What is poolish? What is Biga? What is fermentation? What is hydration? Bread & pizza dough.

hi there it's natalina coming to you from natalina's kitchen where we have been teaching authentic italian food culture since 2011. and now as we're moving our classes fully online we want you to have the most success so if you're planning on taking a bread making class or a pizza making class it's very important for you to understand these terms because you will hear them often okay so first of all if you are making a dough whether it's for pizza or for bread or focaccia you need to determine first whether it's a direct dough or an indirect dough okay so i'm going to explain the difference so basically a direct dough is your classic flour water yeast and salt mixture left for a couple of varying different rising times or fermentations also as they're called which we'll be explaining okay now on the other hand let's switch sides here an indirect dough is when you have flour water salt but you incorporate one of these other pre-dos or pre-fermentations okay we're going to get into these what they are exactly but in an indirect dough you're using either a bigger a poolish or a sourdough starter okay then you're also looking at rising times and different fermentations so right off the bat your simple classic directo or the indirect dough which a lot of people would argue produces more complex flavors and better results but in a pinch a direct dough works just great so let's now look at these terms okay now moving to our pre-dose that are used in the indirect dose you have a choice of a sourdough starter a poolish or a bigger and now let's see what the difference is so a sourdough starter is basically a starter that is usually equal parts flour and water and over quite a number of days up to a week you attract natural yeast and you will then have prepared a sourdough starter that could be used for your bread or pizza dough okay now the other two predos are one is the poolish which is a polish name for this pre dough okay and basically rather than natural use you're using commercially prepared juice just a little bit just to help it out as well as flour and water typically equal parts and you're going to let it ferment for typically about 24 hours and we're going to look at that term fermentation in a minute minute as well okay a poolish is fairly liquid and it can also be called a sponge okay so in my pizza napolitana style pizza i like to use a poolish because it also lends a beautiful flavor because of the long fermentation process of the pre-dough okay now we're going to get into fermentation as well but you also have a choice of using a bigger and the bigger is the italian term very similar to a poolish but it is a little more solid so it's still considered a sponge but it's not a one-to-one measure of flour and water it's more solid okay and we also do use a little pinch of yeast as well to get it fermenting and growing typically that would be over 24 hours as well okay so for an indirect dough you're kind of doing a little work ahead and you're making one of these three to then incorporate into your dough for whatever it is you're making now a couple of terms that we need to discuss here as well is number one fermentation now typically a longer fermentation would require a stronger flour or a flour that's higher in gluten and the reason is is during fermentation so it's basically a chemical process it gets all bubbly and and makes gases as you see it sit for 24 hours or more you'll see it almost comes alive similar to a starter or poolish or bigger because basically um there's some reactions in there to what's happening i'm not going to get all science on you basically it's going to create a lot of flavor and that actual chemical reaction or that scientific process breaks down the gluten okay so that's why you want to use a higher gluten flour so with my uh napolitana pizza when we prepare the poolish which ferments for 24 hours we use a bread flour or a strong flour that has a lot more gluten in it and that is the reason and it's also the reason why a lot of folks will say when they go to italy um the pizza's so light and even if they have a gluten intolerance not an allergy a gluten intolerance they find that they can easily consume italian pizza and breads for that matter and it's because of this long fermentation process it actually starts to break down the gluten and it makes a beautiful flavor and a really light airy dough okay we're also going to talk about hydration here as well so hydration is simply the ratio of water to flower okay so a really high quality light dough is typically a hydration of 70 percent or higher so what that means is if you have one kilo or a thousand grams of flour you would use 700 grams of water okay so it's basically 70 hydration now the more hydrated the dough is so if it's over 70 such a 75 or 80 the harder it will be to manage because it'll be a very soft dough okay so there's kind of a trade-off it's harder to manage but you'll get a lighter airier dough the more hydration that you have okay so for beginners it's always nice to start at about 70 and then you can just gradually add more water to make a higher hydration of your dough whether it's pizza or bread and basically as your skill improves you'll find that you're better able to manage those higher hydrations so these are all terms in order to be successful with one of our online pizza or bread classes you need to be familiar with this so there's one more thing we're going to discuss and that's flour okay last but not least let's talk about flour and gluten okay in terms of bread and pizza making so basically gluten is simply the protein that we would find in the flour or in the grain that was used to produce the flour okay so when flour and water mix together there's a reaction and that creates the gluten okay a lot of people know gluten because there's people that can't have gluten celiacs right okay so how does that tie into our flowers for pizza or bread let's look at the two major types of flowers that i would use in my bread making or pizza making classes one being the double zero italian flower okay that is simply very finely milled flour okay if something is called double zero that does not automatically categorize it in terms of how much gluten is in the flour but rather how finely milled it is in europe and in italy in particular a flower can be milled anywhere between a two two a one a single zero and a double zero okay tubing the courses double zero being the finest and that is the popular flour that's used to make pizza are thin crust wood fired pizzas okay now a double zero flour that finely melt um can also have different uh percentages of glutens depending on whether it's used to make um pizza or pasta or focaccia or whatever okay the pizza flour that i prefer for my thin crust pizzas comes in at a 12.5 percent gluten okay so that is uh somewhere in the mid-range okay now a bread flour is much higher in gluten than your all-purpose flours than your pastry flours and in this case in this particular pizza flour a typical bread flour which is also called a strong flour or a hard flour can come in as high as 14 in gluten okay so that's anywhere from 12 to 14 and that's why i was telling you earlier that a bread flour is typically used for a very long fermentation because the gluten breaks down if you were to use something like a 12.5 percent and do like a three four day fermentation it might break it down too much that it wouldn't have a beautiful mouthfeel and a beautiful texture okay so there's different schools of thought whether it's better to ferment the poolish or the bigger and then when you actually create the dough do a shorter fermentation or do a direct dough mix it all from the beginning and let it go for a very long fermentation and often if it is going for a longer fermentation it will be using bread flour or a higher percentage of bread flour okay so these are all the terms that i think you should have a pretty general understanding in order to be successful at bread and pizza making so good luck in your project and we'll see you in the kitchen and don't forget to tap on the tomato to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss a thing you

Channel: Natalina's Flavours of Italy!

Views: 24,333

Keywords: napoletana pizza, woodfired pizza, learn to make pizza, pizziaolo dough, poolish, biga, fermentation, hydration, authentic pizza

Id: t-LgPOkatqY

Length: 10min 15sec (615 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020