Yeast usually gives a better rise, but you can surely use sourdough in addition to yeast. I did an experiment a little while ago making pizza dough with both yeast for rise and sourdough for taste. If you mix both in the instant yeast will win from the starter, so I made 2 different preferments.
I cant remember what I did exactly, but I got the idea from pizza bakers on youtube compare yeast and sourdough prefermented pizzas. I only remember the yeast preferment was really really dry and shaken, not mixed.

You can always use fresh yeast, at work we use a 60/40 of poolish to white wheat sourdough starter.

Sorry for the late reply to your wonderful comment Melissa. So glad you had such success with this marvelous dough. Fun to make and delicious to eat. A firm favorite within our family and hopefully it will be in yours too!

Thank you and enjoy your baking and sharing,
Ed & Marieke

Fijn Dieke, het blijft een heerlijk deeg om mee te werken!

Beste Barbara,
Ja dat kan, bij 22 uur zouden wij willen voorstellen de poolish te bereiden en direct in de koelkast te zetten. Je kunt deze dan 1 uur voor gebruik uit de koeling halen. Afhankelijk van de temperatuur van je koelkast en van je voordeeg kan het zo zijn dat je nog wat moet aanpassen voor het optimale resultaat. Daarbij kun je beter een wat onder-rijpe poolish gebruiken dan een over-rijpe omdat de glutenstructuur dan te leiden heeft en daarmee ook het brood. Vandaar dat we willen aangeven, gezien je 22 uur rijstijd, iets voorzichtiger te zijn om over-rijzen te voorkomen.
Een andere mogelijkheid om dit proces te beïnvloeden is natuurlijk de hoeveelheid gist. Hoewel de hoeveelheid al zeer klein is, zou je in jouw geval er zelfs nog iets minder in kunnen doen, mocht dat nodig zijn.
Succes ermee!

Hi again Keez,
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and thoughts. We must admit we have not done this one by hand ourselves but we do understand what you mean by ‘therapeutic’. We do have this same feeling a bit when making the Tartine sourdough. www.weekendbakery.com/posts…yle-bread/
You get into this rhythm, not in any hurry, enjoying the process, feeling the dough with your hands, knowing how it’s suppose to feel.

Enjoy your baking journey!

Just for a fun fact: I can tell from numerous experiences, that this recipe is completely do-able without the use of a machine. At least for me, it worked out quite therapeutically, because after some time even the mind seems stick to this sticky dough.

With some (obvious) extra kneading time (includes even more resting time during mixing, for the dough as well for the artisan nutcase doing the kneading) and use of a wooden ladle till the goop is sufficiently elastic for handling with a plastic scraper or other paddle like appliance, the dough finally also withstands the windowpane test ever so bravely.
How much extra time is needed depends strongly on technique, batch size and stamina

(proofing times are not noticeably affected)

End result looks identical to machine mixed version, from inside and outside. But it surprisingly tastes even more like heaven, at least to the one(s) that put in the extra labor 🙂

Cheerful greetings from the Netherlands y’all!

Hello Josephine,
We guess the protein content of the T55 will be around 11%. We would suggest to give it another try with stronger bread flour with a protein content of between 12.5 and 14% or try the T55 flour with 5 to 10% less water and see if this helps with the development of the gluten.

It’s T55.

Hello Josephine,
Can you tell us what flour you use and what the protein content is?

And thanks for your ultimate comment on this recipe! Such a good idea to make two halves with different toppings.
We made one yesterday with fresh herbs from our garden (we had planted this new ‘kaap knoflook’ , garlic plant from South-Africa from which you can use the leaves and paired it with lemon thyme and fresh oregano, lots of white onion, which we love and also the nobs of mozzarella. Again a feast for eyes and taste buds.

Hope you will enjoy many more variations on this theme in the near future!

Happy baking,

Ed & Marieke