OK, now I’m armed with a few new titbits (that’s TITBITS, it’s not sweary my American friends) of information from a bit more experimenting.
Firstly – this new flour is rather good. I’ve not looked on the bag but the gluten content must be higher than the strong white bread flour I’ve used over the past few years. The first noticeable thing is how much creamier it appears while mixing when using the same water:flour ratios as before. Then once you’re stretching the dough ready to cook – wow does this stuff let you stretch it! We’ve only had one session with this flour and that was in the regular domestic oven with the pizza stone but we could tell the difference immediately. I look forward to cooking in the wood-fired oven.
Next is more of a new technique and it’s never struck me to do it like this, I’ve always mixed / stored dough in a similar way to making bread. The technique is to let the mixer / bread machine just mix the dough for 15-20 minutes and then stop / divide it up into 200g balls (or thereabouts), cover with cling film and store in the fridge ready for the following day. If you’re doing it the same day – still do this but make sure (in all cases) that you bring the dough out at least an hour before cooking otherwise you’ll suffer putting cold dough into a hot oven. Well, you won’t suffer but the dough will. And then you will. I was right the first time wasn’t I?
This is something I’ve not seen mentioned much, if at all, and yet in this last few weeks, both the restaurant and the suppliers have urged me to do this. And it’s a bit of a revelation I have to admit. Almost a head-slapper.
The dough rises a lot slower doing it this way and when you come to stretching it just goes where you want it and easily. I was always of the opinion that it’s good to let the dough rise in a warm place or at least room temperature. Well that’s fine for bread as you’re looking for air in the final product, but I just thought a pizza had to puff up. We even rolled one of the doughs as a test and it still managed to puff up at the sides, and the base was just on the edge of crispiness. I’d say it was one of the best we’d ever made in that oven, and shaping the pizzas took half as long.
I have a funny feeling I’ve got it sussed.
