Pizza with Poolish - Looking for the right amount of dry yeast

The lightest pizza dough I have found from the dozens I tried over the years is Neapolitan style I use in our brick oven.

2 pizza crusts yield:

373 g 00 Flour (100%)

220 g Water, Cold (59%)

1.12 g Yeast, Instant (0.3%)

5.6 g Salt, Kosher (1.5%)

• Start this early the morning the day before pizza day so you complete the mixing of the final dough and refrigerate the evening before.
• Adjust the water temperature and chill/warm accordingly.
• Weigh out all ingredients.
• Place salt aside, mix remaining ingredients roughly until just combined.
• Autolyse 30 to 60 minutes.
• Add salt and mix until dough resists when pulled. Windowpane test the check. About 15 mins by hand.
• Bulk ferment 12 hours at 22C (less time if warmer, longer if cooler). Use an aliquot jar to check for a rise of about 2 x volume.
• Divide dough into 300g portions.
• Allow the dough to proof for about 20-30 minutes at room temperature and then refrigerate for a minimum of 3 hours, or as long as 24 hours. (Sandwich size zip-lock plastic bags are perfect.)
• Remove from the fridge and allow to come to room temperature 1-2 hours before making pizzas.

Cheers,

Gavin

Gaëlle how were the results from the recipe you posted?  What did you like, and what didn't you like? 

I use a pizza dough recipe with approx 2.5g yeast for 300g flour weight and 67% hydration.  It is reliable and tastes good. 

You need to take all the factors into account.

Vito does two  things which allow him to use "too much" yeast:

In one video his poolish is at room temp for only one hour, then goes into fridge, thereby stopping or slowing the replication of the yeast.

Second, I suspect in some recipes, the yeast is eating up all the available sugar in the poolish, and stops replicating at that point. So the excess yeast doesn't really matter at that point on.  The yeast "hit the wall" so to speak.

It's also possible that his recipes don't scale all that well, meaning that you have to use his exact amounts for those timings and can't vary the quantities or the timings much.

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I've learned to trust established pizza/bread authors more. If they have a large following, that means their formulas work for a lot of people.

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At the same time, there will always be people who try to follow a formula, but their ingredients just don't match close enough, or they make inappropriate/incorrect substitutions, or their weather/environment/fridge-temp just doesn't match.

Or, they misinterpret something the author said/wrote, and they just didn't understand what to do.

Those people often don't realize that they did not follow the formula close enough.

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One thing most authors and videographers leave out is how to adjust hydration for different brands and types of flours, and different climates, humidity, and storage conditions.  Sometimes they don't even tell you what flour they are using.  

Even when they do, home bakers often don't understand the slight variations that make a big difference, like US versus Canadian flour, malted versus unmalted, protein percent, added bread improver, etc. 

At TFL we've seen people struggle and struggle until they finally realize "oh, my water is different" and try a different water, and finally get a good result. 

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All this is to say:

--  you always have to adjust anyway, because you can never exactly duplicate someone else's formula, unless you live where they live (have the same weather), and use the exact same ingredients including the water.

Hi Gaëlle, 

Let's try to look at this in another way: 

Let's say you have 360ml water and 600g flour, hydration: 60% 

In general, dry yeast take 0.5%-0.7% of the flour weight. Which is: 3-4.2g in this case if you just use dry yeast to make a straight dough. (means you use it right after it's proofed) 

If you would like to put the dough to the fridge overnight, you can half the yeast, which is 1.5-2g in this case. Because time will help us to do the job, doesn't need that much yeast. 

If you would like to use poolish and you have 12hour for the poolish, in general we need 0.1% (weight of the flour that you are going to use for the poolish) dry yeast. And then you will decide how much poolish you would like to add to the final dough. Whatever you do, as long as the hydration of the final dough stays the same, it'll be fine. 

To answer your question (I would love to have some advice on what a reasonable amount of IDY would be for 2 pizzas with a 24h / 48h rest in the fridge, made with a poolish and using the Caputo Chef 00 / bread flour or AP flour depending on what would work the best for a long cold bulk....(and baked in a home oven): 

lf hydration is 75%, for 2 pizza, usually what i do is: 

bread flour: 400g

water: 300g 

salt: 8g

dry yeast: 2.8g or: 

poolish: flour 200g, water 200g, yeast 0.2g, give 12hours 

final dough: flour 200g, water 100g, yeast 1g ( the final dough flour 200g X 0.001 = 1g) , and poolish , olive oil 

so if you know your flour weight, you can calculate according to the fermentation method (dry yeast, poolish, biga, levain) you want. 

hope it helps. 

Funnily enough, I too am thinking of trying poolish with my pizza dough. I found this recipe that looks pretty credible, though I haven't tried it yet - it might be worth a look.

Also, there is a phone app called PizzApp that has a poolish option which can be enabled in the settings. It's a great app - very easy to use.

Lance

The source of your frustration finally dawned on me when I read this:

"That's also where I'm confused: some recipes recommend placing the dough in the fridge after just an hour rest at RT, when others recommend letting the dough rise at least until it has doubled in size before retarding them..I'm lost again :-)"

I don't think you've quite grasped the concept that time and temperature are ingredients, especially when it comes to yeast and preferments. Or at least all the ramifications of varying time and temperature.

Amount of yeast (or preferment, ie biga/poolish/levain) is intimately tied to time and temp.

Different recipes just call for different ingredients (including time and temp). 

It's a three-dimensional relationship for straight dough.  6 dimensions when using a pre-ferment like biga/poolish/levain.  and then double that if you use both a room temp ferment and a fridge ferment.

Yeast : temp. Higher temp, needs less yeast. -- Lower temp, needs more yeast.   Because yeast replicate faster and work faster at warmer temps.  "work" means eat sugar and make CO2 and alcohol and flavor.

Yeast : time.  More time, needs less yeast. -- Less time, needs more yeast.  Yeast replicate themselves, so with time, the yeast make more yeast while also working.

Time : temp.  Higher temp, needs less time.  Lower temp, needs more time.  Again, because yeast make more yeast over time, and work and replicate  faster at higher temp.

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Example for a poolish (or biga):

1. What percent yeast to use in the poolish?
2. what room temp is the poolish going to be kept at?
3. How long to keep poolish at room temp (before putting in fridge)?
4. What is fridge temp?
5. how long to keep poolish in fridge?
6. Do you bring poolish back up to room temp for the mix?
7. what percent poolish to use in final dough?
8. what room temp is the final dough to be kept at (before putting in fridge)?
9. How long to keep final dough at room temp before putting in fridge?
10. what fridge temp is the final dough to be kept at?
11. How long is the final dough to be kept in fridge?
12. do you bring the final dough up to room temp before baking?

So, I hope it's apparent that there are at least eleven (percentage/time/temp) factors that affect "how much yeast goes into poolish".

Other factors, aside from percentage/time/temp that influence the amount of yeast:

1. Type and mix of flours. Flours with bran and germ (high extraction and whole grain) ferment faster, so they need less yeast. Rye and spelt ferment fast, and need less yeast. 
2. added sugar/honey. More sugar, less yeast is needed, to a degree.
3. Is the white flour malted or not? Malted flour ferments faster. Unmalted flour ferments slower.
4. did you add diastatic malt on your own?

Also... "less yeast" can be translated to "less time" or "lower temp" (within limits) at any step along the way.  Because less time and lower temp means that the yeast will replicate themselves slower, and will ferment (ie, eat sugar and produce CO2/alcohol/flavors) slower.

So the only technically correct answer is "it depends on the recipe."  And that's why you see such a wide variation.

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 Bottom line:  People generally choose a recipe that fits their schedule as to amount of time available, and when the dough will be ready.

You can pick recipes that will have pizza dough ready in 1 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, and up.

But that also is constrained by the style of dough/pizza you are making (New York, Neopolitan, pan style, Sicilian, Roman, Chicago, Detroit) And even within a particular style, you can have different flavors of dough by how long you ferment the poolish, and how long you ferment the final dough.

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Warning: You can never exactly duplicate someone else's flour, water, humidity, room temp, fridge temp, etc., so almost all things will have to be adjusted anyway.

 A good recipe author tells you what to _look for_ and admits you have to adjust things like hydration and times.  

I noticed that the recipe Albacore gave, at https://mypizzacorner.com/pizza-dough/easy-poolish-pizza-dough-recipe-neapolitan-poolish-pizza/

specifically talks about adjusting yeast for time and temp, so that is good. And he also says that the percent of poolish in the final dough can vary too. That is also good to mention.  But he did not give the protein percent of the flour, or say if it was malted or not malted. 

Bon chance, et bon appétit.

Gaëlle how are you coming along with pizza making?  Can you post any photos of your recent pizzas? 

I haven't seen on this thread a discussion about opening the crust (forming the dough) or baking.   These are essential steps in pizza making.   

As desired in the original post, a puffy ring is achieved by:

- dough recipe

- forming (opening the crust)

- baking

Recipe for pizza dough is the least of the concerns in my view.  I use a straight dough from Bruno Albouze, and let it ferment overnight in the fridge.  Easy and good, with 67% hydration which is the sweet spot for my flours and kitchen.   I use between 50 and 100 slap-folds with this dough; I stop when it looks and feels right. 

Opening the crust is critical.  The Iacopelli video linked in the original post did not show him opening the crust.  There are very many videos on how to do this.   A thin center with a thicker puffy ring is done in the opening/forming step.  The dough needs to be taken to near window pane thickness in the center, when forming the pizza.  The dough needs to be opened on a well-floured bench, and many bakers flour the doughball in a large bowl of flour.  The doughball needs to have zero friction with the bench as it is opened into a pizza.   I used a bench heavily covered in cornmeal.   

Baking is critical.  Very high heat and a deck-type oven is needed for proper New York style thin pizza.  Heat greater than 600degF and a large thermal mass provided by a firebrick lined baking volume (oven) is needed.   Anything else is a compromise.  I bake pizza at 550degF in a basic consumer grade oven. The flavor is outstanding, and the top crust and toppings are properly cooked.  However, the bottom of my pizzas are not to my expectations because of the lack of thermal mass in my oven and the inability to achieve 600degF or more. 

So my points on this thread:

- dough recipe and hydration are minor players for successful pizza

- forming is equal in importance to 

- baking which needs to be done at very high temperature with large thermal mass