PR/Floyd pizza dough stretching problems
Hi all,
It's been a long time since I made pizza or visited the site but I have renewed interest. In 2008 I used Peter Reinhardt's pizza recipe which was also featured by Floyd in his Pizza Primer. I like a Neapolitan style pizza. As I recall the results in general were quite good but i had a really hard time stretching the dough.
My notes don't indicate it but I believe that I made the dough and left it overnight in the frig. The next day when I took the dough out and let it come to room temp I had trouble stretching the dough. It simply was not supple/extensible (?) enough. Wether I tried using my hands or a rolling pin the dough would always shrink back up and would not get much larger/thinner. After a lot of work with the rolling pin I was able to get it to fit the back side a half sheet pan. I had laid parchment and fine cornmeal down on the sheet pan. I then transferred the pizza onto a quarry tile surface I had made on one of the oven racks.
So,very simply, why was my dough not easily stretched/rolled out? Is it a matter of hydration, (wetter being maybe better?),dough temperature, amount of time rising at room temp or aging in the brig overnight? Any help will be greatly appreciated! My son bought me a pizza stone for Christmas so we will be using that as a baking surface. I'm also getting back into artisanal bread baking having had some pretty good results with advice from this site and Hamelmans "Rustic Bread? recipe.
Thanks again and happy new year to all!!!
Best,
Vance