Forty-eight hours in the fridge is what makes a discard pizza dough taste like more than a vehicle for cheese. The cold ferment produces the leopard-spotted rim, the slightly sour, wheaty base flavour, and the extensibility that lets you open a ball by hand into a 30 cm round without it springing back.
Discard plus a pinch of yeast
You cannot get a 48-hour cold ferment to rise reliably on discard alone — the culture is too acidified and too cold. One gram of dry yeast per 500 g of flour is enough to guarantee the rise without making the dough taste like commercial bread. If you have no yeast, use 60% discard instead of 45% and give it 72 hours.
| Ingredient | Weight | Baker's % |
|---|---|---|
| Bread flour, 12.5% protein | 500 g | 100% |
| Water, cold | 325 g | 65% |
| Discard | 225 g | 45% |
| Dry yeast | 1 g | 0.2% |
| Salt | 12.5 g | 2.5% |
| Olive oil, added last | 40 g | 8% |
Three folds, then a long sleep
Mix everything except the oil, rest 20 minutes, then three slap-and-folds on the bench, 20 minutes apart, working the oil in at the third. Ball at 250 g, put each ball in an oiled container, and refrigerate. The dough is usable at 24 hours, good at 48, and past its best at 72.
Opening, topping and the 6-minute bake
Take a ball out 2 hours before baking. Open it by hand on a semolina-dusted bench, pressing from the centre outward with the fingertips and leaving a 2 cm rim untouched. Never use a rolling pin — it crushes the gas out of the rim and you lose the leopard spots. Bake at the highest temperature your oven reaches, 300 °C if possible, for 6 minutes.
- Crumb rating 4/5: leopard-spotted rim, foldable slices, no floppy centre.
- The dough handles best when it is cold but not fridge-cold — 2 hours out is right.
- Freeze balls after 24 hours; they keep two months.
A pizza stone at 300 °C takes 45 minutes to preheat properly. A dough that has waited 48 hours deserves a stone that has waited 45 minutes.
Sources / 参考来源
Published reference works consulted for this log: