How does hydration level effect pizza dough?

every pizza dough recipe has the same key ingredients flour water yeast and salt in order to truly understand how these ingredients work together and how recipes scale you must first understand what Baker's percentages are you take all of your ingredients in your dough and calculate how much of each item you have compared to the amount of flour that is used so for every dough recipe flour will be 100 everything else is measured against that the formula looks like this Baker's percentage equals weight of the ingredient divided by weight of the flour times 100. for our pizza there's some general guidelines on what that percentage should be for each ingredient yeast as a general rule will be between 0.1 and 2 percent of the amount of flour so if your recipe is using 1000 grams of flour your total yeast will be between 1 gram and 20 grams salt is typically between 2 and 2.5 percent or 20 to 25 grams in a recipe that has 1000 grams of flour the amount of water in a dough recipe relative to flour is referred to the hydration percentage for pizza it's typically between 60 and 80 depending on the style and preference by adjusting the hydration level of the dough you can achieve different results in terms of elasticity stickiness rise crust puffiness and crust texture increasing the hydration level of the dough will make it more extensible and stretchy but also stickier and harder to handle the dough will also rise faster and higher resulting in a lighter and airier crust lowering the hydration level result in a denser crust according to the true neapolitan pizza Association the ideal hydration for neapolitan pizza dough is between 55.5 and 62.5 percent so then why are so many people talking about 80 plus percent hydration on their neopolitan pizza dough I guess the only way to truly explain and comprehend what hydration does to pizza dough is with a perfectly executed experiment I'm going to compare hydration amounts of 60 70 and 80 percent to see how they are made and how they affect the final Pizza I'm going to use a basic dough recipe for all three levels of hydration and just for fun I'm going to test drive this King Arthur brand double zero flower for this little experiment so every version of this dough will get 300 grams of flour 0.5 grams of yeast and 6 grams of salt the only variable that will change is the amount of water the process of mixing the dough will be very similar for all three versions I'll start with all of my water then I'll add the yeast about half of the flour mix that up then I'll add in my salt and the rest of the flour I'll continue to mix in the bowl until all the dry flour has been absorbed this is the 60 hydration dough it has already formed a pretty solid dough ball and I'm able to give it a little need on the table right away I'll throw a lid on this and label it then I'll get to work on the 70 hydration dough again water yeast flour salt flour mix this will need a little more time for the flour to stiffen up before I'll be able to work it much so I'll go ahead and transfer that to a labeled container as well and let it rest okay 80 water yeast flour salt flour mix again this will be allowed to rest before I attempt to work it further [Music] okay 15 minutes later and the 60 dough is already looking like pizza dough I'll work it a little bit more but then I'm going to put it away to proof undisturbed okay here's the 70 percent though it still has a way to go so I'll give it a few stretching folds in the bowl and let it rest for a while same thing for the eighty percent I repeated that two more times after 10 minutes of rest then the 70 and 80 got a little table stretch and fold action before I portioned all the dough balls I let all of the dough ferment in the fridge for 36 hours and then they were ready to use okay these are the final dough balls ready to get stretched and turned into pizzas this was the 60 right here uh you know pretty firm definitely easy to handle this is our 70 I mean feels like it's a high hydration dough for sure and then this guy over here is our 80. you can see it's super soft just I mean that's 80 hydration for you let's get started um just gonna stretch them out real quick it's not going to take much to stretch this guy it's stretch itself essentially [Music] just gonna Degas it try to leave the corn cone [Music] foreign 's holding up holding a stretch a little bit more kind of pulling back not quite as easy as the 80 but obviously still pretty loose [Music] all right we can see this all the way over here this is the 60. a little more elbow grease on this one for sure [Music] okay we are back I got all three pizzas cooked all right that's our 60 right there I don't know if you can see the bottoms or not but our 80. so 60 70 80 percent hydration crust color on all three I feel like is pretty similar the 60 browned the fastest for sure it was the quickest to Brown up the other two took a little bit longer not a lot of leoparding on any of them really so I don't know if it's the that uh flower that I'm using [Music] um was it king art the King Arthur brand double zero flower it's a newer product which I haven't really worked with before which is probably a mistake I'm gonna experiment like this but you know you live and you learn um but the end result we have three pizzas the exact same recipe except for 60 70 and 80 hydration all right taste test we're gonna start with the 80 hydration since that was the first one I cooked it's been out the longest in case you're curious that's what the inside looks like it's good I mean there's nothing wrong with it it did get a little bit of a gum line so I don't know if it didn't cook long enough I mean the Top's obviously done they got some good spotting and the bottom looks good but a little bit of a gum line on that one all right this is the 70 percent try to get you a shot at the inside there hopefully you can see that it's delicate crispy chewy got all the textures flavor is about the same I don't think the flavor development is going to be that different across these three mostly going to be a texture and a visual thing so get you a shot of the inside this is the 60 percent [Music] maybe not as delicate it's a definite it's definitely denser it's the most dense the 60s the 60 is the most dense of the of the three for sure um flavors across the board are the same they're all good they all developed good flavor um but yeah denser on that one whether or not between the 70 and 80. I don't know if I could really discriminate whether if one's denser or not I think the the 70 got crisper but it's also been cooked fresher than the 80. so it's a little hard to compare that um so honestly I think between between the three I think I like the 70 hydration the best my usual pizza dough is about 64 65 hydration so kind of in between these two anyways and you know honestly I think that might be the sweet spot for Like a Rock Box pizza oven or a similar home pizza oven that cooks around 8.50 somewhere between 800 and 900 Degrees that said the hassle of the higher hydration dough might not make it worth it for a lot of home pizza Cooks I mean definitely if you're a beginner don't even attempt to go past 60 I think 60 is a a real good spot to start and practice and get good at and then you know once you can nail that consistently and you want to start messing around with these higher hydration but you're not going to get that drastic of a result of a difference in results it's just you know it you're you're nitpicking at this point and sure you can make slightly better Pizza but you're gonna have to spend a lot more time and a lot more chance of failure with the higher hydration dough so that said I'm making like 63 to 65 that's the sweet spot for me I don't know about you

Channel: Patio Pizza

Views: 39,537

Keywords: Pizza, pizza at home, making pizza, pizza dough, homemade p, pizza recipe, home pizza oven, pizza steel, pizza stone, pizza sauce, gozney, roccbox, gozney roccbox, poolish, poolish pizza, poolish recipe, stuck pizza, pizza peel, OONI, Koda 16

Id: iGo5kFH7Bmk

Length: 9min 46sec (586 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 16 2023