Converting Pizza Dough to Sandwich Sourdough
Hi,
I've used this site over the past decade now and again, never made a login until now as I am currently going nuts.
I own a restaurant. We are trying to kill 2 birds with one loaf by using our pizza dough as our sourdough/sandwich dough as well. Hoping some bigger brains can offer me some guidance. Here's the situation.
Our pizza dough is:
63% water
1.8% salt
Yeast is weather dependent
8.8% starter
3.8% whey
3% added gluten
2.3% olive oil
The dough is autolyzed at the beginning. When mixing is complete, after resting it for 10-20 minutes on bench top it gets cut into dough balls for pizza.
Now if I grab a dough-balled large, that's 650g and try to make it into a sandwich loaf, if my life depended on it, I can't get it to do what I want. What I want is a sandwich loaf approximately 16cm wide, 9cm tall, 20cm long. Dimensions are a bit beside the point.
What I've tried is taking the fresh formed ball and letting it double, degassing it, restiching it, putting it a banneton, letting it prove, gently removing it onto parchment paper, and sliding onto the stone in my steam convection oven. I've tried temps of 200c and 220c. 220c is a bit too aggressive for this situation.
In the maybe 15 attempts I've made with slight variations, I never get adequate oven spring. Crust is nice, crumb is acceptable for my needs, but it will not spring nor will I ever get an ear.
Yesterday I tried a plain white dough, new recipe. Mixed it, balled it, let it double, degassed it, cut up balls, shaped the balls, put them in baskets, let them rise, baked them. Same oven, steam on, beautiful rise and I got an ear on them. I tried the next day using them for sandwiches and they just don't compare to the proper sourdough that I am currently forced to buy. The real sourdough has a beautiful crunch that is simply wonderful and I can't not serve that! The price of these loaves is prohibitively expensive and I really do need to make our own.
Does anyone have any suggestion as to what I could try with my pizza dough so that I can get better oven spring? An ear would be a bonus. I really want to use my pizza dough as it will save our kitchen a lot of time and energy and money.
A recipe from scratch is out of the question, we don’t have the time or means to create a careful temperature-controlled environment for artisan sourdough.
Hope some bigger brains have a suggestion
I don't understand what you are requesting. You say the the sourdough bread that you buy has a "beautiful crunch", and you also say you want a sandwich bread. Sandwich bread usually means a softish bread with a soft crust, and usually is enriched with some combination of eggs, sugar, and butter. One also doesn't expect to have a sandwich loaf with an ear. In addition, sandwich loaves are usually baked in loaf pans to get a more uniform shape for sandwich slices, and for less crustiness.
This is just a matter of terminology but it makes it hard to know exactly what you want. Your basic pizza dough sounds to me like it ought to produce a decent loaf of bread.
One thing I notice is that your description of how you are making these loaves did not include a bulk fermentation step. If you are omitting the BF, your loaves may rise in the basket but the gluten may not have enough time to organize and relax properly. The use of vital wheat gluten would make the need for the time more pronounced.
What kind of flour are you using? Normally with an all-purpose or bread flour, bread bakers would not be adding gluten.
TomP
Sorry, I guess this is just a terminology thing as I'm not as versed in the bread world. I want to make a sourdough loaf in a banneton to be used for bread to make sandwiches. I want an ear purely for aesthetics. The ear is negotiable at this point.
My goal is a bread loaf as close to a real sourdough as I can get without the same processing, using my pizza dough. I understand some sacrifices in quality must be made to reach this goal.
Guilty, I am not bulk fermenting. I
am hoping I can make aneed to make a good enough bread without this step.I am in Thailand using Thai flour. I use bread flour. I fortify it with gluten.
Ah, and I am in the US and using US flours. All right.
Well, as to sourdough-like bread, one of the characteristic elements of naturally yeasted, "artisan"-style bread is that it is given a relatively long time to develop. This brings out more flavor and lets the gluten organize and relax. You use shaping techniques to restore elasticity to the shaped loaves. It's possible to approach these qualities without using a sourdough starter, but not without providing some time. But you would prefer a short production cycle if possible, it seems.
The simplest thing I can think of is to put some of your balls of pizza dough into the refrigerator after they have fermented an hour or two. The next day, shape them, proof and bake them. You should be able to bake within an hour or so after shaping. This will give you more flavor than you are getting now, with minimal effect on your daily pizza-making.
You need to be able to generate some steam in your oven for a better crust. It only needs to be in there for the first several minutes of baking.
Your baking temperature may be on the high side for bread, since you are baking pizza. The larger the loaf the lower the oven temperature should be. I find that a 1-pound/450g (baked) loaf bakes well at 400 - 435 def F/204C - 224C. A 1 1/2 or 2 pound loaf could be baked say 15 deg F/9C lower.
Another step towards a more sourdough flavor is to drain liquid off a live-culture yogurt and use it as part of the mixing liquid. You only need an ounce/30g for 300 - 500g flour. That's if you can get any in Thailand, of course. It will improve the flavor of your pizza crust as well.
The next step could be to use a poolish in making up your pizza dough. You would still add the yeast to the dough during mixing. This would add almost no trouble, and will bring better flavor to the pizza as well. Otherwise you would refrigerate balls of dough as I suggested above.
I think that these minor changes to your process flow would let you use the same dough for both pizza crust and for bread, with pretty satisfactory results. You may never be able to match bread from a good bakery that runs a process specifically tailored for sourdough bread, but it won't be far behind.
Please bear in mind that I am a home, amateur baker though I have known and worked with a (very) small-scale bakery run by a friend of mine. I don't have the scheduling, cost, and physical plant issues that you have.
TomP
First, when the dough is allowed to double, is that a measured doubling or is it an eye-balled doubling? What I've learned over the years is that my sense of a dough doubling is quite a bit different than a measured doubling. In other words, what looks doubled to me is usually quite a bit more than an actual doubling when measured in a container. So, if the same is true for you, the dough may actually be edging toward over-fermented even though it is still at the bulk ferment stage of your process. That would certainly contribute to a reduced or no oven spring.
Second, how aggressively are you degassing after bulk fermentation? It may be that the degassing and subsequent shaping are removing so much gas from the dough that it hasn't recovered before going into the oven.
Third, which is really an extension of the second point, what is the dough condition when you put it into the oven? Has it reinflated? Does it need more time? Or has it fermented so far that it is nearing collapse? If it has expanded to less than 1.5 times its original shaped volume, it may need more time. If it is already at or beyond doubling from its original shaped volume, it may be verging on over-proofed. The latter case would certainly militate against producing good oven-spring or an ear.
If you would post photos of the loaf and its crumb, that would help with a diagnosis.
Best of luck,
Paul
I did not think of this possibility. Thank you, I will try to "double it" less.
What I've tried is forming a dough ball, putting it in a vessel, and letting it "double" (see above). Then I remove the dough from the vessel, stretching the sides towards the center again and re-stitching it.
After re-stitching it, it gets floured and put into a banneton. I put it in my warm prover and check on it in about 30-45 minutes. I poke it with my floured finger and if it springs back but not too quickly, I proceed with baking it.
Thank you I will do that. Just today I took a 350g dough (I was hoping to use more like 650g one day b/c the more bread, the better) and followed the following process:
1. Doubled it, but less than before
2. Restitched/balled it.
3. Floured generously and put in banettonne. Put into prover.
4. After about an hour it passed the finger poke test.
5. I inverted it onto baking parchment gently, scored it, trying perpendicular today, and used a pizza peel to place it gently on a stone in my steam convection oven set to 200C. The steam is set for 5 minutes. After a total of 10 minutes I turned the heat off but left it inside. After an additional 15 minutes I removed it to cool. I will slice it tomorrow and try to get some photos.
The result of the scoring was disappointing, it just looks like a dried wound, not really sure how to describe it. It clearly is not helping the bread expand that much.
Thank you for the help! Hope the pictures I get can help too.
The dough on the left is a 350g pizza dough following process below I've put into quotes. The dough on the right is the sourdough I buy. I believe it's starting weight is 550-650.
Here is what the scoring looked like
Here it is in the oven while baking at 200C, Fan on, steam on 5 minutes.
That scoring would not help the loaf to expand. It could only help it get a little longer. When a score line expands it gets wider. So if you want overall expansion, you want scores that affect the entire surface. That means scores along the length. It could be a single dramatic score, off center perhaps, along the whole loaf, a series of shorter lengthwise scores like a baguette, two or three long lengthwise scores, that kind of thing. For a boule, a square pattern or a cross, something that will allow the whole topside to open up.
Scoring will have the most effect on a small loaf, since the surface tension on the outer membrane will be high relative to the forces inside trying to expand the loaf. You have a smallish loaf there.
The finger poke test is all very well, but I have experimentally let loaves ferment for even an hour or so past the poke test. Most of them baked pretty well, some rose dramatically more than usual, and a few became overproofed. It depends on the flour, the dough recipe, and the entire history of the fermentation, as well as the shaping.
Based on the crumb, the store loaf on the right had a much higher hydration than your dough.
I also think yours looks underbaked, but that wouldn't have prevented good oven spring. If you are able to play with the oven temperature, try turning it down or even off when you put the loaf in, generate steam, and then turn the temperature back to the planned bake temperature after 5 to 7 minutes. This will let the surface of the dough take longer to get up to a temperature where it stiffens up. If the dough is still able to rise, this should increase expansion.
TomP
Great suggestions and observations, thank you. I will report back hopefully tomorrow with some pictures of my successes and failures.
I wrote So if you want overall expansion, you want scores that affect the entire surface. That means scores along the length. In the opposite case from yours, a loaf that wants to slump and spread sideways too much will do better with a series of shorter scores mostly from one side to the other. Done right, they will help the loaf expand upwards instead of outwards.
You might try going to the bakery that sells the sourdough bread you like and seeing if they will sell you some of their flour. See if their flour gives you a different result.