doughs and see what would happen.  I mixed all three of these doughs Wednesday evening.  I let all three doughs room temperature ferment for about 12 hrs. and then cold fermented them until this evening.  The first pizza made tonight was the lightest in texture.

The first pizza I just put in any ingredients in with the poolish that I thought might work.  I did write down what ingredients I had used.  The second pizza was another poolish pizza that really had a high amount of poolish in the mixture. It was so sticky I didn’t think I could load it into the oven, because it kept sticking to the peel. When I loaded it the pizza almost slide off of the steel pan. The third pizza was the same formula I had tried out on my Sicilian thread, but I used the preferment Lehmann dough poolish in the formula instead of milk kefir.

If anyone is interested, these are the pictures of the experiments I did with the leftover poolish.  The first picture is of the remainder of the poolish that almost died until this morning.  I had left it on my kitchen table to see how long it would take to almost completely fall.  The other pictures are in progression of the explanations I gave above.  At least the preferment Lehmann dough poolish did work okay in these pizzas.  I also decided to bake all three of these pizzas on the upside down steel pan, since I did have good results with using an upside down steel pan last evening at Reply 15 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,12662.msg123240.html#msg123240

At least I learned some things from these experiments.

Norma

Challenge for January 2011 "New to You" on pizzamaking.com

On pizzamaking.com the Challenge for Janurary 2011 is "New to You"

I tried two “New to Me” ideas, in making this pizza, that I never tried before.  I made a taco pizza and used a steel pan to bake the pizza on.

The taco pizza was dressed with fried hamburger mixed with taco sauce, mild white cheddar, fresh salsa, grape tomatoes, and jalapenos.

The steel baking pan turned upside down did heat fast, so this is another way for me to make pizzas, and not heat my kitchen up too much.  I have tried many ways to make pizzas. (BBQ grill set-up, waffle iron, WFO, standard home oven, deck oven, baked under the broiler with aluminum foil, fried in a deep fryer, Panini Grill and others.

Norma

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