What is the recipe you used?

Put it in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic film (plate), and then into the oven with only the light on. If it doesn't rise after a few hours your yeast is indeed dead. If it does rise then punch it back down and let it rise a few more times. That should add the flavor you are looking for. You won't have big holes but it'll taste a lot better.

If the yeast is dead and you really want to save it you could try making it into crackers.

Some oven lights are too hot. Others aren't hot at all. But I agree with Azline's thinking. And that you've already told us the yeast is dead, or as close to dead as makes no nevermind. It happens.

Dissolve some yeast in a cup of warm, not hot, water with a small spoonful of sugar. If it bubbles a lot and grows, and smells yeasty after 15 minutes, it's alive. Make a bowl shape out of your dough, pour in the yeast and close the dough over it, squish it around gently, so it doesn't leak, to distribute it, and knead your fingers through it to finish mixing it around. Let it rest a few minutes, give it a knead, and do the oiled bowl covered rise thing again. Proceed as normal. By the time you're done, it may have more flavor just from the handling and waiting. And the yeast. If it's bland, you might also add some salt, but not before it's risen so you don't retard the yeast.

any dough that rested 48 hours in the refrigerator should be very full of flavor. Even if the yeast was dead there should have been some fermenting going on with the flour and water. Did you forget salt? and sounds like you either packed your flour too tight or didn't add enough water. Add more water to loosen it and salt for flavor.
Pizza dough is so dead on simple ti really doesn't need a recipe...
I put 1 1/2 cups of water in a bowl, add 2 tsps of yeast, and start adding flour and stirring....when it is a thick batter....I add 1 1/2 tsps salt and about 2 T olive oil. Keep stirring and adding flour ( ti will take almost 4 cups) until it's firm enough to handle with floured hands.
Leave on the counter lightly covered for an hour or so, doing a stretch and fold every 15 minutes or so.....and either refrigerate or divide in half and push and pull into shape....top and bake.

Personally, I'd throw it out and start again with a recipe that works. 🙂

Thanks, everyone.

I used the recipe given here (although found on another site).

https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/01/cooks-illustrated-thin-crust-new-york-ny-pizza-recipe.html

I chose it because it said thin crust pizza and because it used the cold slaw rice method. I’ve made other pizzas with using a long cold rice but with artisan bread flour not just KA bread flour.

I weighed out the ingredients. This recipe calls for only 1/2 teaspoon of instant yeast. That is not very much but I believe that diesel rice fermentation method uses very little yeast. I used a newly opened jar of “instant yeast,” 1/2 teaspoon as directed.

I followed the directions, and kneaded a bit on an lightly oiled surface. Even after resting the Ball of dough seemed stiff and dry. Nevertheless l continued with the recipe instructions and placed the ball of dough in a large lightly oiled bowl and covered it securely with plastic film. I put it into a cold refrigerator.

I checked on it after 24 hours. No change. I left it as it was for another 24 hours (=48 hours total at that stage.) maybe the new yeast was not so great, but I’d used it for something else that worked. (I keep my brown jar of Fleischmann’s instant yeast, tightly covered and refrigerated, btw.)

I divided the dough and let it come to room temp.. Still no loft to the dough, so it seemed like the yeast and the slow fermentation Had not down much of anything. The dough was stiff, dense, inelastic.

* That’s when I decided to rehabilitate the dough. I’ve rehabbed pizza doughs before, say if they proof too long and collapsed, go dead etc., because the flour is still wholesome. So, this time I made a very small bit of supplemental, yeasty dough with a bit more water and same “bread flour” then cut into cubes and incorporated it into the first, large dough (2 balls at this point to rehab) with the same food processor. Ten resulting doughs were then more hydrated and had more yeast.

Back to the fridge, covered as before. After 12 hours, I baked one, froze the other for another time when I would let it continue slow rising for a day or two.

I’ve done this before.

The dough #1 stretch okay. Pizza cooked fine, but the bake pizza crust, although looking okay, was, as described in OP, blah. It did not have the character and flavor of other slow, cold rise pizza doughs. that was 2 - 3 weeks ago.

Dough #2 got removed from freezer, defrosted to room temp and put into a lightly oil bowl, cover, placed in fridge to ferment, slow rise. Hardly any rise.

Further rehab needed (dough is still wholesome and safe). I let it “rise” in a warm room. Not much. Then a warmer enclosed porch. It rose a bit. Now it’s back in fridge.

I don’t mind rehabbing dough and I like to learn how the changes I make affect the resulting dough or pizza.

* Unfortunately, neither the recipe or photos (link above) did not show much of the finished from rising dough. The one photo show only a minor increase in size and none of the narrative describes the feel, look, texture or behavior. In fact, even the stretch doughs look flat. The baked results look great and many commenters remark on the delicious pizza flavor and crumb. I lik the look of the results, although I’m not sure why it’s called “thin crust.” It looks delicious, but substantial.

The flavor in the baked crust of these cold slow rise pizza doughs is supposed to come from the fermentation process that slowly breakers down the carbohydrates in the flour.

From the article/ recipe narrative:

<<

If you're new to Slice and/or DIY pizzamaking, the "cold rise" is a popular technique for producing a crust that's far more flavorful than one you'd get with a same-day mix-and-rise. As Cook's Illustrated explains:

Fermentation is a two-phase process: First, the carbohydrates in the dough are converted by the yeast to sugars, alcohol, and acids. Next, these convert to carbon dioxide, expanding the bubbles created in the dough when it was first mixed. At room temperature, the process moves rapidly to the production of carbon dioxide. But in the fridge, the process is slowed way down. With enough time, the complex-tasting sugars, alcohol, and acids form, but very little carbon dioxide gets converted, so the bubbles in the dough stay small and the crust bakes up both thin and more flavorful.

>>

I was going to bake the dough last night, but ran out of time. If it still seems rigid, lifeless, I may make a caramelized onion flatbread from the dough. I could toss it, but it still has potential for something, even if the slow ferment didn’t work to impart a good flavor to the resulting crust. I am a curious and resourceful (and usually evenly persistent) person, so I’ll see.

I figured some here have encountered similar dough results and wanted to mine your experience.

Thanks for your good feedback.

Lindac, that’s about how I do a lot of pizza doughs. This recipe called for only 1/2 teaspoon of instant yeast. So, it relies on the fermentation over 28 to 48 hours to change that carbohydrate in the flour.

” But in the fridge, the process is slowed way down. With enough time, the complex-tasting sugars, alcohol, and acids form, but very little carbon dioxide gets converted, so the bubbles in the dough stay small and the crust bakes up both thin and more flavorful.”

I’ll let you know how it goes. Gonna be a hot day today. Great for baking pizza, or I may do it outside.

Not near enough yeast and I don't put sugar in my pizza dough. I do use KA bread flour. This is the pizza dough recipe I use. You can make it as thick or thin as you want. Thick crust, it makes two 12 inch and thin it makes 4.

https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/homemade_pizza/

I would cut into strips, brush with butter, and sprinkle with parmesan for bread sticks.

For three cups of flour, I use 1-1/4 tsp IDY and 2 tsp salt, and the same 1-1/3 cups water as the recipe you used. I also allow my dough to rest in the refrigerator for 1 or 2 days.

The amount of yeast shouldn't matter if you give it long enough to rise. If you really think it isn't dead, put it on the counter and see if it rises.

I had a lot of trouble with KA bread flour that I bought before the current issues started. I really didn't like it. It seemed to tighten up right away and was stiff and tight, no matter what I did, like increasing the hydration, handling differently, etc. I'm using it up for flouring the work surface. The problem may be the flour!

You might try adding a bit of water to soften it up and make tortillas/chapati/flatbreads in a skillet or griddle.

Did you make that recipe by the volume measurements or by weight? It looks like they messed up the conversion with the recipe. It says 3 cups (16 1/2 ounces) bread flour.

Flour is 4.2 to 4.4 ounces per cup (depending which site you look up the conversion on). I generally use 4.2 ounces per cup when converting recipes to weight because it usually works and I find it easier to add flour to a too wet dough than to work water in to a too dry one. That would mean 3 cups is 12.6 ounces. Even at the high end, it would be 13.2 ounces. That's about 80% hydration so it should be a fairly wet dough.

If you make it by the weight measurements, 10.5 ounces of water to 16.5 ounces of bread flour would be a very dry dough - 63.5% hydration. The recipe I usually use is about 76% hydration.

A half tsp of yeast should be fine with a long enough rise. Maybe the dough being too dry inhibited it's action.

I can't see why rehabilitating the didn't work. That sounds like either the yeast is dead (maybe not totally inactive but mostly inactive so with a small quantity you don't get enough active cells) or something is killing off the yeast.

There could be many things going on here...one you could have run the processor too long over heating the dough and killing the yeast....you could have packed the flour....forgotten the salt>
You can always fix the dough....add more water and a bit more yeast...taste the dough....does it need salt? I always put some sugar into pizza dough to boost the yeast.....and a wetter dough makes a thinner more crisp crust.
Your posted recipe should have resulted in a fairly wet dough...interesting I find that 3 3/4 cups of flour equals a pound. And leaving it at room temp for an hour or 2 would have allowed the yeast to start to do it's thing.
One of the reasons I don't use Cooks Illustrated recipes....I suspect they illustrate and don't test!!

All good points. Islay, yes, K did add more water.

Last week, my rehab pizza was looking better. We were in a heat wave and I kept running out of energy. It was resting on the counter, it was late, and DH figured he’s surprise me, not knowing is was an experimental, Covid-curing dough and a project I was working on with this forum, MIT and the CIA.

So, with love in his heart, he set the dough (enough dough for two large pizzas) onto an oiled piz-pan. It must have been an inch thick <giggle> and resistant to stretching out.

He brings slices of the baked pizza to me, apologizing that it wasn’t very good.

It wasn’t very good. Charred on the bottom, uncooked in the center. There wasn’t any way for me to fairly evaluate the flavor. “That’s so sweet of you!”

It was only dough, and I hadn’t yet taken its full measure of decided what I might be best as.

I have “moved on,” as they say. For now, I’ve returned to our usual dough.

Post follows.

Here are my two doughs from using Bob’s Red Mill Artisan Flour (for pizza, focaccia, ands o on).

I mix each recipe in the KA with a dough hook, up the water a bit from the recipe, then move each ball of dough into a lightly oiled baggy. I let it rise in a refrigerator for a few days, stretching and folding it while still in the baggy as needed. I like kneading dough, but this technique is fast and there isn’t anything but the KA bowl, hook and a beaker to clean up. Photos: