WWW = Whole White Wheat

I had come up with a WWW dough that I thought was pretty good a couple years ago, but over time, it has proven a bit fickle. Not in the taste, but in the handling. Even after following my pizza waiter’s suggestion to make it up 24 hours in advance and do a slow ferment in the refrigerator, I was never quite sure, week to week, if I would end up with a large thin pizza or a medium thick one– it depended on what the pizza maker was able to do with it. And it was especially frustrating since I had come to exercise a great degree of precision on the ingredient ratios.

Last week, after the dough was especially uncooperative, our waiter and I had an in-depth talk about what steps I might take to remedy things once and for all. Armed with his tips, I digested everything I could in a day’s time from the Specialty-Grain forum at pizzamaking.com. A member there, named Charbo, seemed to be very familiar with the King Arthur Whole White Wheat flour I had been using, so I adapted a couple of his/her recipes into what appears to have been very successful for the first try at a new dough.

From my readings, I knew I needed to do a few things differently. One, raise the hydration; two, rest before kneading; and three, knead less. I was really afraid that I was going to have a sticky mess with the increased water, but it didn’t turn out to be the case.

This is for two 400 gm. dough balls that each made one 16″ thin-crust pizza skin:

390 gm. King Arthur Whole White Wheat Flour
325 ml. water
60 gm. vital wheat gluten
1 tsp. instant dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 rounded tsp. salt (DC kosher)
1 Tbl. olive oil

This is whole white wheat as opposed to red or Graham whole wheat– very important to use the exact brand and type of flour. As you can see, I go by weight, rather than volume on the main ingredients. I mix all the dry together first in the bowl, then add the wet and fold into a ball using a Rubbermaid spatula. Since 1 ml water weighs 1 gram, I just pour in water until the scale reading increases 325 gm. If some of the last of the flour doesn’t pick up into the ball, I add another tablespoon of water, and continue. Cover bowl with a tea towel and rest 15 minutes, allowing flour to get well-hydrated, then take the ball and cloak it for about a minute. Return to bowl for another rest, and then cloak some more. Cut the ball into two equal parts, and briefly cloak each into a smooth ball. Cover loosely and cold ferment in refrigerator 24 hours. Set out at room temp for about an hour before use. This dough will be elastic enough it can be hand-stretched and tossed just like a real pizzeria would. Or form it by hand, or roll it out on the board. This recipe can be halved with no problem once you get a feel for how this dough behaves. This double recipe has a slightly better margin of error for first time users.

What is cloaking? It’s like kneading, but not on a floured board. Hold the piece of dough with both hands, thumbs on top. Pull the top of the dough outward with your thumbs, and tuck it under and pinch together on the bottom with your fingers. Turn the piece 90° and repeat. Repeat a dozen or more times until the surface of the ball becomes smooth. Cloaking allows the strands of protein to align and the dough to become elastic, but without risking it becoming tough from over-kneading in a stand mixer or on a board.

As expected, the dough didn’t rise as much as it did with my old recipe– I was using 1/3 the yeast and giving it only an extra tsp. of sugar– but they had a look and feel to them that told me I was on the right track.

I was disappointed I wasn’t paying closer attention and didn’t see the the pizza maker working the dough, even though we were sitting right across from the big kitchen window. But I gave him a sign like “Well???”, and he smiled broadly and gave a big thumbs up. When the pizza came out, it was clear I was on the road to success, as we had a full 16″ pie with a razor thin crust. The waiter sat down with us and cut himself half a slice to try. We agreed it was good, and the only other thing we should have done was alert the oven tender. He gauges doneness somewhat by edge color, and didn’t recognize our pie since it was so stretched out. As a result, the slightly darker raw dough color led him to pull the pie out about 2 minutes early.

I tweaked the ingredients into the Expanded Pizza Dough Calculator at pizzamaking.com to see what my percentages were:

Flour (100%):390.53 g | 13.78 oz | 0.86 lbs
Water (83.5%): 326.09 g | 11.5 oz | 0.72 lbs
IDY (.8%):3.12 g | 0.11 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.04 tsp | 0.35 tbsp
Salt (.5%): 1.95 g | 0.07 oz | 0 lbs | 0.57 tsp | 0.19 tbsp
Olive Oil (3.5%):13.67 g | 0.48 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.04 tsp | 1.01 tbsp
Sugar (1.05%):4.1 g | 0.14 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.03 tsp | 0.34 tbsp
Vital Wheat Gluten (15.5%): 60.53 g | 2.14 oz | 0.13 lbs | 7.29 tbsp | 0.46 cups
Total (204.85%):800 g | 28.22 oz | 1.76 lbs | TF = N/A
Single Ball: 400 g | 14.11 oz | 0.88 lbs