My Dough Making Process

The order in which you add ingredients makes a big difference in how easily and completely the dough is mixed. I have tried different processes for mixing sourdough, and have settled on this method. If you are making a lean dough with no oil, steps three and four will be skipped and all of the flour will be added in step five.

1. Add all of your water at a temp of 95°F into your mixing bowl.
2. Add the starter and mix it in completely.
3. Add 25% of your flour and mix it in completely. This will leave you with a thin soup.
4. Mix in your oil. Because you already mixed in some flour, the oil will incorporate completely rather than separating from the water.
5. Place the remaining 75% of your flour on top of the oily soup you have created. Do not mix yet.
6. Evenly disperse your salt on top of the dry flour.
7. Mix the dough until it is slightly more consistent than oatmeal. The long fermentaion times of the sourdough process eliminate the need for extensive initial mixing.
8. Place the dough in an airtight container
9. Halfway through the proofing time (10-14 hours after mixing the dough for a 24 hour dough), the dough needs to be reactivated. If you are using the dough to make pizza, then you should form your doughballs now. If you are planning to make bread with the dough, then you need to do a few stretch and folds.
10. If you are making bread, then the dough needs to be formed into loaves a few hours before baking. How it is formed will depend on what type of bread you are making, but the simplest way would be to make a round loaf. To do this, follow the same method as making a pizza doughball.
11. Finally, it is time to bake. The pizza dough can now be stretched, and the bread can be put in the oven. The bread loaf should receive a few knife slashes in the top to allow for expansion while baking.

How to Form a Dough Ball for Pizza

1. Weigh out the dough needed for the dough ball. Dough balls should weigh between 450-650 grams for a 14" pizza, depending on your desired crust thickness.
2. With your hands on the dough like they would be on the steering wheel of a car, pull your palms away from each other. The dough skin on the front side (under your palms) will be streching and moving towards the back as your fingers tuck the excess dough into the middle of the dough ball. Here is a video showing you how this is done.
3. Once the dough ball is formed, place it back in an airtight container.

How to Do a Stretch and Fold

1. Take the entire batch of dough and stretch it out on a flat surface in every direction until it is about a half inch thick.
2. Take the bottom third and fold it up.
3. Take the top third and fold it down.
4. Fold the sides in next.
5. Finally, put the folded dough back into your airtight container.