Does Humidity Play a Role when using the Lehmann dough...I sure don't know 7/10/2012

This post is just to express that I still think humidity does play some kind of role in how pizzas turn out when using the same formulation. I had wondered, and was very curious, of why my preferment Lehmann dough pizzas and doughs weren’t anyways the same week to week though out the year. Since I have no been playing around with a basic Lehmann dough for a little while, I also see the same thing.


Last week it was hot and there was a much lower humidity at market. The dough balls when trying to open them dried out so fast, which had never happened for me before. I ended up opening the dough ball right out of the deli case without a warm-up This week it also was fairly hot, (but not as hot, around 90 degrees inside at my stand) and the humidity was much higher and there was no kind of problems with dry skins when opening the dough balls, even with the fans blowing the same as last week. My thermometer with humidity isn’t exactly correct, so I don’t want to post the humidity from yesterday inside my stand, but I know it was higher than last week. The dough balls could sit out for up to 2 hrs. for warm-up and they worked fine.

The resulting pizzas also turned out different even using the same formulation.

I still have not figured out what role humidity does play in how dough balls behave when opening them, or the final pizzas do differ, but just wanted to post if someone else has problems with their dough balls and final pizzas maybe humidity does play a role. I believe most members that make pizzas at home would not see these differences, but since I work in so many different kinds of temperatures and humidity’s at market, I think I might see more changes then other members. I still have no conclusions, or really can’t do anything about what temperature or humidity it is at market, so I just watch and try to learn what might happen. Maybe, it wasn’t even the preferment Lehmann dough that seemed to give me problems sometimes, but might have been the humidity.

I also used the same formulation for the Lehmann dough and replaced the oil with MFB. For some reason (I think Steve said there was some sauce on the end of the peel), but there was a loading error when he went to slide the pizza into the oven. The pizza almost ended up heart shaped. I am not posting the results of that test, but will try to do the test again next week. I want to see what MFB will do as a replacement for the olive oil I am using in the final pizza.

These pictures weren’t of the best looking pizzas made yesterday, but just some to show how some of the pizzas turned out yesterday.

Norma