I have thought about that balance. I usually strive to find the shortcuts, the ones that cut the time and steps and produce a result that is maybe 90 percent of perfect. For example, what is the shortest time to make pizza dough? According to many recipes you should start the day before. But what if I realize in the afternoon that I want to have pizza tonight? I have tried one hour of rising, and while that has worked, I think it is not close enough for the "right" balance. But I will continue to experiment.
You can go the exact other way, plain pizza dough is best after anywhere from 2 to 7 days in my experience. You can push it to 10 or 14 days too, which will taste different but still very good and the dough will be quite weak by then for thin crust pizza.
You still have to think of it ahead of time but this removes need for coordination and lets you do it in batches.
Also I just make one kind of starter bread dough in batches and then make everything out of it, some things as-is (bread for first ~4 days, bread dough pizzas for 14 days), some by mixing it with fresh dough (bread afterwards, everything else). But i'm specifically after the heavily fermented dark dough taste.
It freezes well, 14d would be way over-fermented even in the fridge IMO.
Doesn't really save having to know in advance because it needs to defrost and prove, but it does save having to be in the mood again within just a few days for another one. (It's difficult/annoying to make so little dough as for one pizza, IMO.)
I keep them in the fridge, yes, should have mentioned that.
Oh, and another thing i should have mentioned is that if the dough is older i make sure to fold it few times more and work a bit more fresh flour into it. And i use high hydration (as high as i can make it, about 72~75%), when i pull it out from the fridge it's _wet_ so even when it's as old as it should be (2~7 days) the crust will be mostly fresh flour.
The trick is that there is no trick and you just let it overferment but pick style that will work well with it. You need savory toppings to go with the taste, e.g. salami and maybe sharper tasting cheese. Making very thin pie will be difficult with dough so weak so don't do that, it won't rise very high so don't make it too thick either.
And 14 days is the furthest i recommend taking it. As i wrote above two to seven days is best, of course it tastes differently after seven than after two days but both are good and perfectly within the canon of 'pizza' and you can prepare it anyhow you want.
Beyond that you're pushing it, but since the topic is what shortcuts you can take i'll still recommend more than you need and using it longer than you'd think to over trying to make it the same day. 30~40 minutes from a decision to a pizza, it does taste right too.
I assumed it was in the fridge, I meant that's pushing it imo even so, I'd keep it maybe a day outside absolute max.
And I find high hydration such a pain with pizza especially, which seems only to get worse over time in the fridge (some things seem to dry out, others to get wetter, what a machine!), 75% for 14d, I don't know how you do it. It must take on a lot of extra flour when you get it out to stretch it out to shape?
When it's young it works as is, it is more annoying but i like the results. For thin crusts i work a bit on it so likely few more grams end up on the inside, and it's mostly crust. You do need to stretch it in more steps and can't leave it resting for too long as it'll stick to the counter. Also I worked my way up from 66%.
We all want to make something and pick methods in pursuit of that. I always liked light, airy, bubbly, crispy things which drove me to high hydration and savory, beery, bready things which drove me to long fermentation. For pizza this means i liked bubbly high crusts and savory thin as a pancake pizza bassa, so that's what i tried to make.
When it's getting old i deliberately fold in extra flour. Notice it doesn't take that much to push it down because the quantities are quite small -- i've settled on 144g flour, ignoring everything else at ×1.75 it's 252g of dough, it'll take 18g of extra flour to push it all the way down to classic 66%, that's a heaping tablespoon. And i rarely really reach 75%, i aim for just under 75% and generally end up making 72~74% after including what it absorbs as i work it.
The shortest time to pizza dough is the one you pick up from the grocery store in 10 minutes. No difference from whatever you'll make at home, and makes a great pizza. I've brought it with me in a cooler when camping and made pizza over the campfire. Next time to avoid having to ice it down, I'll just start a no-knead one the first night I make camp. Whatever works, works
There are some really good doughs out there. Whole Foods has a really good one. However I can make a better dough at home. I use a higher gluten flour (14%), diastatic malt powder and cold ferment for a few days. To my taste it’s better than any dough I’ve purchased. But yes, unnecessary.
Does it really though - one flat thing vs. a bunch of jars and packets, or at least a bag of pre-portioned toppings and one of oil/sauce? In addition to your pre-made dough + a rolling pin and mat of course. Unless it's supplied pre-rolled and part-baked, which apart from being even worse and more significantly diverged from what you could make (fresh) at home, means you've got the flat thing anyway that could have been pre-topped for approximately no extra space cost.
But anyway, no I was surely obviously not responding purely to the camping anecdote, nor was other commenter making it solely about that, thread is about pizza, not backpacking.
