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[turner]

Okay, I wrote this for family members who just had to know.  It's written for newbs with my attempt at idiot instructions, so please bear with things you probably already know.

Pizza Dough

3 ¼ cups high glutton flour (bread flour can be used)
1 ½ teaspoons sugar
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 ½ teaspoons of red star yeast dry active (no substitutions)
1 cup of very warm water
A splash of olive oil

Awesome sauce

1 large can of Red Gold crushed tomatoes (no substitutions)
1 small can of tomato paste
One tablespoons of GFS pizza spices
Dash or two or three of dried pizza peppers~to taste
Splash of olive oil and optional splash of lemon juice (up to an ounce of lemon juice).

For the pizza dough, add the yeast, salt and sugar in a mixing bowl.  Add hot tap water (not hot enough to kill the yeast) to the bowl and whisk.  Take this time to measure out the flour and let the yeast, sugar, salt / water mix sit for 15min.  Make sure the yeast is active.

Now it is time to add the flour to the mixing bowl.  Add a little olive oil and stir it in before adding the flour.  Mix the flour until it has formed in to a ball.  *note* you might have to add a little bit of water or flour.  Be VERY careful not to add too much water if the flour is too dry.  It only takes a few drops.  Once a ball has formed, put it in a large bowl and covered with a little bit of olive oil to prevent sticking and age over night in the refrigerator.

Awesome sauce is easy.  Add crushed tomatoes,  tomato paste, and a splash of olive oil and lemon juice in a blender.  Blend well.

Add blended tomatoes to a bowl and stir in pizza spices and peppers.  Let it sit for a few hours or overnight  before making pizza.

To make the pizza, remove the dough from the refrigerator a 4 hours before you roll it out.  Carefully hand flatten the dough and try to maintain a circular shape *this just takes practice* Once the dough starts to become flat, you can use a large roller and carefully finish rolling the dough out to a large thin round masterpiece.  You must sprinkling flour while you roll it out to keep it dry. Take your time.  Roll out about 2” larger then your 16” pizza pan.  Dock the dough and add a good layer of olive oil to the pan.  Carefully place the dough in the pan and make sure air pockets are not trapped under the dough in the pan.  It can be folded in half.  Use a roller to cut the extra dough on the edge and add the sauce to taste.  Add MIXED Italian cheeses and favorite toppings.  Bake at 475 on the bottom rack until done. (about 15`16min) 

Note, this is my generic instructions.  As of lately I've been adding up to 3 1/4 of dry ingredients, but I have been adding a little bit of yellow corn meal to try to get a little bit of the crunch that Home Run Inn has.  Also, the bulk needs to be high gluten flower, but I've also been playing with adding a little bit of King Arthur APF too.  Play with the ratios a little bit.

I also get HGF and mozzarella and smoked provolone cheese from  Gordon Food Service.  Their flour makes a much better pizza then bread flour and their cheese is much better then anything I've tried at the grocery store.  I also add shredded parmesan cheese as well.

Enjoy!!!


This pizza has pepperoni on it too.  I picked up from Home Run Inn to put it on top of the sauce and under the cheese.  This keeps piles of grease from forming on top, but also it stays in place better.

This is sort of a hybrid thin crust.  It's not full thin cracker crust.  I got tired of dealing with REALLY dry dough.  It's not as thick as American thin crust and properly made, it taste way better.

[Pete-zza]

turner,

Thank you for posting your dough recipe.

Can you tell me which brands of high-gluten flour and bread flour you have been using? Also, since there are many ways of measuring flour out of the flour container, can you tell me exactly how you measure out the flour? For example, do you stir the flour in the flour container and then lift it into your measuring cups using a spoon/scoop and then level the tops of the measuring cups? Or do you dip the measuring cups into the flour container and then level off the tops? Or maybe you use some other flour measurement method or variation.

With respect to the "splash of olive oil", how much would you say it is on a measuring spoon basis?

Finally, is it safe to say that the leftover dough after using the rolling pin to get the final 16" size comes to about 2" worth of diameter (18"-16" = 2")? I ask this question because often a dough skin will shrink as it is being worked with to form the final desired skin size.

Thanks.

Peter

[turner]

The brand I have right now is Primo Gusto.  GFS sells another brand too and I can't really tell a difference in taste.  I think I buy on price.  I don't use bread flour, but I left that option for people who can't find high gluten flour.  Strangely it can be hard to find, at least in Indiana.  Even Sam's Club didn't have it.  GFS is the only place I've ever seen it.

For measuring, I do use a cup.  I don't currently have a scale.  What I do is I take a measuring cup and fluff the flower a little to try and avoid compact measurements.  Then I overfill a cup and use a knife to level off.  I add the flower to a 4 cup (anything can be used) so I can stir up the dry ingredients before adding them to the water.

As far as the olive oil goes, I've never actually measured it.  I would guess around 3-4 table spoons worth.

As for shrinking pizza dough, before I put it in the pan, I lift the dough off the counter to let it shrink back a little and rest for just a moment.  I will roll it out more if it shrinks too much.  The extra dough needs to clear the size of the pan and the side.  My pan might be a 1/4" deep.  Overall, when the dough is in the pan and the sides are pressed in, I like to have at least 2" of extra dough.  More would be wasteful and less can be tricky to work with.

I hope this helps.  I'll take pictures of a sliced piece on the next pizza I make. 

[Pete-zza]

What I do is I take a measuring cup and fluff the flower a little to try and avoid compact measurements.  Then I overfill a cup and use a knife to level off. 

turner,

As a point of clarification, do you lift the flour from the flour container into your measuring cups or do you just dip your measuring cups into the flour container?

Peter

[turner]

I dip the measuring cup in to the flour.   For a single pizza recipe, measuring without weight has never failed me.

The end product ball should be moist, but not wet.  All the flour should be mixed very well with nothing left behind.

I guess I should add:   I throw all the flour in to the wet ingredients all at once.  I use a flat beater (kitchen aid part) to start the mix.  It only takes about 30 seconds to get all the dry ingredients wet and using the flat beater starts the mix a lot better then the dough hook can.  Then I change over to a dough hook and set the timer for 6min.  I've tried different ways over the years and this is my personal favorite.  I used to slowly add flour and only use a dough hook, but IMO, the dough hook is horrible at starting the mix.  The flat beater works perfectly.

I tried using the flat beater after watching a Alton Brown show on making pizza.  While I wasn't interested in his thick doughy American hand tossed pizza, he has a lot of good tips for making pizza.  Try and catch the show on the food network.  It might even be on you tube.

[Pete-zza]

turner,

The reason why I asked you all of those questions is because I thought that I would attempt to convert your recipe to baker's percent format so that it can be scaled up or down for different pizza sizes. If that is possible based on the information and answers you provided, I will post my results later today. Of course, the baker's percent version requires use of a digital scale for at least the flour and water. The volume measurements can be used for the rest of the ingredients.

I also use the flat beater and C-hook combination, for the same reason and in pretty much the same way that you use them.

Peter

[Pete-zza]

turner,

Based on the information you provided, I have set forth below what I believe is a reasonable approximation of a baker's percent version of your dough recipe. To create that version, I used the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html and member November's Mass-Volume Conversion Calculator at http://www.unclesalmon.com/tools/food.php. Since the high-gluten flour you have been using is not in the pulldown menu at the Mass-Volume Conversion Calculator, I used the King Arthur Sir Lancelot high-gluten flour as a proxy. I also used the Medium flour Measurement Method in that calculator. I also assumed three tablespoons of oil.

This is what I ended up with:

King Arthur Sir Lancelot High-gluten Flour (100%): Water (55.2283%): ADY (1.32362%): Salt (1.95441%): Olive Oil (9.45447%): Sugar (1.39601%): Total (169.35681%):

428.37 g  |  15.11 oz | 0.94 lbs 236.58 g  |  8.34 oz | 0.52 lbs 5.67 g | 0.2 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.5 tsp | 0.5 tbsp 8.37 g | 0.3 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.5 tsp | 0.5 tbsp 40.5 g | 1.43 oz | 0.09 lbs | 9 tsp | 3 tbsp 5.98 g | 0.21 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.5 tsp | 0.5 tbsp 725.47 g | 25.59 oz | 1.6 lbs | TF = N/A

Note: No bowl residue compensation

Based on the 18" skin size that you use to make a 16" pizza, I calculated a skin thickness factor TF of 0.100562 [(25.59)/(3.14159 x 9 x 9) = 0.100562]. That thickness factor can be used in the expanded dough calculating tool along with the baker's percents given above to come up with the ingredient quantities needed to make a skin of another size. As an example, if someone wants to make a 14" skin, one would use the above thickness factor and a pizza size of 16" (2" more than the desired final size of 14"). So, the dough formulation in that example would look like this:

King Arthur Sir Lancelot High-gluten Flour (100%): Water (55.2283%): ADY (1.32362%): Salt (1.95441%): Olive Oil (9.45447%): Sugar (1.39601%): Total (169.35681%):

338.47 g  |  11.94 oz | 0.75 lbs 186.93 g  |  6.59 oz | 0.41 lbs 4.48 g | 0.16 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.19 tsp | 0.4 tbsp 6.61 g | 0.23 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.19 tsp | 0.4 tbsp 32 g | 1.13 oz | 0.07 lbs | 7.11 tsp | 2.37 tbsp 4.73 g | 0.17 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.19 tsp | 0.4 tbsp 573.21 g | 20.22 oz | 1.26 lbs | TF = 0.100562

Note: Pizza size entered into tool = 16"; no bowl residue compensation

In both cases, there will be some scrap dough. In your case, I estimate that the scrap dough comes to around 5.37 ounces (this assumes close adherence to the 16" and 18" skin sizes). In the 14" example given above, the corresponding dough scrap is about 4.74 ounces. Of course, in the real world there may be some differences because of the use of bench flour, possibly more water, minor dough losses, dough rolling variations, etc.

Looking at your dough formulation in its baker's percent format, it strikes me as representing a South side Chicago thin/cracker style crust. Is that what you have been trying to make? Also, out of curiosity, do you use a "family" cut for the pizzas you have been making?

Peter

[turner]

All this pizza talk made me hungry.

Here is a representation of how it looks after mixing.

Also, out of curiosity, do you use a "family" cut for the pizzas you have been making?  <-----  I don't know what that means.   

Also, yes, this is my attempt at Chicago think crust inspired pizza dough.  I started with the thin crust recipe from pizzamaking.  com

I just slowly tweaked it just a tad and from trial and error came up with something that I find easier to work with, but still has attributes I was after.  I still play with it a little adding very small amounts of yellow corn meal and king author APF.

[Pete-zza]

turner,

You can see a "family" cut at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6368.msg54574.html#msg54574. I think another name is "party" cut.

Peter

[turner]

Here is a cut.  Sorry, this camera is older and not great.  It's the best it can do.