(Experiment 106) Cold Fermentation Neapolitan pizza

Cold fermentation Neapolitan pizza is king in my house. Why? Because I can make the dough a day or two in advance, it requires very little active time, and it produces the best-tasting dough.

Why cold fermentation?

It gives the enzymes more time to break down the starch in the flour into sugar for the yeast to feed on. Ultimately, it tastes better and is easier to digest.

Do I need a pizza oven ?

Ideally yes . This gives out the best result no questions asked but you can get decent results using a pizza stone/steel.

Do I need a pizza stone or steel?

Yes. The stone or steel needs to be preheated for at least 30-45 minutes at 500°F. When you put the cold pizza on it, the dough will immediately start baking and the surface will barely lose any heat.

Let’s go over the settings quickly.

RT leavening is the amount of time you let the dough sit at room temperature before and after putting it in the fridge. This number affects how much yeast you need. So if you let it proof for 2 hours before putting it in the fridge, then let it sit on the counter for 3 hours after balling it up, you’d enter 5 hours total.

CT leavening is the time spent in the fridge. Adjust the time and temperature to your liking — just be sure to adjust your yeast type accordingly. Instant dry yeast is what I have on hand 99% of the time, since it’s commonly available where I live.

RT °C: set this to your room temperature.

CT °C: set this to your fridge temperature.

Water hydration is the percentage of water relative to flour in the dough. This affects several things: how easy the dough is to work (higher hydration is harder to handle), how crispy the crust turns out, how puffy it becomes, and more. 60% is probably the easiest to work with if you’re new to this.

Note that you don’t have to do 72 hours — 24 or 48 hours work well too. Just adjust the numbers below to match. For me, the sweet spot is around 30 hours: it gives the best flavor, and the dough is super easy to work with.

Print Recipe

(Experiment 106) Cold Fermentation Neapolitan pizza

Instructions

TIme reference are just an example here, refer to what you have inputted into Pizzapp.
• 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.
You can also use a standmixer to do this although I would recommend you add a few more minutes of kneading to get better results.
• Put the dough in an airtight container for 2 hours at room temperature then put it in the fridge.
  
• After 20 hours (CT I had 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 4 hours( my total RT leavening was 6 hours , but before going in the fridge it had sit on the countertop 2 hours so, it require another 4 hours at room temperature ) . 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