using King Arthur Italian Style Flour *PICS*

[snowdy]

The other night i needed to make a quick same-day dough and since  high-gluten flour isn't good for that (as learned through the board) i decided to use king arthur italian style flour:

http://shop.bakerscatalogue.com/items/item3045.html

First off, this stuff is like mixing chalk.. super powdery... etc.

For Dough recipe i used:

2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon salt
3/4 cup warm water
2 1/4 cups king arthur italian style flour
2 teaspoon instant yeast
2 teaspoons olive oil

i used twice the yeast (2tsp instead of 1tsp) as is called for in most emergency doughs.

When it came time to roll out the dough.. it was awesome. When i use high gluten flour it takes me forever to get the pizza out by hand to 15 inches or so.. i always have problems with it looking really wrinkly and wanting to stretch itself back in even when i get it out....

with this italian style flour it was like working with one of those doughs you see the pizza spinning champ guys use.. when i took the dough ball out of the bowl, it took me about 1 minute to stretch the dough out to full 15 inch size.. this stuff is great to work with.

i used 1 dough ball from this recipe and made about a 15 inch pizza. The cheese used was Grande part skim mozzarella.

I thought the lower protein flour would help make a better crust since i only had about 1 hour for rise time.... it definitely came out better than using high gluten flour when i tried a same day dough last time.

i let the pizza stone heat up for about 1 hour ... the dough rose for about an hour total and popped it in.

The resulting pizza as very soft and airy.. it actually had different taste to the crust than i usually get when using king arthur high gluten flour. The taste actually reminded me of many pizza "slice" type shops that sell by the slice around where i live in California.

One other thing... i could hardly get any browning out of this pizza at all... it cooked at 500 F and even with 2tsp of sugar the dough had hardly any browning to it at all. Not sure why that would be??

Here are the pics... try this stuff out if you want a different texture and taste to your crust. its actually very good.

[snowdy]

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[snowdy]

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[duckjob]

Looks good. As far as the browning goes, I believe that that is a property of the 00 flour. I know all the pizzas I made that were all 00 or part 00 did brown less ones with high gluten. I use the KA00 as well.

[canadianbacon]

Snowdy Snowdy Snowdy ! 

All I can say is WOW, - that pizza looks darn good, urrr, I mean DAMN good !

I'll tell ya, that pizza looks exactly like what my local pizza joints make, - perfect !

I'll have to check out your recipe and pics again and see what you did.

amazing stuff ! 

Mark

[canadianbacon]

Hi Snowdy,

how much cheese did you use on this pie ?

did you take some moz and just grate it over the top ? ( this is my method )

Just wondering if I cheap on on my cheese, as you look like you have a very good amount on there.

Mark

[snowdy]

hey mark

i used grande grated part skim... didnt measure the amount but i usually put a pretty good amount on there as i love extra cheese...

this was about a 15 inch pie and i put enough to cover the whole thing so you couldnt see much sauce underneath it before it went into the oven.

the grande stuff is soo damn good.

i like 50/50 brand the best so far but the provalone is a little too strong. i think a 75/25 would be ideal.

l8r!

[BradLovesPizza]

Boy, that cheese looks good!

[Pete-zza]

Snowdy,

I agree with duckjob on the color issue. You won't get the same degree of coloration with the 00 flour as with the higher protein flours, although the Caputo 00 will usually provide more color because it is higher in protein than other 00 flours. You might brush a bit of olive oil on the rim of the dough before baking and/or you might put the pie under the broiler for a short time to increase the top crust browning.

Peter

[canadianbacon]

Hi Snowdy,

Thanks for the info on the cheese.... man that looks DAMN good, .... yeah a few days later and I'm looking at the images again.

What a great thing digital photography is .... isn't it.....  " a picture is worth a thousand words" .... it was a wiseman that invented that phrase, it's so so true.

Btw, I re-read your recipe and it says you used 1 TABLESPOON of SALT.... was that a type-ohhh ! ? 
or was that for real ? .... I've never used more than a pinch of salt in any of my dough.... would love to know if that was
correct.....

was it as salty as heck ? ..... or just right ? .... very very interesting, I will try this tomorrow if that's correct.

Mark

[abatardi]

Btw, I re-read your recipe and it says you used 1 TABLESPOON of SALT.... was that a type-ohhh ! ? 
or was that for real ? .... I've never used more than a pinch of salt in any of my dough.... would love to know if that was
correct.....

was it as salty as heck ? ..... or just right ? .... very very interesting, I will try this tomorrow if that's correct.

Mark

Tablespoon is probably about right.  A pinch is definitely not enough.

- Aaron