Cold fermentation Neapolitan pizza is king in my house. Why? Because I can make the dough a day or 2 in advance, requires very little time and it provides the best tasting dough.
Why cold fermentation?
It gives more time to the enzyme to break starch in the flour into sugar for the yeast to eat. Ultimately it tastes better and is easier to digest.
Do I need a pizza stone or steel?
Yes. The stone/steel needs to be preheated for 30 minutes at 500F. When you put the cold pizza on it, it will immediately start baking the dough and will barely lose any heat.
Let’s go over the setting quickly.
- RT leavening is the amount of time you let it sit at room temp before and/or after you put it in the fridge. This number will modify the amount of yeast needed. So if you let it proof 2 hours before putting in the fridge and you let it sit on the countertop 3 hours ( after you ball them up) , you would put 5 hours.
- CT leavening is the time in the fridge. Adjust time + temperature to your liking. Very important to adjust your yeast type. Instant dry yeast is what I have on hand 99% of the time cause its commonly available where I live.
- RT C set it to your room temperature
- CT C is your fridge temperature
- Water hydration percentage of the dough. This will impact many things like how easy is will be to work the dough ( higher is harder) , how crispy the crust will be, how puffy it will be etc . 60% is probably easier to work with if you are new
Do note you don’t have to do 72hours, 24 or 48 hours work well too. Obviously, adjust the number below to match.To me, the sweet spot is around 30 hours. It gives the best flavours and the dough is super easy to work with.
Instructions
- Add water + salt to a bowl, mix with your hands
- Add about a quarter of the flour and mix; this is to prevent the salt from burning the yeast
- Add the yeast
- Add the rest of the flour and mix with your hands
- When most of the clumps of flour are gone and it’s making somewhat of a ball, dump it on the countertop and knead the dough for 5 minutes. You should have a nice soft dough.
- Put the dough in an airtight container for 2 hours at room temperature then put it in the fridge.
- After 30 hours (or whatever amount of CT you have set) take it out of the fridge
Gently remove dough from the container, put on a clean surface, separate, and make balls.
- Put them back in the container and cover them loosely for 2-4 hours( adjust to what you have set your RT to) . Note that the warmer it is in your house, the less time is required. This will give time for the yeast to wake up and eat all the sugars and give it a nice puff when you bake it.
- Stretch, bake and enjoy
