Last week I posted a new recipe for cold fermentation with mixed success. No matter if I let it proof longer or modify the % of water, it would give more or less the same result. A weak pizza 🙁
So I kept telling myself, I must have done something wrong and just retry with less water or use a different recipe. Ultimately failing each time
So what’s going but more importantly how can I avoid all those failures?
The type of flour you use has a HUGE impact on the quality of the dough. If you do Roman/Neapolitan pizza style, you want to use Tipo 00 flour. For American style, standard bread flour work fine. So what’s Tipo00 ??
Tipo00 refers to the fineness of the grain when milled.
Ok simple enough. WAIT! Not all Tipo 00 flour were created equal.
Unfortunately, most bags don’t reveal the % of protein content in the whey. The higher the number the better it will be for long fermentation.
To calculate it, look at the nutritional facts on the bag.
On the right you can see that for 30g you get 4g of protein.
4g divided by 30g X 100 = Percentage
In this example, this flour contains roughly 13.3% of protein. That being said, this bag of Polsetti Tipo 00 lists this flour at “at least 11.5%” while the nutritional fact from Canada shows 13.3%. Not sure who to believe here but can highly recommend Polsetti Classica Tipo 00.
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| Weak pizza with sparse air pocket due to low protein content in flour |
For 48-72 hours fermentation the recommended protein content is 14.5%
For 24-48 hours fermentation the recommended protein content is 13%
For 2-8 hours fermentation, anything with 11-12.5% will work