"Southside" Thin Crust w/recipe & pics

[AmsterdamPizza]

Hi,

I moved to Amsterdam a few years ago and ever since I've always missed both the Deep Dish but also the thin crust pizza's one finds all over Chicago. -These are typically smaller family-run shops; Rico's in Lansing, John's on Western, Nick and Vito's, Lucky Vito's, etc.. There are too many of these places to actually name them all! -Either way you don't find them in The Netherlands, that's for sure!

I have been lurking here for sometime trying to pick up all of the tips and tricks in an effort to recreate the taste of these pizzeria's here in Holland.. The other night, after many many pizza's I finally came close to one of my favorite places, Rico's Pizza, out in Lansing.

I thought I would share it with yourselves. -I'm going to try and duplicate this again next Tuesday night so I'll post again and let you know how well I do next time!


The Dough
Here is the dough formulation:
This is for one 14in pizza. I set the calculator up for 15inches, with a thickness factor of about 0.06.

**Flour (100%):  138.2 g  |  4.87 oz | 0.3 lbs
Water (50%):  69.1 g  |  2.44 oz | 0.15 lbs
IDY (0.5%):  0.69 g | 0.02 oz | 0 lbs | 0.23 tsp | 0.08 tbsp
Salt (3%):  4.15 g | 0.15 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.74 tsp | 0.25 tbsp
Corn Oil (14%):  19.35 g | 0.68 oz | 0.04 lbs | 4.3 tsp | 1.43 tbsp
Vegetable (Soybean) Oil (3%):  4.15 g | 0.15 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.91 tsp | 0.3 tbsp
Honey (10%):  13.82 g | 0.49 oz | 0.03 lbs | 1.98 tsp | 0.66 tbsp
Milk (fresh) (11%):  15.2 g | 0.54 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.04 tsp | 1.01 tbsp
**Semolina (18%):  24.88 g | 0.88 oz | 0.05 lbs | 7.15 tsp | 2.38 tbsp
**Rice Flour (8%):  11.06 g | 0.39 oz | 0.02 lbs | 4.8 tsp | 1.6 tbsp
Total (217.5%): 300.59 g | 10.6 oz | 0.66 lbs | TF = 0.06

**I later needed/felt that I should add 10 more grams of flour, 10 grams of Semolina, and 5 grams of Rice Flour as I felt while making the dough ball that it was too oily/watery/sticky.

Flour: I use the worst flour in my grocery store: “EUROSHOPPER WHEAT FLOUR”. -11 grams of protein per 100 grams of flour... Someday I'll hit the specialty store around the corner for a higher gluten flour.. I've seen one with 14 gr of protein per 100 gr of flour, but it was self raising. -yuck

I first mixed all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl, then I run them through my sieve to make sure I get a finer powder.

I make a well in the flour mixture, and then add the room temperature water, oil, milk, and honey.

I mix them together with a wooden spoon until they begin to form a solid dough ball. -In the case of this pizza I felt the dough ball was a little sticky/oily. So I added about 10 more grams of flour, 10 grams of semolina, and 5 grams of Rice Flour, after a semi sticky dough ball had formed.

I removed the dough ball from the bowl, sprinkled about a tablespoon of packed dough onto my table, and a tablespoon onto the dough ball and kneaded the dough for about 3 minutes, turning over once, and kneading for another one or two minutes. I might have added a TINY more flour while doing this. My goal was to make sure the dough ball didn't fall apart, but also remained somewhat oily.

I then oiled my bowl up with a lot of corn oil and let rise in the oven for 4 hours. -You can let it rise in your house as long as the temperature is in the upper 70's. -I keep my house cold so dough doesn't get a good rise sitting on my table. After four hours I punched the dough down and put it in the fridge for two days. -Personally I think two days is overkill, you could easily put it in the fridge for a day or less.

I took the dough out of the fridge 3 hours before it was ready and let it rise in my oven at 25ish degrees Celsius for three more hours.

I took the dough out of the oven, and let it sit on the counter while I preheated the oven to 245 degrees Celsius (took over a ½ hour, -crappy oven)... While the oven heated I spread some corn oil over the top of the deep dish pan and sprinkled some corn meal on it.

Next I lightly dusted my countertop with flour and began to spread the dough ball out to about 12 inches or so by simply pushing it outward with my hands, flipping it over, pushing it outward again, etc, etc. I took the dough, placed it on the deep dish pizza pan and continued stretching it out to the full 14 inches. I would say that it was about 2.5-3mm thick when it was stretched out.

I placed the dough in the oven for about 4 minutes, and then removed, setting aside for 5 minutes while I prepped the cheese, sausage, and sauce.

After 5 minutes I removed the dough from the deep dish pan and placed on my peel. Before par-baking the dough is actually too fragile to place onto the peel and successfully launch onto my stone. -This is why I use the metal deep dish pan for the par-bake!

The Sauce
I have actually very recently found canned pizza sauce, that when I add the dry ingredients below I find that I no longer need to follow the full recipe below, just doctor it up with the ingredients listed below, less the tomato paste, crushed tomato's, and running the sauce through a sieve. The name of this sauce is: Cirio Pizzassimo



Yields enough for 4 14 inch pizza's:
Two cans of crushed tomato/Cirio Pizzassimo
3/4 T fennel(either crushed or powdered via  grinder)
1 1/2 tsp. dried Basil
1 tsp. Oregano
1/2 tsp. Pepper
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. salt
2-3 tsp. honey
2 tsp Sugar
½ small can of tomato paste (!!not needed if using pre-made pizza sauce from can and the ingredients above!!)

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Combine ingredients in sauce pan
2. Simmer for a couple of hours
3. RUN THROUGH SIEVE TO THICKEN (!!not needed if using pre-made pizza sauce from can and the ingredients above!!)

The Cheese
I use mostly fresh Mozzarella. I have not been able to locate moisture cheese here. Nor have I located Scamorza, other than the smoked variety yet.

I basically have to dry the cheese out in the fridge overnight so it wont turn the pizza soggy. -I add a slight dusting of salt to the cheese as well.

I mix in Parmesan flakes and dust with the mozzarella cheese. -I would say about 1 T of the ground parm, and 2 T of the parm flakes.

The Sausage
Of course, I can't just go out and buy sausage, so I have to make it myself!

Per 250 grams of COARSE ground pork shoulder:
1/2 T Morton's Kosher Salt
½ T Fresh Ground Black Pepper
1/2 cloves garlic, crushed in press (or some powdered equivalent)
1 t marjoram
1 to 1/2 t Sugar
1 t dried thyme
1 t dried basil
1 t onion powder
1 t ground coriander
1 T ground fennel
1/2 T fennel

Mix together, keep cool. Shape into 2 euro-coin size pieces, and then FREEZE 30 minutes before putting on Pizza.

The Cooking Time
I cook the pizza about 15 minutes in total on a pizza stone at the bottom of the rack. I use the convection setting on my oven the entire time.

[mrmojo1]

Sweet! nice job!! that looks fabulously delicious!!!!

[buceriasdon]

I will most certainly give your recipe a try next time I'm making thin crust. Nice job.
Don

[BTB]

Looks interesting.  But I absolutely dislike working with real sticky dough that this recipe seems to result in.  But, while saying that, I also have to say that some really great crispy thin crust pizzas that I made had some incredibly wet, sticky and hard to clean up dough.  Go figure.  Just plan to use plenty of bench flour.  But then one is altering the formulation tremendously when you use a lot more bench flour.  Wouldn't it make more sense to add more flour into the recipe to start with?  (Or conversely, reduce the hydration to begin with?)

Pictures showed a beautiful looking pizza, tho, and I'd grab a bunch of pieces right away.  And they were cut the "normal" way (squares) just like God intended pizza to be cut.  LOL.

                                                                                             --BTB                    

[buceriasdon]

Wow, After working with doughs that remind me of the movie " The Blob" 61% dough would seem dry right now. I totally agree, thin pizza should be cut in squares.
Don

Looks interesting.  But I absolutely dislike working with real sticky dough that this recipe seems to result in.  But, while saying that, I also have to say that some really great crispy thin crust pizzas that I made had some incredibly wet, sticky and hard to clean up dough.  Go figure.  Just plan to use plenty of bench flour.  But then one is altering the formulation tremendously when you use a lot more bench flour.  Wouldn't it make more sense to add more flour into the recipe to start with?

Pictures showed a beautiful looking pizza, tho, and I'd grab a bunch of pieces right away.  And they were cut the "normal" way (squares) just like God intended pizza to be cut.  LOL.

                                                                                             --BTB                    

[AmsterdamPizza]

Hi there,

Please note that I did the following to the dough formulation after I had noticed it was kind of a puddle of mud:

**I later needed/felt that I should add 10 more grams of flour, 10 grams of Semolina, and 5 grams of Rice Flour as I felt while making the dough ball that it was too oily/watery/sticky.

I also use some bench flour when rolling it out.

[AmsterdamPizza]

Last Monday I was in my local "Eko Plaza  - The Organic Supermarket of The Netherlands", and I came across a strange type of flour with a lot of protein, 20% actually! -It was called: Kikkererwtenmeel.. I had no idea what its, and my phone was dead so I couldn't translate it into English, but I bought it anyway. I later found out that it's called Chickpea Flour, aka Gram Flour and although it is extremely high in protein it has no gluten. Darn.

I made a new pizza with it, and I really thought it turned out well! Here's my original dough Formulation:

Flour (100%):    103.17 g  |  3.64 oz | 0.23 lbs
Water (37%):    38.17 g  |  1.35 oz | 0.08 lbs
IDY (0.50%):    0.52 g | 0.02 oz | 0 lbs | 0.17 tsp | 0.06 tbsp
Salt (3%):    3.1 g | 0.11 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.55 tsp | 0.18 tbsp
Corn Oil (14%):    14.44 g | 0.51 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.21 tsp | 1.07 tbsp
Honey (10%):    10.32 g | 0.36 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.48 tsp | 0.49 tbsp
Milk (fresh) (12%):    12.38 g | 0.44 oz | 0.03 lbs | 2.48 tsp | 0.83 tbsp
Semolina (23%):    23.73 g | 0.84 oz | 0.05 lbs | 6.82 tsp | 2.27 tbsp
Rice Flour (6%):    6.19 g | 0.22 oz | 0.01 lbs | 2.68 tsp | 0.89 tbsp
Chickpea/Gram Flour (5%):    5.16 g | 0.18 oz | 0.01 lbs | 2.58 tsp | 0.86 tbsp
Total (210.5%):   217.18 g | 7.66 oz | 0.48 lbs | TF = 0.06

NOTE ON THE DOUGH FORMULATION
During the making of this dough I had to add two heaping teaspoons of flour to this ball in order to keep it together. And then I added three more tablespoons of milk. I tried to recalculate these numbers into the dough tool, but the output really doesn't make sense because it automatically adjusts everything else, screws up the amount of flour, and reduces the water.

Ok, so I had some problems with this dough. The biggest problem is the IDY I think. I let this dough rise overnight in a warm dark place and it barely rose. I later tried to kickstart it in a warmed oven, but it still had less than doubled after 24 hours. I got to thinking about what I had done wrong and I remembered that in order for it to ball up I really did have to work it a lot, so it's possible that was the problem.

Par-baking
I par-baked this pizza for about 4 minutes at around 570 degrees F. I would not recommend doing this for 4 minutes next time, as you'll see in the photo's I overdid it a little. I'd go for two minutes at this temperature.

Other notes
I used the same ingredients in my previous posts for the toppings with the exception of the cheese. This time I mixed some smoked Scamorza into the cheese. I would also NOT do this ever again. ...I really wanted to try Scamorza and although it melts better than mozzarella, if you can only find smoked it might not give you the kind of flavor you're looking for on a pizza... If I were able to find it un-smoked it would be my go to cheese.

Findings
Despite the smoked Scamorza, and despite par-baking too long I think this pizza showed a lot of potential and I am definitely going to try this again with more Chickpea/Gram Flour next time. I felt that the crust on this pizza had an excellent crunch, and had a lot of different little crackery-like depth to it without actually tasting like a communion wafer.

[Pete-zza]

NOTE ON THE DOUGH FORMULATION
During the making of this dough I had to add two heaping teaspoons of flour to this ball in order to keep it together. And then I added three more tablespoons of milk. I tried to recalculate these numbers into the dough tool, but the output really doesn't make sense because it automatically adjusts everything else, screws up the amount of flour, and reduces the water.

AmsterdamPizza,

Although all of the dough calculating tools can be used to create new dough formulations and to revise existing ones, they were really designed to be used with existing, proven dough formulations where the baker's percents are known or can be calculated. Also, the tools work with fixed dough weights, either as a result of a user using the Dough Weight option or the Thickness Factor option to produce a fixed dough weight. So, as you discovered, if you change the amount (baker's percent) of an existing ingredient, the calculator adjusts the values of all of the ingredients other than the flour so that the dough weight remains constant. If you add new ingredients, as you did, the same or similar thing happens. To come up with the final dough formulation in your case where you have added one or more new ingredients to the formulation, you should recalculate all of the baker's percents (using a common desk calculator) and then use them in the tool with the new dough weight. You could also just add things to an existing dough formulation, which will increase the total dough weight, and then trim the weight of the final dough back to the desired value. I can assure you that the tool does not have a mind of its own so as to act maliciously to "screw" things up.

Another thing I recommend doing with the dough calculating tool is to treat all of the dry flour ingredients (which would also include vital wheat gluten) as part of a blend. So, for example, I would lump the flour, semolina, rice flour and the chick pea flour together and treat them as a blend, That blend is substituted for the "flour" entry in the tool. I might also adjust the formula hydration because the semolina, rice flour and chickpea flour will also be hydrated, even if not at the same rate. Also, the hydration value should take into account the fact that honey comprises around 17% water and milk is roughly 90% water.

Since the expanded dough calculating tool does not include rice flour and chickpea flour as listed ingredients, can you tell me how you used those items in the tool and how you calculated the volume equivalents to the weights?

Peter

[AmsterdamPizza]

Hi Pete,

I know the tool isn't evil, in fact I use it all the time. My girlfriend is getting pretty upset with all of these pizzamaking.com printouts all over our kitchen, office, and living room! :-)

I measure the rice flour and chickpea flour out in my scale, and then I adjust the "rye flour", and "soy flour" weights in the claculator to match my own measured weights in the dough calculator. -Then before copy-pasting them into my posts I change the names.

If you like I can weigh these out on a digital scale later this week, and report back with more scientific calculations and conversions for these ingredients.

Either later next week or maybe this week if I get time, I am going to investigate making the dough with Spelt Flour (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelt).

[Pete-zza]

I measure the rice flour and chickpea flour out in my scale, and then I adjust the "rye flour", and "soy flour" weights in the claculator to match my own measured weights in the dough calculator. -Then before copy-pasting them into my posts I change the names.

AmsterdamPizza,

Actually, I am very impressed. I do that sort of thing all of the time, and have on occasion discussed how I do it, but I have not seen many members do it, or do it as well as you did. I usually end up changing the volume measurements that correspond to the ingredient weights.

Peter

[AmsterdamPizza]

Hi,

A week or so ago, I made a new pizza this time using Spelt Flour and Pine Nuts.

Now, I do understand that you won't find this pizza anywhere near a typical southside pizzeria... but hey, my girlriend loves Pine Nuts, and I wanted to try Spelt Flour so here goes:

Dough formulation:
**Flour (100%):  196.14 g  |  6.92 oz | 0.43 lbs
Water (47%):  92.19 g  |  3.25 oz | 0.2 lbs
ADY (1.5%):  2.94 g | 0.1 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.78 tsp | 0.26 tbsp
Salt (2%):  3.92 g | 0.14 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.7 tsp | 0.23 tbsp
Corn Oil (24%):  47.07 g | 1.66 oz | 0.1 lbs | 10.46 tsp | 3.49 tbsp
Sugar (1.5%):  2.94 g | 0.1 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.74 tsp | 0.25 tbsp
Dry Non-Fat Milk (2%):  3.92 g | 0.14 oz | 0.01 lbs | 2.73 tsp | 0.91 tbsp
Total (178%): 349.13 g | 12.32 oz | 0.77 lbs | TF = 0.08

**Flour blend=
39.22g semolina flour
58.84g tarwemeel gebuild (I think this is a coarser flour)
58.84g speltmeel (Spelt Flour)
19.61g pine nuts, crushed
19.61g rice flour

10 pct rice flour
10 pct pine nuts
20 pct semolina
30 pct tarwemeel gebuild
30 pct speltmeel

Plus some All Purpose bench flour when rolling it out...
I let it rise or about 20 hours in my kitchen.

OK, so what is tarwemeel gebuild? I currently have no idea. I suspect (based on some translations) that it's ground wheat right before it turns into flour. -So it's not really as fine as flour is.
This link has some information, but you will have to use a translator: voedselencyclopedie.nl/Gebuild_meel


I used the same sauce and sausage recipe I laid out above. -I used fresh mozzarella cheese, but let it dry out all day.

Results:
Well. It was.. interesting.. I think the spelt gives it a kind of whole wheat dynamic (slightly). The pine nuts, I couldn't really taste.. The crust held together pretty well. I was really happy about that, and it gave it a more chewy consistency. -Which I didn't like all that much.

Next Steps:
I think I might try this again, but for now I am going to focus more on the basics.

It's very hard to find high gluten flour here, so I need to step it up and head over to one of the windmills outside o the city that list high gluten flour on their website
I still have not found low-moisture mozzarella cheese, or scamorza that isn't smoked.