The Recipe
What would a consistent quality product be without a recipe?!?!?
This one is actually quite simple, and hasn’t changed for hundreds of years, and before you start, if you don’t already, you are going to want to go out and get a nice (but not extravagantly expensive) accurate kitchen scale that can weigh in grams (as we weigh everything). So, let’s take all these ingredients we just discussed and make a pizza.
The basic recipe is simple and includes:
Item Time / Weight
- Ideal room temperature 77°F
- Water 1000g
- Salt 50 – 55g
- Yeast 1g fresh (or 1/8tsp active dry*)
- Flour 1800g
- Mixing time 10 minutes
- Kneading 20 minutes
- First stage rise 2 hours
- Roll dough balls 180 – 250g each
- Second stage rise 20 hours
- Longevity 3 – 4 hours after 2nd rise
* AVPN does not provide an alternative to fresh yeast so offers no guidance; however, The Traditional
Oven website offers a yeast conversion calculator that suggests 1g of fresh yeast is equivalent to ~1/8tsp of active dry yeast (so depending on conditions – temp and humidity – I use either 1/8tsp or 1/4tsp or somewhere in between, so you’ll need to experiment). Remember too, that active dry yeast needs to be proofed before adding to the recipe (and always add yeast to water, never water to yeast). No need to worry about the proofing water temp impacting your dough as you only use 5 times the amount of water that you have in yeast, so in this recipe, use 5/8tsp water to 1/8tsp yeast, and then mix until smooth. If using instant yeast, there is a different conversion (and it doesn’t have to be proofed, but instead can be added directly to the dough).
While we learn in class to do this by hand, I’m instead going to focus here on using an electric mixer (as that’s how most of us will prepare our dough at home for ease and consistency). So, using your electric mixer, follow these simple rules:
- Start by pouring the water (while reserving some in a small ramekin for your yeast if using active dry) in your mixing bowl with the salt, and mix it (by hand or spoon) until completely dissolved
- DO NOT put the yeast in yet, as that concentration of salt on its own is enough to have a very adverse impact on your yeast (if not kill it all together)
- Next, start both your timer (for 30 minutes) and your mixer on low speed with a dough hook and add 10% of the total amount of flour and mix well
- Once mixed, NOW add your yeast (and remember, if using active dry yeast, dissolve it in the water you reserved in the first step in a ramekin so it is smooth, but not proofed, and readily integrates into the dough – instant yeast has a finer texture and can be mixed in with the dry ingredients with no need to dissolve in advance)
- Now gradually add the remainder of the 1800 g of flour until a total of 10 minutes has passed and all the flour has been added
- Now let the mixer run on its own and do its own thing, still on low speed, for 20 minutes, until the dough forms a single ball and the bowl is clean (the mixture should be slightly sticky, soft, and elastic to touch)
- Now remove the dough from the mixer, form it into a nice round, tight ball, and place it on a smooth surface covered with a damp towel (or what I do is turn the mixing bowl on top of it and let it sit – what you don’t want is air to get to it as that will cause an unsightly skin on the surface, and is not desirable), but no matter what, DO NOT spray with cooking oil to keep it from sticking to whatever surface it comes in contact with – cooking oil is NEVER to be added to true Neapolitan dough
- Let this sit for two hours (tip - it is not going to rise like you would expect from normal bread dough as we have retarded the yeast with the salt, but instead will mature, and prepare itself so we can form individual dough balls)
- When two hours is up, uncover the dough just long enough to use a metal spatula or a bench scraper and cut off a piece of dough that weighs about 250g, and then cover the remainder of the dough back up so it doesn’t get a skin
- We are now going to make individual dough balls (and at 250g each - the max allowed - this recipe will yield 11 balls, with the last being a bit heavier than the rest) the formation of which must be done exclusively by hand (known as ‘staglio a mano’) where the dough is made into small balls or ‘panetti’
- Take your tightly rolled panetti and put them in a dough box, Tupperware container(s), cookie sheet, or somewhere where they won’t be disturbed, can easily be covered to keep from getting a skin, and can mature for the next 20 hours
At the end of that 20 hours, behold your dough babies!!! Kept at the right temperature and covered, they will make a consistently delicious dough for up to 4 more hours.
That’s pretty much it, but for the Wurstaholics™, here’s even more to know and/or consider.
Heat can be the devil to your dough, and as mentioned earlier, the only temperature you can easily control is your water. Depending on your existing temperatures (flour and the room where you are mixing), we can get a pretty good idea of how to adjust the water to get the desired end temperature based on your mixer. Ideally you want to end up with your dough going into the first stage rise being only somewhere around 77 - 80°F.
Here is a formula I use to help:
Determine the coefficient of friction for your mixer. Never heard of that? At first, I hadn’t either. Most high-end mixers will provide that sort of info, but for the rest of us, what do we do? Internet? Google? Those might help, but as a rule of thumb most Hobart and Kitchen Aid orbital mixers have a coefficient of friction factor between 30 - 38°F (so I use an average of those two and arbitrarily just go with 34). Spiral mixers (if you are lucky enough to have one of those, and they aren’t cheap) have a factor between 24 and 26°F. Plunge and fork mixers (very rare in the US) have coefficients even lower yet (BTW, the ideal mixer for Neapolitan dough is a fork mixer as it adds air during the mixing, and keeps temps down). So, you are going to end up with using these rules of thumb, some trial, error, and experimentation to see what your mixer’s coefficient really is (or more importantly, what temperature of water do you need to start with).
Note: if you are using a mixer and have not fully developed your dough but notice the temperature is getting out of hand, stop the mixer, remove the dough, and continue by hand. Remember, temperature is the devil to your dough!
So, here’s what you do:
- Take the ideal temperature you want to achieve, and multiply by 3
- Subtract the temperature of the room from that number
- Now subtract the temperature of the flour (normally the same as the room or could be a little cooler)
- Now subtract your mixer coefficient of friction (and for a Kitchen Aid, you might start by trying 34)
- The end number is how cold your water needs to be.
Let’s see how this works in an example. Let’s say you want your dough to be 77; your room temperature is 72; your flour temperature is 70, and you are using your Kitchen Aid with a coefficient of 34. Here’s what that calculation would look like:
Action Temp
- Ideal dough temp 77°F
- Multiply by 3 resulting in: 231°F
- Minus your room temp 72°F
- Results in: 159°F
- Minus mixer coefficient 34°F
- Results in: 125°F
- Minus your flour temp 70°F
- Required water temp 55°F
So, in this example, using a Kitchen Aid mixer in a room that is 72°F with flour that is 70°F, you need to chill your water down to 55°F before you add it to your mixing bowl.
Crazy, right – but just another step in consistent, amazing pizza!!!!
And if you don’t have one, I suggest investing in a nice instant read thermometer. I personally use a Super-Fast Thermapen by ThermoWorks out of Utah (but manufactured in the UK). A little pricey but durable, fast, accurate, and versatile – I use it for all kinds of applications.
