Pizza#
Two days of fermentation. Ninety seconds of baking.
The plainest dough of the semester#
- 500 g type 00 flour
- 310 g water — 62%
- 13 g salt — 2.6%
- 0.5 g instant yeast — 0.1%
No fat, no sugar, no milk, no preferment.
Soft wheat, gently ground#
Little damaged starch for amylase to reach, so the dough makes sugar slowly and ends two days with almost none in reserve.
A sweeter dough darkens all over before the rim can rise.
Two days instead of ten minutes of kneading#
0.1% yeast needs the time simply to rise. While it does, the flour finishes hydrating and the gluten links up on its own.
What comes out of the fridge is extensible, not springy — the only reason you can open it by hand.
60–90 seconds#
The crust sets before the interior can dry out.
Open it from the centre#
Fingertips walking outward, stopping 2 cm from the edge. Gas leaves the middle and goes into the rim.
A rolling pin flattens the rim and thins the centre until it tears.
Two kinds of colour#
| Reaction | From | Gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Maillard | ~140 °C | The gold ground of the rim |
| Pyrolysis | ~300 °C | Leopard spots, or a burnt base |
The spots should be coin-sized and scattered, not joined up.
At home, 250 °C#
Steel conducts an order of magnitude faster than stone — heat into the base in thirty seconds rather than five minutes.
Preheat an hour at maximum, then finish under the grill element.
Start your starter tonight#
50 g wholemeal flour, 50 g water at 28 °C. Discard to 25 g and refeed daily.
Week 6 is sourdough and it will not wait for you.