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Played around with some "Beer Dough", Oddly disappointing results

G

GotRocks

New member
Hopefully @Tom Lehmann can chime in to explain why I realized such wildly different results using my everyday dough formula, replacing 75% of the water with beer. (Miller Genuine Draft)

The texture on my raised edge was very soft, like Wonder-Bread Soft, Yet stretching the dough after a 96 hour ferment period was like trying to stretch a truck tire instead of what I am used to.

Flavor, the flavor sucked, I was hoping for a really malty beer’ish flavor to it, but it again actually tasted like boring Wonder Bread too
Was it the acidity of the beer that would cause this? Maybe the lack of dissolved minerals in the beer?
We are on well water at our restaurant, it has a high iron and calcium content in it,
Maybe I’ll try distilled water and see if I get the same crappy dough, Would the lack of dissolved minerals really cause such a wild difference?
 
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G.R.
The first thing I would do is to use a dark beer as opposed to a light beer for a better flavor. How did the dough look after the 96-hour cold ferment? How about the finished crust color and bake time, was the crust color lighter than normal or did you need to bake the pizza longer to achieve the desired crust color?
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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G.R.
The first thing I would do is to use a dark beer as opposed to a light beer for a better flavor. How did the dough look after the 96-hour cold ferment? How about the finished crust color and bake time, was the crust color lighter than normal or did you need to bake the pizza longer to achieve the desired crust color?
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
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It looked great, it had a beer scent to it, but didn’t come through very much in the flavor, tough as hell to stretch, and base although fully cooked, could not support its own weight, everything was very soft commercial white bread texture with no crispiness at all.
We take a 16 ounce dough ball out to 16"
 
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I’m guessing that the dough was over fermented which would explain the toughness aka buckiness as well as the dough collapsing (not able to support its own weight). The over fermentation was due to the acidity of the beer. Try a Lager beer at 24 or 48-hours.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Typically when my dough is over fermented, (nearing being blown out) is it very extensible and way easier to work with,
We prefer at least a minimum 48 hour ferment time, and we really like it between between 4-8 days of age.
We stretch directly out of the cooler, we do not let our dough come up to room temps, our yeast percentage is 0.5%

But, I will make another batch and see how it reacts sooner., Thank you
 
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What you have described is correct for dough that is “over the hill” but dough that is only moderately over fermented is tight and bucky. It is the bane of every baker making white pan bread as the dough is just about impossible to run through the forming equipment without the dough tearing or becoming misshapen as it is dropped into the pan. In the pizza world we would say that the dough is tight or elastic when opening the dough ball into a pizza skin.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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I’ve made small, experimental batches with Boulevard’s unfiltered, bottle-conditioned wheat beer. It came out great after 24 & 48 hour ferments. But I don’t know what the cost would be for trying to add it to a large batch of dough. Pretty tasty for my dinner though!
 
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If you have a micro brewery close to you I’ve heard that some stores have been able to buy the “dregs” from the bottom of their tanks at a reasonable price to use in making their beer dough.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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We are at critical mass here with Tap Rooms, and microbreweries in my area, Heck, Wisconsin does love their beer!
I see the same thing happening with the BBQ craze, there will be too many, half will fail due to low quality, and the good ones will remain viable.
I’m actually looking into micro-distilling here, before that gets too crazy.
 
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I was playing with beer dough a few weeks ago. I used Dukes at 100% of my normal water and gave it about 36 hours. The consistency was good but the flavor was lighter than I had been hoping for. We put it with a chipotle BBQ sauce and chicken, then caramelized onions and deglazed with the beer to get a little more flavor. Final product came out fantastic.
 
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I let my Beer Dough sit for 11 more days, and made a few pies with it and it was fantastic!

It stretched easily, it was not blown out, the flavor was spectacular it really behaved nicely and the finished product crisped up for us.

So from the results that I saw here is that the beer must’ve retarded my fermentation, 96 hours was not enough resting time, whereas the exact same formulation without beer, 48-72 hours rest time is where we like it.

I do not plan on using this beer dough formula for the restaurant, because I would never have enough cooler space to run a 10-12 day cold ferment to keep ourselves in dough
 
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Tom, have you ever tried malt extract? The kind you buy from a home brew supply place? Its listed as a malt syrup. I have often wondered if that would work for a beer flavored crust. Any thoughts?
 
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It won’t give you a “beer” flavored crust if that’s what you’re looking for, but it will give you something of a malted milk ball (candy) flavor.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Yeah, an 11 day ferment would be quite cumbersome. I can see it getting you one some food shows though! I’m surprised it wasn’t blown out after all that time though. Would dough normally be good for pizza for 5 or so days? I thought it was about 3 days then it was good for breadsticks and apps for a day or two, then it went bad.
 
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