Agreed. I had a number of terrible events unfold before I had my coffee this morning, and reading this while finishing my coffee made me feel like I'll at least make it through to... when I start watching election coverage. This is great content, Andrew. Very succinct and easy to understand. Thank you.
thanks so much, James! Appreciate it, and I'm glad you liked the post. I've not spent much time on pizzamaking.com in awhile, but it was very helpful for me back in the day.
This inside baseball was exactly what I needed to break through. Feeling so happy and grateful for this clear context. Hang in there people. Keep baking this day away. 🔥❤️
You wrote, "Incidentally, there is no benefit to adding actual sugar to long-fermented doughs as a way to improve browning, since it will be long gone by the time it comes to bake the dough."
I've always wondered about this...but have not found credible measurement of how the amount of sugar changes over time. What have you found? Thanks.
I haven't found anything specific, Allen (though I haven't really done any digging). But from experience I know that diastatic malt is a far more reliable method for ensuring browning than small amounts of sugar, so it must be the case that the sugar gets consumed first. I'm sure you could add _large_ amounts of it to overcome this effect (it's not like sweet doughs turn noticeably less sweet after long fermentations). I've actually seen a formula for how much you need ("each gram of instant yeast consumes 2x its weight in sugar per hour of fermentation"), but I haven't sorted out how to convert it into cold fermentation timeframes.
Actually, I forgot that I did some testing around this awhile back for CI, where I found that you needed to use at least 4% sugar to overcome this effect, at least in doughs with multiple-day fermentations like these. And I think I remember finding that honey was a good option too (though it comes across as sweeter), since yeast doesn't readily ferment fructose.
Just threading your teachings here. If you're proposing that cold-fermentation is the way to go with thin-crust pizza, then should I care about DDT at any point in building my dough?
Tom - good question, and one I will go into when I share recipes. But the good news is that because you generally want the dough to start out _cold_, you don't have to be precise, you just start with ice-cold water. All will be revealed next week!
This is the news I needed today.
Agreed. I had a number of terrible events unfold before I had my coffee this morning, and reading this while finishing my coffee made me feel like I'll at least make it through to... when I start watching election coverage. This is great content, Andrew. Very succinct and easy to understand. Thank you.
I hope things turn for the better for you.
Hi Andrew, this post in all its glorious detail is just in time as I'm about to retest pizza stones and steels. Any new thoughts about those?
Stay tuned for tomorrow's post, Lisa!!
Thank you for that very interesting and informative post. I posted a link to this article on pizzamaking.com so maybe you will get some new visitors.
thanks so much, James! Appreciate it, and I'm glad you liked the post. I've not spent much time on pizzamaking.com in awhile, but it was very helpful for me back in the day.
This inside baseball was exactly what I needed to break through. Feeling so happy and grateful for this clear context. Hang in there people. Keep baking this day away. 🔥❤️
You wrote, "Incidentally, there is no benefit to adding actual sugar to long-fermented doughs as a way to improve browning, since it will be long gone by the time it comes to bake the dough."
I've always wondered about this...but have not found credible measurement of how the amount of sugar changes over time. What have you found? Thanks.
I haven't found anything specific, Allen (though I haven't really done any digging). But from experience I know that diastatic malt is a far more reliable method for ensuring browning than small amounts of sugar, so it must be the case that the sugar gets consumed first. I'm sure you could add _large_ amounts of it to overcome this effect (it's not like sweet doughs turn noticeably less sweet after long fermentations). I've actually seen a formula for how much you need ("each gram of instant yeast consumes 2x its weight in sugar per hour of fermentation"), but I haven't sorted out how to convert it into cold fermentation timeframes.
Actually, I forgot that I did some testing around this awhile back for CI, where I found that you needed to use at least 4% sugar to overcome this effect, at least in doughs with multiple-day fermentations like these. And I think I remember finding that honey was a good option too (though it comes across as sweeter), since yeast doesn't readily ferment fructose.
Hey Andrew,
Just threading your teachings here. If you're proposing that cold-fermentation is the way to go with thin-crust pizza, then should I care about DDT at any point in building my dough?
Tom - good question, and one I will go into when I share recipes. But the good news is that because you generally want the dough to start out _cold_, you don't have to be precise, you just start with ice-cold water. All will be revealed next week!