How to Reuse your Overproof. Pizza Dough, with Master Massimo Nocerino

Carry-over dough is a portion of bread or pizza dough left over from a previous process and reused as an addition in a new dough. The carry-over dough is not a natural yeast (mother yeast) that comes from a spontaneous fermentation of water and flour activated by a starter such as honey, yogurt or fruit; the mother yeast is a mixture that naturally develops bacterial colonies which later on balancing with each other will have fermentative strength with leavening power. The carryover dough instead comes from a dough of bread or pizza made with water, flour, salt and brewer's yeast and possibly fats (oil) which therefore contains brewer's yeast cells of the Saccaromyces Cerevisiae species that will be used for the fermentation of the dough same. So the mother yeast and the carryover paste have colonies of different bacteria but also the ingredients are different, in fact the carryover paste contains salt and also oil, not present in the mother yeast. It has the function of adding acidity to the dough to which it is added and accelerating its maturation, giving it a particular taste. The quantity of carry-over dough must be calibrated according to the season in order not to have a particularly acid mixture and must be around 10% of the weight of the dough at most, increasing up to 20% during the winter season. However, the leavening power of carryover is often not effective, as the yeasts may have lost their fermentation function and therefore more brewer's yeast is added to accelerate maturation. Having said that, I wanted to do some experiments since in this period we are forced to stay at home due to the Coronavirus emergency and that we are all baking and that brewer's yeast is in short supply due to the increased demand, I tried to treat the carryover dough like a mother yeast and refresh it to keep the enzymatic activity alive and use it in the dough just like you do with mother yeast, I must say that the result is excellent and that it behaves like a mother yeast and that it does not develop a large acidity. Since the flours are not found, I used a 00 flour but you can use any type of flour, obviously the stronger it will be (e.g. manitoba) the more days you can keep the carry-over dough without refreshment. The carryover pasta kept at room temperature reaches a maximum of 24 hours without developing excessive acidity, obviously if it is very hot the times are reduced, instead kept in the fridge it can be kept for 4-5 days.