Incorporating a preferment into Lehmann Dough?

[norma427]

Tom,
I made the pizzas today, using the preferment that was incorporated into the final dough.The dough part hydration was 62 %. I used 5 test dough balls. The preferment was mixed Sunday and left to sit at room temperature for 2 hours. The final preferment temperature was 82 degrees F. The preferment was then refrigerated. I left the preferment sit out for an hour on Monday and then incorporated it into the final dough. It was left to ferment in the deli case for 24 hours. The dough was soft today. When opening the dough, it was harder to open, than the regular Lehmann dough. It seemed to have some weblike structure in the dough. When it was baked the crust was a little more airy. The final taste of the dough was a little better than the regular Lehmann dough. I had some standholders see if they could taste the difference in the crust and they couldn’t.
The 62% hydration was a lot better than the 58% that was tried last week.
What puzzles me the most is in two of the dough balls you could see a slightly medium bubble forming. I don’t know if this could be the starting of over-fermentation, as I have seen in doughs I made before, some up to 8 days fermentation. In those 8 day fermentations I used cold water and had a very low dough temperature and then fermented for 8 days. Also in those long fermentations, I noticed weblike structures in some of the dough. I had to use the dough right out of the deli case with no warm up to achieve the best results. I also noticed some weblike structure in the dough with using the preferment. I had 5 dough balls to use and left them out for various times. I found the dough balls used right out of the deli case were the best to handle. Even when used right out of the deli case, there weren’t any problems with bubbles forming in the middle of the pizza when baking. These doughs were all Lehmann dough using the same formula.
Do you have any recommendations.

Thanks,
Norma

 

[Tom_Lehmann]

Norma;
Your results don’t surprise me at all. Once you get decent fermentation on a dough, especially a pizza dough, it becomes very difficult to distinguish any differences. To a great extent this is due to the contamination of flavor resulting from the dough/crust being baked right along with all of those savory herbs and toppings. What you described appearance wise is about right, you’re looking for that web like structure. If you were to form the dough skin, then very lightly oil it, and set it aside to proof/rise for 30-minutes, or so, and then dress and top it, you would most likely get that same type of structure in the finished crust too, but it won’t influence the flavor, just the textural properties (it should be a bit more crispy).
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

 

[norma427]

Tom,

So if I am reading this okay, do you mean the preferment using the sponge/biga would be the same as using a longer fermentation time? The web-like structures I am talking about are thin spots when opening the dough.
When using the sponge do you get the same results? Sorry to be asking questions again, but I really want to understand how this type of preferment is supposed to make a better flavor of the crust.
I did incorporate the sponge into the final dough Monday and let the dough then cold ferment until Tuesday.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions,

Norma

 

[Tom_Lehmann]

Norma;
No, the thin spots when opening the dough atr typically caused by technique of opening the dough. The thin spots, and large gas bubbles in the dough are what result from the long fermentation times. Sometimes a wel fermented dough almost looks like swiss cheese on the inside.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

 

[norma427]

Tom Lehmann:

Norma;
No, the thin spots when opening the dough atr typically caused by technique of opening the dough. The thin spots, and large gas bubbles in the dough are what result from the long fermentation times. Sometimes a wel fermented dough almost looks like swiss cheese on the inside.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

Tom,

Thanks for clarifying about long fermentation times. I had seen this before when fermenting Lehmann dough for up to 8 days. The latest dough I was talking about was using the sponge/biga and found this dough behaved in the same way. In this dough the sponge/biga was incorporated Monday, cold fermented until Tuesday and then used. It was 62% hydration. I have used your advise on plastic bags to save space and cool down time. That really works out well in my situation. Many of your ideas have been helpful to me. I don’t have any problems opening my regular Lehmann dough, it’s just when using a longer fermentation or in this new formula of the sponge/biga.
I am currently trying a poolish that can be made 3 days ahead and left out until the poolish bubbles and then can be kept refrigerated for up to 3 days, before being incorporated into the final dough. Peter on pizzamaking.com came up with the idea on the advise of another member using a ciabatta bread formula.

Thanks for all your help and taking the time to review what I am saying to you. Your help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Norma

 

[norma427]

Tom,

I just wanted to let you know that the classic poolish originally for ciabatta bread did work out well. Using this for a preferment for your Lehmann dough is great in my opinion. The classic poolish took the taste of the crust to a whole new level. The dough was very easy to open and the final pie tasted delicious.
The classic poolish part can be made 3 days in advance and then incorporated into the final dough.
It was Peter’s and old criter’s ideas on pizzamaking.com, that made this preferment possible.

Thank you again, for taking the time to answer this post and the many other posts about using your Lehmann dough. I really can’t say enough about how well I like your dough.

Thanks,

Norma

 

[brooklyn12]

Hello Tom. I been making pizza dough with a 90 gram TIGA preferment. I followed the instructions in The Pizza Bible book. This called for 1/3 of 1/8 teaspoon for yeast.

My question is, once I open my pizzeria, I need to make the preferment in bulk. What would the IDY % for the bulk preferment be?

Having used the preferment calculator - my settings were at 30% of flour weight and 43% of water.

Do my questions here make any sense? I basically want to know how scale everything. For example if I was to use 50# of flour, what would the bakers percentage be for my preferment.?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[GotRocks]

Here’s a little thing we do to increase our flavor, and make the dough easier to work with the next day as opposed to a 48 hour rest in the cooler;
each batch of dough make has a few 16 ounce dough balls set aside in the cooler to not be used for pizza, and we incorporate those blown-out dough balls to our new batch of dough. so we’ve been incorporating leftover, dough from a previous batch for quite some time now.
we currently do a 61% hydration, down from 62% after we started incorporating old dough.
I have heard that McDonald’s uses a small percentage of old fryer shortening in their new fryer oil when it gets changed for a more consistent product, so I tried the same with our dough and was pleasantly surprised