How to cold ferment your pizza dough

I will show you how to cold ferment your pizza dough .

Why ?

Because you wanna make a pizza that has amazing rice on the crust .

It's covered with beautiful little char spots .

Had 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 from 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 need 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 four and seven degrees Celsius .

Now leave it in there for one , two mhm or three days .

Take it out , make your dough balls , place them in a tray , cover them and let them rest for about four hours at room temperature .

Shape your dough , bake your pizza and enjoy .

Boom , boom , you're ready .

What the hell just happened ?

What is proofing ?

What is fermenting and Why is this pizza guy singing it ?

Just go .

How does it work ?

Let's get started .

The first thing you will need is a recipe for your dough .

On my website , you will find recipes for Neapolitan American Sicilian and sourdough pizza .

Go to pizza dough calculator dot com and find your recipe .

Now , you can mix your ingredients .

But if you still need some help with that and check out my tutorial on how to make Neapolitan pizza dough .

After mixing , you can give your dough a quick five minute meat 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 cell organisms and because they came in contact with water , they are now starting to wake up .

Oh , hold up .

I know what you're thinking .

But that , that ain't me .

That's Mr 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 gasses like carbon dioxide and alcohol .

Not only the yeast is something when it came into contact with water , also the proteins , glutamine 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 , need dough for a quick five minutes and let time do the rest .

Once glutamine and Gliadin have bonded together , they have become gluten and gluten has elastic properties much like chewing gum .

So now the gluten are in place .

The gas is being produced by the yeast will be trapped inside the dough , making everything rice to have an idea what gluten looks like .

In reality , I made two dough balls , same amount of flour , same amount of water .

The only difference is in the one I used high protein tipo 00 pizza flour .

And in the other one , I used low protein cake flour .

Let's check it out .

I will wash away the stars .

So only the gluten will remain .

Now , you can also see why it's so important to use high protein in flour instead of low protein in flour .

Next , I will blow some air into the gluten .

So you can see how incredibly elastic the gluten are .

Ok .

Ok .

Ok .

We know about your gluten .

We know about your yeast .

Why are we gonna put the dough into the fridge ?

Ah That's because there is one more process that has to 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 will find that it exists out of starch Granules to create 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 partially be eaten by yeast , creating more complex flavors and the sugars that are left over will caramelize during the bake , creating more flavors and a beautifully jarring on the crust .

So the enzymes , they do a great job but they're not the fastest workers , especially if you compare them to the yeast .

Yeast eats sugars .

And this gas is like crazy , especially when they're in a warm spot .

If you let this go on for too long , your dough will over prove 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 four and seven degrees Celsius .

The yeast will almost come to a standstill giving the scenes who are not as much affected by the some time to catch up with the yeast .

How much time you give the enzymes to do their job is 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 this time is the secret to achieve absolute greatness .

We start by defining our dough , then once you get your piece of dough , you boil 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 grate .

Now , there is one last very , very important step for the final proofing of your dough .

Let your dough rest at room temperature between 19 and 22 degrees Celsius for about four hours .

This is very , very important .

There are two reasons why this is so important .

The gluten are 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 reason .

Two , all those enzymes have been working there as a for the last few days , breaking down all those starches and turning them into sugars and you know how yeast loves 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 less rice , creating all those gasses , aromas and other greatness .

Uh OK .

That didn't help but believe me , this will be the best pizza you have ever made .

OK .

Now you're finally ready to shave 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