Pizza #2 48H Cold ferment; still tuning my process!

The 48H Cold Ferment Pizza

After the success of my last pizza I decided to try another cold ferment pizza while making a few adjustments to try and get a better crust. If you haven't read my previous pizza blog then you might be a bit confused about why i'm making these adjustments to my pizza crust but in short, it's because I have limited supply to quality pizza ingredients and equipment living in China so I'v had a countless number of failed pizzas, usually ending up with very white, biscuit like dough instead of the golden brown and crispy/chewy pizza dough we all know and love.

Reflecting back on what was wrong!

Last time I was a little impatient with my pizza dough and took it out from the cold ferment after only 24 hours. I was also impatient with the rest period and only waited about an hour after taking it out which wasn't enough time for the dough to warm up and made rolling it out a bit tough. If you noticed in my last pizza blog the pizza had very BIG crust. The crust tasted very good but it was just a little too much for me.

The Changes

To improve on my last pizza I forced myself to be more patient and did a 48 hour cold ferment. After the cold ferment I set my oven to rise mode and let the dough sit in there for 1 hour to warm up, previously I just had the dough sitting out of the fridge instead. After the 1 hour sit I took it out of the oven and set it on the counter for another hour while the oven heated up.

To make a thinner crust I rolled the dough ball out much more and left much less crust space when forming the initial shape. The dough was much warmer and pliable than last time which made this process much smoother.

While I was happy with the browning results of the olive oil and oven pre-heat time in my last attempt, I decided to try another browning agent and compare the results. I grabbed some butter, sauteed it in garlic and then strained the garlic out to make a garlic butter which I brushed over the entire pizza.

Just like last time, I precooked the crust for 10 minutes before adding any toppings to help promote the golden brown crust I was looking for. After pulling the pizza out I added my pizza sauce, three types of cheese, ham, garlic slices, jalapenos and olives... Honestly, there wasn't much thought behind the combination of ingredients, I was just too lazy to make another trip to the store and grabbed a bunch of random stuff I had in the fridge haha! Right before popping it back into the oven I brushed the crust one more time with the garlic butter just for good measure.

Now the moment we're all waiting for.... the final pizza! The crust turned out amazing! It had a beautiful golden brown and the crust to pizza ratio wasn't as overbearing as my last pizza. And who doesn't love a garlic butter crust! I'm very happy with this iteration of my cold ferment pizzas but it's only the beginning. I'll be trying a 72 hour cold ferment and even a 5 day ferment at some point. I'm really excited to see how the crust develops when it has more time.

The recipe (2 10-12in pizzas):

It's the exact same as before. Since i'm trying to measure the effects of cold fermentation I'm trying to keep this part the same. Here's the recipe again for anyone who didn't read the first blog:

4 cups + 1 small handful of bread flour (the handful is for rolling the dough out later)
1 1/2 cup water
2.5 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons yeast
3 teaspoons kosher salt

Directions:

1. Combine all the ingredients in your bread machine and let the machine form the dough and knead it for you. If you don't have a bread machine you'll have to do this part by hand. It's a mess and it's tiring but you can do it! Make sure you knead it really well, about 15 minutes until the dough is not sticky anymore and has a nice elastic stretch. If the dough tears apart when you start pulling it some then it's not ready.

2. After the kneading is done, roll the dough into 2 balls, grease with olive oil and cover tightly in their own separate large bowls. Place the bowl in the fridge and you're done for the next 48 hours!

3. Once you've waited out your cold fermentation time, take the bowl out and place it in a room temperature/warm area to warm up some for 2 hours. During the last hour pre-heat your oven as hot as it'll go. In pizza making, the hotter the better, most professional pizza ovens will reach 600-800F ! The idea is to flash cook the outside of the crust while leaving the inside nice and chewy.

4. Finally, roll the dough ball into a pizza disk and brush with garlic butter or olive oil. If you're using a low temp oven like me (230C), then you'll probably want to pre-cook your dough for about 10 minutes to help with the browning process. If you plan on using a lot of wet ingredients for your pizza then make sure you brush the entire pizza with butter/oil and precook the crust as this will help prevent the crust from getting soggy during the cooking time.

5. After the pre-cook top it with your favorite toppings and throw it back in for another 10-15 minutes until the crust is as brown as you'd like.