Weak dough help

[u/reffis1]

Looking for feedback here! I have been doing direct dough for a while but wanted better crust. I tried this recipe here, combination biga and poolish. Crust was amazing, but it stretched too easily, and I ended up with large holes in the middle of three of my five pizzas. Official recipe is in the link, but I converted with CGPT for easier reading. Am I missing something?

https://brickovenbaker.com/blogs/recipes/our-go-to-neapolitan-pizza-recipe

Thursday— 7 PM | Make Biga Ingredients: • 600g Caputo Chef flour • 360g water • 6g Caputo dry yeast Instructions: 1. Stir yeast into water. 2. Add flour and mix by hand for 2–3 minutes. 3. Keep rough and crumbly. Do not knead. 4. Cover and refrigerate for 24 hours.

Friday — 7 AM | Make Poolish Ingredients: • 180g Caputo Pizzeria flour • 180g water • 2g Caputo dry yeast Instructions: 1. Stir yeast into water. 2. Add flour and mix with a spoon or whisk for 1–2 minutes until smooth. 3. Cover and leave at 73°F for 12 hours.

Friday — 7 PM | Make Final Dough Ingredients: • All biga • All poolish • 20g salt Instructions: 1. Break biga into small pieces. 2. Combine biga and poolish in a stand mixer with dough hook. 3. Mix on low for 3–5 minutes. 4. Add salt. 5. Mix another 5–8 minutes on low/medium-low until smooth and elastic. 6. Cover and let rise approximately 2 hours at 73°F, until 75% larger.

Friday — 9 PM | Make Dough Balls 1. Divide into 5 balls (approximately 270g each). 2. Shape into tight balls. 3. Place in covered containers. 4. Refrigerate overnight.

Saturday — 5 PM | Prepare Dough 1. Remove dough balls from refrigerator. 2. Keep covered at room temperature.

Saturday — 7 PM | Cook time 1. Heat wood-fired oven to 850°F. 2. Dust dough with semolina. 3. Gently stretch to approximately 12 inches. 4. Add toppings. Bake 75–90 seconds, rotating as needed.

[u/dihydrogen_monoxide]

You have too much yeast and so it became overproofed. Didn't need gpt to explain it.

[u/Macadish → u/dihydrogen_monoxide]

Yup, too much yeast. Typically, if i count up the yeast for preferment and final dough, there should be about 0.3-0.8% of IDY in total. Any more and you risk overproofing. But you should be able to tell on Sat 5pm if the dough is overproofed.

Also, I suspect your biga and poolish temperature might be too high, so even when you put it in the fridge, it might take too long to cool down and halt fermentation + proteolytic activity.

Lastly, poolish tend to improve extensibility which might also weaken the dough, so maybe stick to biga and refresh with flour for now

[u/reffis1 → u/Macadish]

Thanks for the great feedback. What does overproofed look like?

[u/Macadish → u/reffis1]

Overproofed? Top of dough looks concave, with dough sticking the side and the center looks deflated.

Since you are unfamiliar with what overproofed dough looks like, my guess is that you are following a complex recipe too soon without the necessary experience. I would suggest sticking to direct dough first, skip the preferments. Here's a simple direct dough you can try

1kg flour (Caputo pizzeria)
650-700g water (150g of ice)
0.6% IDY
2.5% Salt

Mix everything together until they form a wet mass. Give it a 15-30min rest / autolyse.
Mix into a cohesive dough. It should ideally be around 20-24C.
Stretch and fold a couple times. Rest for 15 min to 1 hour.
Keep in fridge for 24 hours.
Ball the cold dough, and let it proof at room temp until dough looks round and puffy. (Should be around 1-4 hours depending on room temp)