Let me show you something. This is what pizza
dough looks like if you age it in the refrigerator
for a week.
And this is the loaf of bread that I just
baked with it. My kids call it Pizza Bread.
It is insanely crispy and flavorful. Sure,
people have been making something similar
for centuries using sourdough starter, or
biga, or some other kind of pre-ferment. But
the thing is, none of that is really necessary
anymore in the age of refrigeration. The easy
way, these days, is to mix up some dough,
throw in the fridge and forget about it for
awhile.
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I'm going to show you how pizza dough changes
as it ages in the fridge — day-by-day for
a week, and how that aging will get you different
baked results. Gotta start with a giant batch
of my standard pizza dough recipe.
Half a cup of warm water with two teaspoons
of sugar and two teaspoons of yeast. Stir
it around and let it bloom for five minutes,
just to makes sure the yeast is still alive.
If you want to live dangerously, you can skip
this step.
Alright, four cups more water go in, two more
tablespoons of sugar, two tablespoons of salt,
big glug of olive oil, maybe a quarter cup.
Stir it around — that's trippy. Then I'll
start with 10 cups of bread flour, anticipating
that I'll probably add more as I knead. Bring
it together as far as possible with the spatula,
and then I'll get in there with my hand. Pizza
dough has a better flavor and texture when
it's really wet and sticky, so I'm just adding
just enough flour to make kneading possible.
Yes, I am exploring options for no-knead pizza
dough recipes. I just haven't gotten one to
work yet to my satisfaction — not chewy
enough. You want to knead this until you can
stretch it thin without it tearing, like that.
That took me seven minutes.
Alright, eight sample containers — glass
is best, it will not leach out chemicals during
the long rise. A little olive oil in each
— maybe more than the pros would use, but
having a dough that's coated in oil will help
it brown at home-oven temperatures. That's
also why the sugar is in there — to enhance
browning.
And this is one of the rare times that I will
use a food scale — zero-out the weight of
the bowl, then weigh the dough and divide
by eight. Circa 300 grams of dough is good
for one 12- or 13-inch pizza, or one pizza
bread, which is what we're making this time.
I normally don't bother with weighing things,
but this is where it really helps you, when
you're cooking at an almost commercial scale.
Our human brain has a great intuitive sense
for small quantities, but when things get
big, eh, not so much. Hard to eyeball.
I'll use each ball to oil its container, thus
oiling itself in the process. Cover — it
can be sealed, the yeast have enough air in
there — and let's label them. Samples #2-8
go straight in the fridge. Sample #1 — let's
just let it rise on the table for two hours,
and then let's take it out and bake it straight
away. This is the bottom side of the dough,
which I've now got facing up on the plate,
and note how it looks exactly the same as
the top side — very smooth.
And here's how you make what my kids call
pizza bread. Coat the surface with plenty
of olive oil, grind on pepper, shake over
plenty of garlic powder and then sprinkle
on a good amount of really big, crunchy, flaky
salt.
My pizza stone has been pre-heating for a
half hour at maximum convection oven temperature
— my pizza steel tends to burn this bread.
And I just pull the stone out a bit and drop
on the dough. Bake it until it's brown, 7-8
minutes, pull it off with tongs onto a cooling
rack. And there it is. Bottom's nice. I cut
it once lengthwise, and then into a bunch
of little strips. Note how big those bubbles
are on the inside. Remember that.
It tastes OK, but the flavor is just kinda
bland and the texture is very soft and pillowy.
It's not crispy, and it's only a little chewy.
This is an inferior product.
24-hours later — the doughs in the fridge
have risen a lot, despite the fact that we
threw them in there straight away. Some people
say you gotta rise them at room temp for an
hour or so before you refrigerate, but that
is manifestly not necessary.
Dough #2 comes out, and look at the underside
— it's rougher, it's kinda bubbly now. That
rough surface holds more oil and goes crisp
in the oven. Olive oil, pepper, garlic powder,
salt. Drop the dough on — it's so much easier
to handle when it's cold — it's stiffer.
Bake it at 550 F or whatever your oven can
manage until brown, and note the bubble structure
this time — it's finer. A slow cold rise
gets you the same amount of air, but it's
divided among a larger number of smaller bubbles,
and for pizza crust I prefer that texture.
Flavor is still a little bit flat, but the
texture is a bit less pillowy — we're getting
a little bit of crunch, a little bit of chew.
Sample #3 — 48 hours of cold rise. Dough
is a little stickier and it's starting to
smell a bit like beer. Stretch it into a little
oval, top it, throw it on the stone. You want
to be careful about not letting the garlic
powder burn, which happens really easily,
and it tastes nasty. If I see a few grains
turning black, out it comes.
Cut it up, texture is still a little pillowy
in a bad way, but the flavor is now improved.
Getting that yeasty, fermented flavor.
Sample #4, 72 hours of cold rise, dough is
getting really sticky, and look at how uneven
the underside is — nice bubbly surface that'll
hold oil and bake up crisp. You gotta bake
this dough bottom-side-up.
Plop. I usually drop it on, rather than deliver
it with a pizza peel because the oil tends
to make it stick to the peel.
Out it comes, and you can hear the surface
is getting much crisper. I would guess that
this is due to the starches breaking down
as it ferments — breaking down into simpler
sugars that caramelize more readily in the
oven, but that's just a guess. It's starting
to get a glassy top, though. Love it.
It's hump day — midpoint of the experiment,
dough #5, four days of cold rise, and this
is when I start to notice a delicious smell
like ripe banana, both when it's raw and when
it's cooked — oh %#@!, that looks like the
Millennium Falcon. Don't sue me, Lucasfilm.
Sample #6, five days cold rise and look how
gooey that dough is looking. If it wasn't
cold, it would be all-but-impossible to handle.
Hmm, I under-baked that one a little bit,
but the flavor is still insane. It's got that
ripe banana note — funky, complex, great
stuff.
The penultimate example, six days of cold
rise. Out it comes, and that top is getting
so crispy. It's also notable how much chewier
the interior texture is. With a wet dough
given enough time, gluten kinda develops itself
— basically kneads your dough for you some
more in the fridge.
And now the finale — a full week of cold
rise. Dough is super gooey and sticky — it
would be impossible to handle if it weren't
cold. Underside is now the top, look how craggy
it is, oil just soaks in there. Careful about
the pepper — you can really taste its spice
in this. Don't use more than you like. Good
coating of garlic powder — you could use
fresh garlic, that'd just be a different flavor.
The powder gives more of an umami taste, I
think. And you gotta use some big flakey salt,
the texture is amazing with that.
At this point, the dough is so soft that it
is hard to handle, even cold. Ah, it stuck
on the way down. There you go. 7-8 minutes
later, out it comes. Underside is brown — my
pizza steel tends to make it black. I prefer
the stone for this.
And you wanna hear how crispy that top is
now? Let me get the mic. Nice. And the flavor?
I mean, you could say THAT it's "like" sourdough,
but as a matter of semantics, it IS sourdough,
right?
Could you get a similar result using the traditional
sourdough starter? Probably. But do you want
to get a starter going, feed it once or twice
a day for a week and then have to keep it
alive in the corner like a goldfish, in perpetuity?
Or do you want to mix up some dough, throw
it in the fridge and just forget about it
for awhile?
I'm going with the easy way.
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doing it the hard way, like making your dough
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Now I gotta take this out to the kids.
