SCIENCE BEHIND A PERFECT PIZZA

 Warning pizza nerds only how to cold ferment pizza dough I will show you how to cold ferment your pizza dough why? Because you wanna make a pizza that has an amazing rise on the crust is covered with beautiful little charred spots has a bit of crunch on the outside while the inside is filled with huge air pockets making it the fluffiest and softest bread-like crust you have ever tasted. Besides being an amazing pizza it’s also super easy to make And did I say it’s tasty?

Damn it’s tasty! How to cold ferment your pizza dough. Let’s get started.

Mix your ingredients and knead them for about five minutes. Now, protect your dough from drying by covering it with a damp towel or better yet put it in an airtight container place it in the fridge at a temperature between 4 and 7 °C now leave it in there for one two or three days. Take it out. Make your dough balls Place them in a tray. Cover them and let them rest for about fourhours at room temperature. Shape your dough Bake your pizza And enjoy! (Bim chika bim chika bim bam boum)

You’re ready! Yeahhhh !!! What the hell just happened? What is proofing? What is fermenting ? And what is this pizza guy saying? It just doesn’t make sense How does it work ? Let’s get started The first thing you will need is a recipe for your dough on my website, madhurbajaj56.blogspot.com And find your recipe Now you can mix your ingredients. But if you still need some help with that Then check out my tutorials on how to make Neapolitan pizza dough After mixing You can give your dough a quick five minutes knead inside the bowl without you knowing you have set multiple processes into motion basically you have brought the dough alive one of the processes that you have set into motion is that you have added many, many single-celled organisms and because they came in contact with water they're now starting to wake up ohh hold up !

I know what you’re thinking, Oh that ain’t me that’s mister yeast and now he’s awake he would love to eat some sugar. So the first thing that will happen is that the yeast will start to feed itself on the sugars inside of the dough producing gases like carbon dioxide and alcohol not only the yeast eat something when it came into contact with water also the proteins glutenin and gliadin got wet, and when these proteins get wet they will start bonding together all by themselves this process takes time, but you can help it a bit by applying some pressure knead the dough for a quick five minutes and let time do the rest once glutenin and gliadin have bonded together. They have become gluten and gluten has elastic properties much like chewing-gum.

 So now the gluten is in place the gas that is being produced by the yeast will be trapped inside the dough making everything rise to have an idea of what gluten looks like in reality. I made two dough balls the same amount of flower the same amount of water the only difference is in the one I use high protein typo 00 pizza flour and in the other one, I used low protein cake flour. Let’s check it out I will wash away the starch so only the gluten will remain now you can also see why it is so important to use high protein flour instead of low protein flour. Next, I will blow some air into the gluten so you can see how incredibly elastic the gluten is. ok ! ok ! ok ! we know about your gluten. We know about your yeast why are we going to put the dough into the fridge?

Aaahaaa that’s because there is one more process that has take place to go from a weak pizza to a strong pizza remember the white stuff we just washed away from the gluten that is called starch, if you would look really really really close at starch you would find that it exists out of starch granules to create the next level super tasty easy to digest beautifully charred pizza the granules need to be broken down into simpler sugars this job is done by enzymes. Lots of enzymes the new sugars they have created will partly get eaten by yeast creating more complex flavors and the sugars that are leftover will caramelize during the bake creating more flavors and a beautifully charring on the crust so the enzymes do a great job but they are not the fastest workers especially if you compare them to the yeast. Yeast eat sugars and produces gas like crazy especially when they are in a warm spot if you let this go on for too long your dough will overgrow before the enzymes finish breaking down all the starch to prevent this from happening you can slow down the yeast activity by cooling your dough at temperatures between 4 and 7 degrees celsius. The he yeast will almost come to a standstill giving the enzymes who are not as much affectedby the cold some time to catch up with the yeast how much time do you give the enzymes to do their job?

 It’s up to you some pizza bakers go for 24 hours and say that everything above 24 hours is just for showing off while others swear by 72 hours but whatever they do, they all agree on one thing and that is that time is the secret to achieve absolute greatness.

We start by dividing our dough then once you get your pieces of dough, you bowl them up you put them in a container, put a thin layer of oil over them to prevent them from drying out. Then cover it with a damp towel or better yet, put them in a dough crate now. 

There is one last very very important step for the final rising of your dough let your dough rest at room temperature between 19 and 22 ° C for about four hours this is very very important. There are two reasons why this is so important, the gluten is very tense from the cold so shaping the dough will be an absolute hell, you need to give the gluten some time to relax and warm up a bit. Secondly, all those enzymes have been working for the last few days breaking down all those starches and turning them into sugars and you know how yeast love that sugar that’s right! So give them at least four hours to eat in return, they will make sure to give your dough one last rise creating all those gases, aromas and other greatness.

Believe me this will be the best pizza you have ever made. Ok, now you’re finally ready to shape, top,bake, share and eat that wonderful wood-fired slice of heaven. That’s all folks Enjoy, have fun, and let me know how your pizza tasted! Peace out and keep smiling.