NY Style Pizza

[Qapla]

This is one of my favorite types of dough. I have been working on this type for many years now and am finally getting fairly good results.

 

One of the important things this type of dough has is a ferment time of 24 hours or more - in fact, 48-72 hours seems to work best, for me.

 

To accomplish this, care is needed in measuring ingredients. For this reason I use a scale and "baker percentages" instead of "volume measurements".

 

 

[Qapla]

One of the things many people look for when making a NY style dough is a flour that has around 13% protein.

 

Standard AP flour is usually closer to 10% and many bread flours come in around 12% or less. There are some brands that are closer to the 13% - but they are not sold in all stores ... none of the flour our local Walmart stocks has 13%.

 

I am able to get a "bread flour" that has 12.7% - that flour makes a suitable dough.

 

That said, I tried something new for me ...

 

One of our local "health/natural" food stores stocks a "whole wheat" flour with 15%. So, with the advise of "The Dough Doctor" I used a 70/30% mixture of the 12.7% bread flour and the 15% whole wheat flour to make a dough that would result in a 13.5% dough.

 

A couple of extra steps are needed to do this since the whole wheat takes longer to absorb the water.

 

I started by measuring the 30% WH flour and adding most of the water and a small portion of the yeast (ADY) along with some of the BF (this makes a sponge) and allowed it to rest/ferment for several hours at room temp. I then pre-fermented the rest of the ADY in the remaining water. I mixed the sponge with the remaining flour, salt and yeats and mixed in the mixer using a dough hook until it looked smooth (you don't want to overmix/knead with the mixer or it will become a glue mass). I divided the dough in half and hand worked each ball into a tight firm dough ball, slightly oiled each ball and placed each one in a lightly closed plastic bag. These balls then fermented in the fridge (CF) for a little over 48 hours.

 

When I took the dough out of the fridge they felt very soft and light. I removed them from the bags and let them come to room temp covered with a towel.

 

They were easy to shape and made very nice pizzas.

 

They got eaten before I took any pics - but these were the first pizzas I have made with whole wheat flour that came out so nice ... my prior attempts were heavy and solid - too much WH flour in the dough.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Qapla