Neapolitan Pizza with Biga Meamb

Elpado

Posted on 10/4/2018, 16:17

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Neapolitan pizza with Biga Meamb

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What a show brothers!

Neapolitan pizza with the preferment “biga” is the final frontier of the Neapolitan pizza!

We have many people trying this method, but our forum member Giovanni Meamb developed and adjusted a great recipe, and you will see, it is really great.

You are probably familiar with the preferment called “Biga”, but if you want more information check out this thread here.

We will be preparing a biga that is slightly different from the standard one, but no worries we will explain everything. We will be calling this biga “hybrid biga”.

I now let Giovanni present his recipe!

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Hi everybody,

Let’s jump straight into the recipe. For 10 dough balls with a weight of 280 grams we will use the following quantities:

Total quantities

Very strong flour (W300 or protein content >13%) _____ 1647 gr
Water _____ 1153 gr (70% hydration)
Salt _____ 40 gr

Hybrid biga by Meamb (hydration 45%):

Very strong flour (W300 or protein content >13%) ____ 1647 x 90/100 = 1482 gr (90% of the total flour)
Water _____ 1482 x 45/100 = 667 gr (45% hydration)
Fresh compressed yeast _____ 1482 x 0.5/100 = 7.5 gr (0.5% of the flour, divide by 3 for dry yeast)

Final dough
Biga
Very strong flour (W300 or protein content >13%) ____ 1647 - 1482 = 165 gr
Water ____ 1153 – 667 = 486 gr
Salt ____ 40 gr (35 g/l)
Diastatic malt _____ 1647 x 1/100 = 16.5 gr (1% of the total flour)

NOTE: Diastatic malt will balance the acidity of the biga and the sugars.

Preparation and schedule

Prepare the biga 48 hours before. Leave the biga to rest 2 hours at room temperature, then 20 hours in the fridge and finally another 2 hours at room temperature again (18/20 °C).

After 24 hours we prepare the final dough. Start from the biga, add the water and dissolve the biga into it. Add salt and malt. Knead until water is completely adsorband add the water. Knead until you create a nice gluten network. If you knead by hands remember to repeatedly fold the dough.

Place the dough back into the fridge for 20 hours. Then make the dough balls and leave them to rest, covered in a box for 5-6 hours at room temperature.

If you have a stone oven or a professional electric oven bake at 430°C on the floor and more than 500 °C on the ceiling, for 90 seconds. If you use your domestic oven set it at max temperature with the grill on. Baking time of course will be longer!

Here some videos about the preparation. Enjoy!

Biga done!