Fermenting Pizza Dough

Cooksie

Well-known member
Site Supporter
I thought this was pretty good information. The person who wrote the article did a test with a 1 to 10 day fermentation. His opinion is three to five days of cold fermentation is best while over five days a loss of quality occurs.


From Serious Eats
http://slice.seriouseats.com/archiv...-long-should-i-let-my-dough-cold-ferment.html

"Fermentation is a fascinating thing. At its most basic, it's the act of using yeast (or occasionally other bacteria) to digest carbohydrates and convert them to alcohol and carbon dioxide (or occasionally other products, such as lactic acid). It's what puts the sour into sauerkraut and the bubbles in Champagne. It's what makes dried chorizo tangy and tea complex. It's what makes you forget all of this neat stuff when you've had a bit too much beer. It's also, of course, what gives a great pizza crust (and all yeast-leavened breads, for that matter) its light, airy structure and distinctive complex, slightly sour taste...
So What's the Solution? Retardation

Retarding a dough is the act of placing it in a cold environment after it's mixed in order to slow down the activity of the yeast. At cool fridge temperatures, yeast behaves differently, producing more of the desirable flavor compounds and fewer of the sour ones. It also produces carbon dioxide more slowly.
Texture is also improved: Long fermentation times give the enzymes present in the flour more opportunities to cleave proteins (a process known as autolysis), making it easier for them to untangle, straighten out, and link up into gluten. Gluten structure is improved. Finally, the colder the dough when you shape it before the final proof, the fewer bubbles are forced out of it...

three to five days of cold fermentation is your best bet for dramatically improving your dough's flavor, texture, and workability...
 

ChowderMan

Pizza Chef
Super Site Supporter
that is interesting. I've done the retarded ferment for bread - okay okay pizza is a bread....

gonna put that on my list when I need more than one pizza - make one fresh and one at the 5 day mark.....
 

JoeV

Dough Boy
Site Supporter
This style of stored & fermented dough is well documented in a book titled Artisan Bread in Five minutes a Day, and can be read about at http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/

I have made this in the past, but with my weight loss program have not done so in quite awhile. I will say that the dough develops very good flavor for the first few days, then begins to get a sourdough flavor to it. For my taste, I never cared for it past day 10, when the "tang" was not to my liking.

I used this for pizza dough, and also to have fresh bread for dinner. I would cut off some of the dough from the fridge about 2 hours before dinner, shape a small loaf, let it raise for about 30 minutes then bake it in mini bread pans. Me and DW would enjoy fresh, warm bread each night, which also led me to achieve 250 lbs of lovable bread baker (the down side, LOL).

Happily, I'm down to 208 and still eat bread every day, but it's my 100 calorie sandwich thins that fit into my new eating habits.

As a side note, ANY bread dough can be used for this, and I have done white, wheat, Italian and rye breads, all with good success.
 

Cooksie

Well-known member
Site Supporter
Great link! He says you can use the dough up to 14 days after making it.

Sourdough is my favorite type of bread. I might like that tang. I don't think I'd ever do 14 days though.
 
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