Pizza crust edge structure: open and airy vs bready
I've made pizza a few times. I do it Neapolitan-style. I typically get a beautiful open crumb in the edge, light and airy. But this time while it was all very tasty, the crumb was more bready and less open. So I wonder for the future, what determines the structure of the pizza crust, and what is important to make it open and light? And what could have been the main factor in the process below that made it more bready than I'd like?
I just made pizza for the first time in a new place, in Moscow vs previously in Edinburgh. I ordered Italian pizza flour, and also used some durum flour and a little whole wheat: same ratio as the last time I made pizza in Edinburgh which was excellent, exact formula here (bread flour = pizza flour): https://fgbc.dk/203d. However I have a new starter, and I also added some raisin yeast water to the levain in place of just water for the fun of it. Everything here tends to ferment way faster than I am used to (e.g. the levain more than doubled and started falling in <3 hrs at 28°C, yeast water would be a factor of course), and even in the overnight fridge retard in bulk the dough kept growing substantially. So I think it got more fermentation than I typically do. I also don't have a baking steel or stone, so I just used a preheated baking tray (but I started out making pizza like that, and didn't have this issue). Is it overfermentation? Different flour? Adding yeast water? Just different oven and baking setup?..
From Maurizio... overfermenting /over proofing is a potential issue.
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2020/11/05/producing-an-open-crumb-in-sourdough-bread
I'd also suggest checking oven temp. Ovens can be quite different!
Thanks! The only thing is bread is not pizza, and there are some big differences in the shaping and baking, but overall yes, I suspect relative overfermentation is the likely culprit...
Hard to say exactly! But I've baked pizza a ton, and the following factors come to mind (sorry if many of them sound quite obvious):
Personally I don't bake sourdough pizza very often, but hopefully some of that is helpful!
Simon
Thanks a lot for the comments! Some of them were quite expected, and some more surprising and could be the culprit.
The hydration was definitely not too low, and if anything the dough felt a little more slack than I wanted it to be.
Mixing is a possibility - I used a hand mixer with spiral attachments to develop gluten, and with an unknown flour could be not at optimal level. I don't think it was mixed too much though, as I said the dough was on the slack side.
Fermentation is the main suspect then IMO! Just automatically I used warm water to mix the dough, and then I quickly realized it was a mistake, since everything ferments quicker here than I expect anyway. So it probably got a big boost of fermentation early on. After it increased substantially in bulk it spent about 20 hrs in the fridge and kept growing more than I am used to.
The balls relaxed a lot and were super easy to stretch! Very extensible, actually. And I was careful.
The oven was hot, but unfortunately no stone here :( That is definitely something that could be improved, but that's outside my control at the moment.
I might have overbaked a little trying to achieve more browning and better cook on the bottom without a stone/steel. But that wouldn't affect the structure i.e. airyness - once the dough is set longer baking won't change the size of bubbles. It just made it more crunchy and less soft I think.
Thanks again Simon, very helpful advice. There is certainly variability every time, that's true! We are not professional pizzaioli.
What was the W index of your pizza flour, Ilya?
Lance
Good question Lance, thank you, I should have mentioned what flour I got. It was Molino Grassi Pizza e Focaccia 00 flour, I don't see the W number on their website (I'm not home and checking from my phone), but other resources report it as 290.
I think I also got it once previously in Edinburgh from an Italian deli, and it worked very well.
W 290 seems OK - I was thinking if the flour was weak, you might not be getting an airy crust. Higher W seems to give better cornichione (at the expense of more chewiness).
Back to the drawing board! Maybe try a test bake with some IDY to reduce the variables. PizzApp gives good results, though I think the IDY quantity needs increasing by about 15%.
Lance
When I ball up the dough - usually in the morning for an early evening bake - I make up an aliquot jar with a little bit of dough.
This is then stored with the balls and monitored for rise. A rise of 100% is considered about right for pizza.
Lance
That's cool, I never tried that! 100% increase after shaping, wow! Any idea about level of growth in bulk by the way? Hard to measure with the bulk retard... But some kind of estimate could be useful.
I left them balled up for about 4-5 hours a little below room temperature (since everything is so quick here I was afraid it would overferment) before starting baking, and it took a couple hours to bake them all up. I didn't notice much of a change between the first and the last... They were definitely very puffy and grew a lot. I might try the aliquot jar next time, cool idea Lance!
Not sure about bulk increase - I don't monitor it closely - I get some but don't think it's a big increase.
If you search for pluviometer on pizzamaking.com you might get more detail on its use.
Lance
It is important that very little leavening occurs prior to balling individual pieces. Although maturation is important where small doses of leavening agent (SD or yeast) are included but that should mostly be applied to the proof.
Why you might ask... Too much fermentation prior to balling results in a difficult to stretch / mould (laminare) la pizza.
Thanks Michael - I suspect I let the dough grow too much before balling then, however I didn't have any issues with stretching - if anything, they were easier to stretch than usually for me! Very relaxed and not springing back, and yet not sticky and sufficiently strong (i.e. not tearing easily).
Then, in your case clearly the starter is over-active and degrading the dough too much. And because of this the flour used was not strong enough to endure the fermentation. There are several aspects to fermentation that change the way dough handles. I'm guessing the dough itself probably wasn't particularly sour (low TTA) but the pH is low enough to invoke proteolytic degradation.