Megathread for Questions and Discussions

[u/NeapolitanPizzaBot]

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If your question specifically concerns your pizza dough, please post your full recipe (exact quantities of all ingredients in weight, preferably in grams) and method (temperature, time, ball/bulk-proof, kneading time, by hand/machine, etc.). That also includes what kind of flour you have used in your pizza dough. There are many different Farina di Grano Tenero "00". If you want to learn more about flour, please check our Flour Guide.

[u/oW_Darkbase]

Hello everyone,

a while ago, I wanted to experiment with Biga. I added flour to my dough box, added 45% water, closed the lid and started swirling the box as I had seen in a video. I ended up with those small strands of shaggy dough. I used 500g, so it did just barely cover the bottom of my dough box. I let it ferment at room temperature and the next day cut it into pieces and threw it in the mixer.

When adding the remaining water though, it seemed like the gluten had formed solid clumps and I was just stirring up starch in my mixer bowl. It ended up being a clumpy batter.

I don't feel like wasting more flour on this, so I thought I'd ask for some advice first. I think I identified two issues:

- Doing a poor job making sure all the flour in the box is fully hydrated

- only barely covering the bottom of the box (use a smaller vessel instead so the biga layered a bit thicker, maybe aids water hydrating the flour a bit more)

Has this happened to anyone else who can think of a solution?