Pizza dough handling using Forkish recipe. Using this forum as pizza forum has no traffic!
Hi all,
I've been using Ken Forkish's recipe for overnight pizza dough and am having some success but some frustration with it. It uses 00 pizza flour and I find it makes a dough that is more extensible than other doughs I have made with AP or bread flour. So, getting it stretched out is not the problem. The dough is very smooth and silken. The problem is that the dough is so moist that it sticks to the metal peel we build it on and will not slide off easily onto the round pizza stone. We dust the round of dough with flour before stretching and also dust the peel liberally.
The dough is only 70% hydration so not terribly high. The dough sits at room temp overnight to ferment and is then put in the frig for most of the day. We take it out of the frig two hours before bake time. At this point the dough is a bit sticky. We end up trying to shape the dough mostly by hand stretching it in the air before dropping it on the dusted peel. But, by the time we finish stretching and patting it a bit on the peel and adding the ingredients it has been sticking so much to the peel that it won't slide onto the stone.
Advise on shaping pizzas and dough handling techniques? Should we be forming/shaping it on a formica counter or wooden cutting board? Should we be using a lot more flour on the ball of dough/surface and peel? Any help greatly appreciated.
Best,
wvdthree
How much are you kneading and working it? If a dough is too sticky even though hydration is right, maybe the gluten isn't developed enough.
Just using his technique of autolyse/adding yeast salt and kneading to mix/then three series of stretch and folds over the next 90 minutes. Let ferment overnight. Really no different than his technique for bread dough handling.
Thanks!
If you are want a ton of info on pizza making, try https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/ . There are some there that bake bread, but that is off topic on that board, much as the pizza board does not get much traffic here, but the amount there is overwhelming.
Thanks so much!
We make pizza at home once a week. We have much better success using semolina flour for dusting the peel than either the 00 or AP.
I've been using Forkish's pizza recipe for about 4 years now and I run into the same problem but it tastes so good I put up with it, until this past winter.
Costco has a twin pack of very good, wide, parchment paper. Now I lay a square of parchment on top of my wooden peel, make my pie on top of the paper and then slide it, paper and all, into the oven onto my pre-heated stone. About 2/3 through the bake, when I'm going to turn it 180˚ for the final 1/3 bake, I put my peel under the pie, lift it, pull out the paper, turn the pie and then back onto the stone to finish. This crisps up the bottom nicely.
Perhaps a bit non-traditionalist but works for me.
...it also has its quirks.
I refer you to this post from David Snyder from 2013, which is the first write up of this dough that I saw. Ken Forkish, in my experience, pushes the fermentation to the limit in all his formulae, and one of the ramifications is that the dough often overferments and becomes sticky and difficult to work with. I have been making this pizza dough since the original post, and it is probably the best pizza I have ever made. I have never fermented it over 7 hours, and often less.
There are some caveats to be aware of: the dough does not keep in the refrigerator more than a couple of days, and it cannot be frozen and then thawed to make a good pizza.
I have experimented with adding other flours, but I keep going back to the Tipo 00 for best results. I also use the non-traditional parchment paper method.
-Brad
wvdthree, I forgot to point out that if you are having troubles sticking, look into a Superpeel. I have no financial connection to them, never got anything from them for free, but I can't sing its praises too loudly. it is fantastic. There are a few different models and sizes, here is one. https://www.amazon.com/EXO-Non-Stick-Polymer-Sealed-Super/dp/B00NGOOM6K My problems in the past were that if I spent more than a minute putting the pie on the peel and dressing it , it would stick. With the Super peel, I can leave it on for as long as it takes, with no rush, and can even wait to let the oven come up to temp, no issues. If you have a high heat pizza oven, like a Blackstone, OONI, or a wood fired oven, it may help to dress it on the superpeel, and when you are ready to launch it, transfer it to a wooden peel and use that to launch it - it works great and keeps the cloth of the Superpeel out of the flames of the oven.
wvd: Are you going by Forkish's FWSY or Elements of Pizza? (In the latter he apologized, and said to forget everything he wrote about pizza in the former.)
I was not aware of his pizza book and that he made corrections. I’ll have to check it out. Thanks.
-Brad
Ah Jeez, I'm on the floor laughing now. What did he change besides fermentation time? Did he change the basic recipe?
Brad is absolutely correct about refrigerating and freezing the dough, not good.
The best dough for pizza can be found at Rome's Pizza as their dough is freshly made and is of high quality