I've been making my pizza dough with the following formula for a while now and I've noticed something odd about the texture of the dough after the initial mix but before the bulk rise. According to the baking percentage formula, the dough is at 68.7%---not very high, not very low in my opinion---I routinely make bread dough at 70%, but in those I only have flour, salt, water, and yeast.
However, after I go through with the process (detailed below) I notice that the dough comes out feeling and acting very wet when I knead it. Almost like a 75-80% hydration (which I've worked with before). The only thing I can guess is that it's the oil doing it (I realize my fresh yeast is a little high, but that shouldn't matter right?). But why? And have others encountered this? Could it be the mixing process? And if baker's percentages cover the straight up hydration of the dough, is there another system for determining how the dough will feel after mixing? Perhaps that's not an important thing to know, but it is odd to me that a little bit of oil could affect the dough texture so much, if that's what's doing it. Anyway, here's what I do:
Formula:
555g bread flour
100g semolina flour
10g salt
10g sugar
15g fresh yeast
25g olive oil
450g water (90-95F)
Add the flours, salt, sugar and yeast to the bowl of a food processor with a plastic dough blade. Pulse to mix. Weigh out oil and water and add through the feeder spout while blending on the 'dough' setting. Once all water/oil is in, continue blending until dough lifts up from the bottom of the blender and spins on the blades (about 30 seconds). The whole food processor part takes about a minute from turning on to stopping.
Then I dump the mixture out onto the counter and begin kneading with the slap and fold technique. Like I said, it feels very wet and sticky and has a tough time staying together. After bulk rise it starts to feel a little less wet, but still feels much stickier than bread dough I've worked with at 70%.
Any thoughts are appreciated.
A
I regularly use 3% olive oil in all my breads and that's fine - I have tried up to 6% without issues. Your level is around 4.5% which should be OK
thanks!
My only thought is that you're the only person in the world who uses the plastic dough blade. :-)
After slicing myself one too many times on the metal blades I learned my lesson :)
Ha, I've done that a few times. I now remove the blade before I fiddle with anything inside and keep it at arm's length as carry it to the dishwasher.