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“Cloud” Pizza (Notturno Italiano’s masterpiece)
Today we are going to present the recipe and the method to obtain the so-called “cloud” Pizza! It is a very popular recipe on our forum and it was assessed and perfected by Notturno Italiano (name Ettore).
HERE you find the original version in Italian language.
Reason behind the name
First of all let’s talk about the reason behind a name. In Italian we have an expression to describe the consistency of a particular food: “it’s like eating a cloud”. It is of course a metaphor and it basically tries to describe a food consistency that is very, very soft! But, it’s not only soft, it’s also very light! Like a cloud! The effect and consistency we want to obtain with this pizza it’s exactly as described above! A cloud! (In Italian it is “nuvolette”, which actually means tiny clouds).
How to obtain it: semi-direct dough
Now that we know the reason behind the name let’s see how to obtain it. First of all, I did not say it before, we are talking about Neapolitan Pizza (HERE the basic recipe). However, it is not the typical Neapolitan Pizza, because it is a so-called semi-direct dough. Semi-direct means that we basically prepare two doughs one of which goes through a long fermentation process. This long-fermented dough is called literally “Carried over dough”. I know, the name does not say much, but this is the idea: if I prepare a dough with 24 hours fermentation and I keep a part of this dough, I can then use it again (“carry over”) as a small percentage of my next dough that will go through another 24 hours fermentation. My final dough will then have a part of it that went through 48 hours fermentation! This is only the general idea and it can then be extended to even longer fermentation time. Let’s say that the maximum is more or less 72 hours. We cannot push much more, because the longer the fermentation and the higher will be the acidity of the dough. If the dough is too acid there is a high risk to destroy the gluten network in the next fermentation, which of course will liquefy our final dough.
The idea is similar to a sourdough starter, but usually the “carried over dough” is prepared with fresh compressed yeast, while the sourdough starter also contains lactobacillus bacteria. These bacteria have a high proteolysis activity (especially if our sourdough starter is unbalanced), and using a sourdough starter in a long fermentation period increase the risk to destroy the gluten network. The dough prepared with only yeast, instead, has a lower proteolysis activity and the risk of destroying the gluten network is much lower.
Why a semi-direct?
Ok now what a semi-direct dough is, but the next question is why use it? Well, if we add a long-fermented piece of dough to our final dough we are trying to reproduce the effects of the pre-ferment like biga or poolish. The semi-direct method, in fact, adds complexity and flavours that we could never obtain with a direct method. It also provides our final product with exactly the consistency we wanted! The cloud effect! Ok let’s now jump into the next step: how to prepare it!
Instructions
We will prepare everything from scratch. The “carried over dough” (COD) and the final dough. I found that the percentage of the COD can vary between 4% and 9% of the total dough weight. We will stick to the maximum for today: 9%.
Basically we want to prepare the COD with the exact same method of the final dough. The only difference is that the COD will have an additional 24 hours fermentation time.
In order to calculate how much COD we need you can use our online calculator that you can find HERE. In my case I want to prepare 10 pizzas and this is what the calculator tells me:
Number of pizzas: 10
Pizza dough weight: 250 g
Hydration: 63%
Salt per liter of water: 40 g/l
Total fermentation/rising time: 24 hours
… of which in the fridge: 16 hours
Room temperature: 22 °C
Oil/lard/butter: 0
Carried over dough: 225 g
Fresh compressed yeast: 0.26 g
This calculation tells us that we need to prepare 225 g of COD. We can use again the calculator like this:
Number of pizzas: 1
Pizza dough weight: 225 g
Hydration: 63%
Salt per liter of water: 40 g/l
Total fermentation/rising time: 24 hours
… of which in the fridge: 16 hours
Room temperature: 22 °C
Oil/lard/butter: 0 g
Carried over dough: 0 g
Fresh compressed yeast: 0.26 g
Ok we now have all the ingredients and we can start kneading and mixing! The rules are the same as for the basic recipe that you can find (HERE.
Below some pictures of what kind of product you should expect. They look like clouds, don’t they?
Enjoy!!
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Neapolitan "Cloud" pizza (Notturno Italiano's masterpiece) |
