(Experiment 98) Pizza with Biga

So this is part 2 of the pre-fermented pizza recipe. Biga is a dry pre-fermentation while Poolish is very wet. Again kudo to Vito Iacopelli for the original posting, this is an easy to follow transcript and additional guidance.

Warning: this is not a beginners dough, its quite wet and takes practice to be able to “handle” such a dough

So what’s the difference between them? Visually Biga will be more “puffy”. Texture-wise I find poolish to be more “soft” while Biga is chewier. The taste from the dough made from Biga reminds me of sourdough, it has a rich flavor. Personally, I prefer the pizza made with Poolish simply because it’s more soft.

To get started you need to make the Biga 48 hours in advance

Biga

• 50g water room temperature
• 100g flour Tipo00
• 2.5g active dry yeast

Instructions

1. Mix with hands gently, the goal is not to form a ball, just make sure flour is mixed with the water and there are no flour clumps anymore. Put in an airtight container for 48 hr in the fridge

You need

• 200g water room temperature
• 250g flour Tipo00
• 7.5g sea salt
• biga ( all you made above)

Instructions

1. Put water in the stand mixer
   Put biga and break with your hands or mixer

   makes the water milky

2. 
   Add 50% of flour while mixing
   Add the salt
   Add remaining flour
   Mix for ~10-15 mins
3. Put on the countertop and flip over on itself a couple of times, you can do so by grabbing it in the middle on each side ( it should naturally flap over ) .
4. When smooth, Make a big ball
   Cover for 30 mins ( I re-used my kitchen bowl )
   NOTE: The dough should be very sticky
5. 
   Out of the bowl
   
   Smooth
6. Reflip on itself, redo the huge ball, cover back for 10 mins
7. It’s now time to make balls
8. Make sure to preserve the top portion from the big ball when you cut it to make smaller balls. Put a bit of flour in an airtight container, drop balls put a little bit of flour on top of balls, cover, and do a final rise 2 hours at room temperature. If you have extra balls you won’t use, put them in an airtight container and throw them in the fridge, following day, let it rise a tad more than 60 minutes at room temperature.
9. You can now stretch and bake !