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Experiment date: 20th February 2021
Objective: See how far I can take cold proving
Abstract: Due to rising ambient temperature as winter fades towards spring, the
cold-proving chamber (garage) wasn't quite cold enough, and so I accidentally
made alco-bread. 10/10, would make alco-bread again.
I really liked last week's recipe, so I'm keeping it exactly the same except
for the hydration level. By jacking it up to 80% I hope to achieve a softer
dough, without too great a hazard to kneading, as my flour is very strong. This
is Matthews Cotswold Flour Strong White, and it's goooood.
This week I activated the yeast at 41°C. After ten minutes, I had very little
foam, and started to worry that the dried yeast had died in the fridge. I gave
it another ten minutes, and got a slight amount more foam. I hoped that this
slight amount was enough to get it started.
Cold-proving in the garage worked well last week, but I only gave it six hours
or so. This week I left it for twenty-six and a half hours, just because that
was the time window between my dough-making opportunity and my pizza-eating
opportunity.
Unfortunately, it is no longer deep winter here. Temperatures are far milder
than they were seven days ago. I measured the ambient garage temperature as
11.4°C - at least ten degrees warmer than it was a week ago. The temperature
inside the dough was surely even higher. As a result, this cold-proving was not
truly cold. I checked after a few hours, and indeed the dough had filled the
clingfilmed bowl entirely. Still, I left it overnight to see what would happen.
The next day, I found a significantly collapsed dough, and upon unwrapping it
was greeted with a powerful sharp-smelling whiff. Uh-oh. I feared I had left the
realm of dough-making and entered the realm of brewery. Was this fermentation?
Or rotting?
Nevertheless, I strongly believe that even bad pizza is still good, and I'm not
one to abandon an experiment midway, so after cutting and shaping and leaving
for an hour, I was ready to bake. The dough was a lot wetter than last week. I'm
not sure if this was because of the hydration level, or because of the
collapsing. It looked thoroughly puddle-like on the baking tray, but I was able
to press it out into circles with oiled fingers.
Taking my key learning from last week on board, I prebaked the dough for 8
minutes, and was granted hope by its nice rise after all. On went the usual
toppings, and in they went for another ten minutes at 230°C.
No oil this week. I'd like to say it was out of health concerns, but actually I
just put the tinned tomatoes in the pan first, forgetting to fry the garlic. By
putting the garlic in second, I effectively boiled it in the tomatoes.
I simmered this for 25 minutes, reducing it to a thick sauce.
Mozzarella, pepperoni, 🧅 shallot and 🍍 pineapple.
I roasted the pineapple chunks beforehand to drive out most of the moisture.
Despite worrying that I was about to get everybody drunk, the pizzas turned out
to be truly awesome. There wasn't a huge amount of rise in the centre, but the
dough was cooked through almost perfectly, with some nice bubbles and the right
balance of crispy crust with soft interior. Whatever alcohol was in the bread
had surely been cooked off, and only a pleasant well-developed fermenty-yeasty
taste remained. It was really, really good!
10/10 scores across the board from all judges.
Little Miss: "I don't think you could have done better. It was perfect."
Was it truly tastier than last week's? Did the overlong warm-proving help or
hinder? If it helped, was the extra taste worth the extra effort? A week is a
long time, with many tastebud resets, so next week I aim to do some A/B
testing.
I'm also trying to drive out my remaining non-vegan dietary inputs, and pizza
is holding me back, so I am going to restart experimenting with purely
plant-based toppings soon.
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pepperoni, dough, oven, cold-proving, alco-bread, leavening, or maillard
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