Thanks Adarsh, I’m glad you like my blog and you’ve found it helpful.

I always recommend to start off mixing by hand and then you’ll get to understand the dough better. Once you’ve honed your skills you could then switch to a machine if you like, and you should be able to get it to work for you.

The only other thing I would mention is that if you’re doing cold proves, you need to use a lot more yeast. If your dough isn’t proving enough then you won’t end up with nice air pockets.

As a rough guide, for cold proving vs room temperature proofing (24 hours) you probably need about 8-10 times as much yeast!

Hope this helps and good luck!

Here’s my story. Over the last year, I have made several dozen pizzas in my Ooni. They’ve always looked great. BUT … I’ve not been able to nail down that perfect airy-and-crunchy crust.

I go with 00 flour, use a poolish, do cold ferments and my stretching is not too shabby. And yet, my crusts are a bit doughy and appear undercooked. They do rise up but I rarely see the open pockets. It’s so frustrating.

I thought I merely needed more practice so I kept at it. But now I know I’m making at least one big mistake: I’m using the bread maker to mix the poolish with the rest of the ingredients before I cold-ferment the dough balls.

The machine must be over-kneading the dough. Plus, the dough is so warm to the touch when it’s ready. The machine has a cycle time of 45 min although it probably kneads for only half that time (and has warm rests in between).

I guess it’s designed to quick-prep dough for a home-oven pizza, and totally ill-suited for napoletana-style. Suddenly, I have hope.

I am going to start kneading the dough by hand! Let’s see if that does the trick. I will try to report back here.

Thanks so much for your blog. I love it.

Hi Jose, thanks for the question.

Are you resting the dough before trying the windowpane test? This is very important as the dough will be tense following kneading. Try resting for 30 minutes or so before trying the windowpane test.

Also, are you resting the dough before kneading? 12-13 minutes of kneading is an awfully long time. 5-7 minutes should be fine if you rest the dough first.

In general, using high protein bread flour should be fine. I would just recommend increasing the hydration by 2% – 4% when compared to 00 flour.

Hope this helps!

I am using regular bread flour (13-14% protein) mostly because of availability reasons, and even though I knead for at least 12-13 minutes I cant get to the point where the dough is stretchy enough for the windowpane test. I use your kneading method and I use your calculator for the recipe. I typically make about 1kg of dough.

I don’t know if there are some additional considerations to be taken with this kind of dough or if I am simply doing it all wrong. Altough I have used the dough anyway, I do notice that it gets a little sticky when I put in the peel.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me. Greetings from Panama!!

Hi Chef Mike! Thank you for the words of encouragement, it means a lot!

With regards to your specific question though, I haven’t experimented with this type of pizza. Yet! I don’t think there’s any advise I can dispense, especially considering this type of pizza is so different from the Neapolitan variety that I work with.

Perhaps the issues you’re experienceing could be due to the oven? I’m assuming you’re using a bread oven with steam?

Thanks for the comment! Hope you figure it out!

The depth of your knowledge–plus your ability to clearly explain things–is lauadable. As I write to my students when they post beautiful loaves of bread, your site is “ChefMike Approved!”.

I’d like to ask your help in troubleshooting a problem I’m having. It’s with the Roman style pizza bianca dough. I’ve got a formulation with great flavor, aroma, and chew. But my pizza slabs tend to puff up unevenly, meaning there are some really large surface bubbles. And beneath the crust layer of those bubbles, there is an air gap. A distinct separation of the crust from the rest of the dough that forms during the bake. So I end up with a thin layer of crust, a layer of air, and then a nicely webbed dough structure across the bottom half of the cross section slice.

Have you ever seen this problem? And if so, what if any ideas can you share with me about remedying it.
Thanks from one baker to another.
@ChefMikeBreads

Hi Wendy. Have you had a look at my pizza school series? I go through every step of the way with videos as well. You can check out part 1 on mixing the ingredients here.

For you, I would recommend doing the first part, mixing the ingredients together, by hand in a bowl. It doesn’t take any strength at this stage. You are not trying to knead the dough, just combine all the ingredients together. After resting your dough, you should then be able to tell whether your dough is too gooey before adding to the stand mixer.

When it comes to the stand mixer, are you using it on a slow speed and with a dough attachment? Stand mixers can over work the dough, destroying the gluten network.

You could also be using too much water. If you follow my recipe from the pizza school series, you should notice that it is a drier dough. I do not recommend wet doughs for beginners as they are difficult to work with.

When you say it will not stretch, are you trying the windowpane test? I would try leaving the dough at least 30 minutes, covered, before trying the test.

When you mention stretching the dough the next day, I assume you are using yeast in the dough, and allowing it to prove covered up? A properly proved dough will stretch much easier than an underproved or unlevened dough.

Also, are you weighing your ingredients? Using cups is a very inaccurate way of measuring and this could lead to adding way too much water to your dough.

I wouldn’t recommend adding flour to remove the dough from the mixer, you should be able to remove it without. Any flour you add needs to be mixed into the dough. If you need to add more flour, I recommend doing this as the dough is mixing. At the end of mixing, all the ingredients should be combined and you should be able to handle the dough (pizza dough shouldn’t be really sticky).

I’m not sure if any of this was useful Wendy. But if you get back to me with some answers I may be able to help further. Thanks

I leave it on the counter covered with a little olive oil and plastic wrap and come back to it in 15 minute intervals, and eventually give up and go to bed. The next morning (after the dough has had a better rest than me) it’s in no better mood to be stretched than the day before.

I’ve been kneading with the stand mixer for longer than 5 minutes because the dough is always WAY to gooey with whatever amount of water the recipes call for, and I have to add more flour before I can get it out of the bowl in one clump, so maybe that’s where I mess up?

That sounds logical, thanks for replying.

Hi Rod, yes that’s a very good point. A stand mixer can make great pizza dough on a slow setting.

Thanks for the kind words!