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[dinks]

SADIAMOND:
 Good morning. I can only state my opinion here about your question "CAN GLUTEN FLOUR as labeled in the store BE HI-GLUTEN FLOUR."?.
... but  probably is BREAD FLOUR. This flour can be used to make exlcellent pizza dough. If after you use this flour you decide to have a stronger flour such as HI-GLUTEN flour you can strengthen bread flour somewhat by adding an ingredient known as "VWG". It is a natural product from wheat it has Vitamin C added which is a boast for yeast & it increases the strength level of flours. I will let PETER tell you all about it as he has more patience than I have. If you live in a city where there is a Smart & Final store they do carry 25 pound bags of Hi-G flour.
  Let me mention this to you, it may help. In the U.S. bags of flour you buy at your super-market such as Gold Medal if
it says protein 3G it is All-purpoe flour. If it says Protein 4G it is Bread flour. I hope this helps give you insight into flours.
Good Luck & have a nice day my friend.
  ~DINKS.

[Pete-zza]

sadiamond,

I will try to answer your questions in the same order as you asked them.

1) The 0 flour you have is not what we call a high-gluten flour in the U.S. It is an Italian flour that is milled so that it retains about 70% of the grain. Most of the members of the forum who use the Italian flours use what is called 00. It is the most refined of all the Italian flours (followed by 0 in the pecking order) and is used to make Neapolitan style doughs/pizzas. Because the 0 flour has more of the grain, it will be slightly darker and coarser than the 00. Most Italian flours used for pizza doughs have lower protein contents and lower gluten levels than our domestic flours and behave differently. So they can’t be used interchangeably with our domestic flours. You will have to find recipes that best use the different flours, including the 0 flour you have. There are a lot of 00 pizza dough recipes on this forum but none for 0 flour to the best of my knowledge.

2) You will not find high-gluten flour in Whole Foods although many Whole Foods do carry the King Arthur brand of bread flour. Unfortunately, you will not find high-gluten flour, and certainly not the King Arthur Sir Lancelot (KASL) high-gluten flour, at the supermarket retail level anywhere. The gluten flour you saw is what is often called vital wheat gluten (VWG). It is not the same as high-gluten flour. Rather, it is a dried wheat protein of high-gluten, hard wheat grain that has had all of the starch removed and is then dried. It is frequently used to supplement other flours to increase the overall protein level of such flours. For example, you could add VWG to bread flour to increase its protein content to approximate that of high-gluten flour. But, it alone would not be used to make a pizza dough.

3) My preference among high-gluten flours is the KASL flour. But there are many other brands of high-gluten flour that can be used to make NY style doughs. Whether it is worth the price and the hassle to get KASL is a personal decision that one has to make. But since this question comes up time and again on this forum, I would like to suggest that one way to approach the matter of high-gluten flours is as follows: Start with bread flour to make your pizza dough. If you are satisfied, then that ends the matter. If you still aren’t satisfied, you can try adding VWG to the bread flour. (I can tell you how to do this if you choose that route). If you try the VWG/bread flour combination and you like it, then you need not look further. If you don’t like the VWG/bread flour approach, then you can try to find high-gluten flour. Since you won’t find high-gluten flour in the supermarkets, you will have to look for another source. It might be a distributor, a foodservice company, or it might be one of the big box stores like Costco’s. Depending on the source, the high-gluten flour might be KASL, All Trumps, Bouncer, ConAgra, Pendleton, or whatever. They will all work to make a NY style dough. What will usually dictate what you buy will be availability in your area and price. In most cases, however, you will be buying a 25-50 lb. bag of flour. One advantage of the KASL, if it matters to you, is that it is unbleached, and non-bromated. It also has a higher protein content, 14.2%, than just about all competing brands. Whether that matters is again a matter of personal choice.

4) All supermarket packets of yeast weigh 0.6 oz. (7 g.) and contains 2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast, whether active dry yeast (ADY) or instant dry yeast (IDY). What you may be thinking of is the relationship between the use of ADY and IDY. In that case, the answer is that 2 1/4 teaspoons of ADY is equivalent to 1 1/2 teaspoons of IDY.

Peter

[Pete-zza]

sadiamond,

Seeing that you appear to be quite fond of (or maybe now sick of) the Trader Joe's pizza dough, I meant to suggest in my last post that you take a look at this thread: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,2036.0.html. In that thread, member giotto and I attempted to come up with a dough formulation that replicates that of the California Trader Joe's. I thought the pizza I made with the reverse-engineered dough turned out quite well. And the leftover slices I reheated were also very good--better than I thought they would be.

Peter

[sadiamond]

WOW--These responses are simply amazing. In three response notes I have learned so much, and I can't thank you enough (sorry Peter about the double-posting). And my unappreciative wife--to think that she can't eat pizza four nights in a row? Well...I'm going to show her these posts tonight and we'll both smile accordingly (we are most decidedly going no carb tonight). And yes, I will definitely read the TJ's thread (I think I have done so already). One comment and one final question...for now!

1) Comment: The folks at the Italian market I bought the "0" flour from told me I could use it interchangeably with "00" recipes. If truth be told I didn't think the pizza came out SO amazingly that I'd pay that much for the flour. I'd rather try the Hi-Gluten route.

2) Question: So, about these unglazed quarry tiles, I just laid out 4 large (that's 4 dollars) for nine, 6" x 6" x 0.5" thick unglazed quarry tiles at Home Depot. The folks there didn't know too much about the use of these tiles for cooking pizza on. I plan to use these on my Weber gas grill. The question is....is there anything else I need to be wary of, e.g., any kind of additive that may have been added to the tile, or am I good to go, after an initial rinse, dry, and proper pre-heating of course?

Again, thanks so much folks!

[Pete-zza]

sadiamond,

I believe I have the same tiles from Home Depot. But you must live in a high-rent district. I bought ten of the 6" x 6" x 1/2" unglazed quarry tiles for $0.30 each. As long as the tiles are unglazed you should be OK. What I don't know is how they hold up in a grill.

Peter

[sadiamond]

25 miles south of San Francisco? Yep, I'd say that's high rent all right! But other than Amici's and Speederia, an independent shop in San Carlos (California) that sells by the slice and is quite awesome, the pizza here not-a so good!

[scott r]

It is a little bit of a drive, but I would love to hear your opinion of Pizzaiolo in Oakland.  I got to the restaurant while I was vacationing in the area, but the wait was too long for the people I was with.  I can say that the pies looked amazing, and the wood burning oven appeared to be rocking hotter than the one over at a16.  It also comes highly recommended by some friends of mine who know good food.

[sebdesn]

One additional comment about the flours...There are differences in the additives in various flours that make a difference in how they perform.
Peter mentioned that KASL has no additives. I have been using a conagra high Gluten and it has malted barley flour,potassium bromate ,thiamine, riboflaven, and folic acid added. The malted barley increases the yeast activity substantially , and the bromate strengthens the gluten.
  I also use a high and a medium gluten from a local mill that is organic and has no additives , and the difference is amazing. I notice the changes mostly in s/d bread,but in pizza dough as well.
Bud

[Pete-zza]

Bud,

The King Arthur KASL flour also has malted barley flour and the B vitamins you mentioned. The only bromated flour that King Arthur sells is the cake flour. Some bakers actually prefer the bromated flours for their purposes (it keeps the dough from falling between proofing and baking). See POTASSIUM BROMATE in the Pizza Glossary at http://www.pizzamaking.com/pizza_glossary.html.

Peter

[deblacksmith]

Pizzageek, a lady at King Arthur told me that there was no Sir Lancelot available at the retail level.

I live in the backwoods of North Carolina, and we happen to have a lot of home bread makers around here -- and we have a retail store that specializes in supply these folks.  He sells Sir Lancelot in either the 50 pound bags or breaks down and repacks in smaller packages.  His supply is not direct from KA but through a Amish firm in PA. 
Sometimes we are just lucky.

Deblacksmith

[kgbenson]

Deblacksmith,

Where in NC are you?  I will be headed to Charlotte in a few weeks and would like to visit tis flour source if it is anywhere near there.

Keith

[PizzaBrewer]

Deblacksmith,

Where in NC are you?  I will be headed to Charlotte in a few weeks and would like to visit tis flour source if it is anywhere near there.

Keith

Keith:  Completely off-topic, but if you like fried seafood (and who doesn't?) you simply must visit nearby Gastonia when you're in Charlotte.  You'll find the unique tradition of "fish camps", there are several competing ones that each provide outstanding fried fish in stupendous quantities.  Here's a link to some pictures of my last visit:

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=64682&hl=gastonia

Not to mention the barbecue tradition found around Winston-Salem/Lexington/Greensboro.

North Carolina is quite a food-lover's treasure.

---Guy

[sadiamond]

Scott R--I don't get up to Oaktown too often, but I've heard of Pizzaiolo. And here's why. Restaurant reviewer Michael Buaer of the San Francisco Chronicle rated it one of his top ten restaurants (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/01/CMGQIF5VJ71.DTL#pizza&type=food). So I definitely want to get up there, but probably won't happen soon.

Also, what town constitutes the backwoods of North Carolina? Is it within an hour of Asheville?

And yet another question for anyone in the audience: can I freely substitute "bread flour" such as King Arthur's, for unbleached white...in recipes?



Thanks!

[Pete-zza]

sadiamond,

I assume that your question about substituting bread flour for all-purpose flour is in the context of pizza doughs. If so, there are a lot of pizza doughs/recipes where bread flour can be used instead of all-purpose flour. Usually the question is turned around and people want to know if they can substitute all-purpose flour--which is available everywhere--for bread flour, or even high-gluten flour.

I personally might not be inclined to substitute bread flour for all-purpose flour in deep-dish doughs although I am aware that there are recipes out there that do call for bread flour for deep-dish. Often the answer to your question has to do with personal taste and preferences. Our members are constantly experimenting with using different flours for different pizza styles and will freely deviate from what most recipes call for in the way of flour. Some members work only with all-purpose flour for all pizza styles, whereas others target their flour selections to specific pizza types. Consequently, it is hard to generalize.

Peter

[sadiamond]

Thanks Peter. Yes, the question was in the context of pizza doughs.

I'm definitely a thinner crust and NOT a deep dish dude. One other question....for recipes that call for instant yeast (I have the regular stuff from Red Star), how to accommodate that? Just take a small batch of warm water and add a packet of the regular yeast, wait several minutes until it foams, and then combine with the remaining "called for" portion of water?

[Pete-zza]

sadiamond,

To use IDY, you just mix it in with the flour. It doesn't require proofing in water. To use ADY, you mix it in with some warm water, at around 105-115 degrees F, for about 10 minutes, and then mix it in with the rest of the water called for by the recipe in question. If a recipe calls for IDY and you want to use ADY, you multiply the amount of IDY, by volume (e.g., teaspoons), by 1.5

Peter

[sadiamond]

Peter--I'm really sorry (too much cheese in the brain apparently), but I don't understand your last sentence. If I want to use ADY in a recipe that calls for IDY:

1) How specifically does that conversion work? If it calls for 1 teaspoon of IDY, I'd use 1.5 teaspoons of ADY, correct?

2) OK then, but how much warm water would I dissolve the ADY in, or is that not terribly significant? E.G., "dissolve in 1/4 cup of warm water." Thanks!

[Pete-zza]

sadiamond,

Your understanding of the conversion is correct.

The amount of the water for proofing ADY is not particularly critical for the amounts of yeast that most home recipes call for. About 1/4-1/2 cup is good enough.

Peter

[sadiamond]

Awesome. I love Mark Bittman's recipes in gen'l and his pizza dough recipe uses IDY. Thanks!

[ihavezippers]

Hey, thanks for the help.  I used this recipe to great success, at least with the crust.
However, once I got into it, I realized the Randy's recipe wasn't really specific, or I am just not very baker-smart.

I don't have it in front of me, but I remember the flour recipe was something like 2 c + 2 T + 1 t.  Those are defintely not the right numbers, but I wasn't exactly sure if c= cup, T=tablespoon, and t=teaspoon...and the fact that they were added together like that instead of in one lump measurement threw me off too. 

Also, I got a little confused on the step by step order.  I wasn't sure when to add what to what, and such.

Is there a recipe on this site for the novice, which step by step goes through the instructions?  Am I correct on my above question, about the measurements in Randy's recipe?
Again, the crust turned out great...but I was guessing throughout the process and only wonder if it could have been better had I correctly followed the instructions.  Thanks.