cake flour

[Ed]

Hello,

My name is Ed and I am new to this forum.  I worked in a New York Style pizza shop here in South Carolina for 6 years and now am working on making pizza at home.

New to Chicago style,  my wife and I have only eaten at Pizzeria Uno's.  However we really enjoyed it and are looking at making deep dish pizza at home.

Recently I visited www.unos.com and looked at the ingredient list for their deep dish crust.  It was cake flour, soybean oil, sucrose, salt and instant yeast. 

Has anyone on this forum tried using cake flour for deep dish crust and if so, how did it go?

Have a good day.

[Pete-zza]

ed,

That's an interesting find. I would think that cake flour would not be a good choice for a pizza dough, since it has only about 7-8.5% protein, but apparently it will work for deep-dish purposes. My suspicion is that Uno's makes the dough up, scales it (or cuts pieces out of bulk), and presses the dough into the deep-dish pans. I wonder whether the dough would have a strong enough gluten network to hold up to sheeting or die cutting/pressing to make it easier to use with the deep-dish pans.

Peter

[Ed]

I dont really know anything about sheeting or die cutting, but I'm going to try the cake flour in a deep dish dough recipe and see how it turns out.  Going to get a hold of a couple of dark deep dish pans and some KA cake flour.  Uno's makes it work somehow.  It will probably be after Christmas but I will let you know how it goes.  I am completely new to making Chicago deep dish but have learned a good bit from this forum.  Now I just have to try it out in the kitchen.

Have a good day,

Ed

[buzz]

I'm very curious about this, too! Cake flour is so soft--I can't imagine that it would hold up, but then who knows....?

[Pete-zza]

I have always taken the position that cake flour or pastry flour alone cannot make a pizza dough because of their low protein/gluten levels but admittedly I was thinking about flat pizza crusts, not deep-dish. Then, I recalled having found a recipe for pizza dough using both cake flour and pastry flour. I went back into my files and found it:

1 tablespoon [15 ml] active dry yeast
1 teaspoon [5 ml] sugar
3/4 cup [190 ml] lukewarm water
2 3/4 cups [690 ml] cake and pastry flour
1 teaspoonful [5 ml] salt
1 tablespoon [15 ml] olive oil
 
Mix together yeast, sugar and 1/4 cup [60 ml] of lukewarm water; set aside until doubled in volume.  Add yeast to flour and salt, along with remaining water and olive oil. Mix until smooth; knead for approximately 10 minutes. Set aside into a greased bowl, into a warm environment, until doubled in volume. Knead rapidly. Oil a 12-inch [30-cm] pizza pan. Roll and then line pan with dough.

Peter

[Ed]

Well today was attempt 1.
Let me clarify first that I am trying to duplicate the crust from the Uno Chicago Grill chain as that is the only reference I have.
I used the Chicago style dough recipe from American Pie except I substituted cake flour for bread flour and canola oil for corn oil. 
No official deep dish pizza pans yet so I used a 13x9 inch cake pan.

The pizza was edible.
I made a double batch of the dough and it doubled in size in about 40 min.  All i did was double every item of the recipe.
I greased the pan with margarine. Rolled out the dough to probably 1/3rd of an inch thick.  Lined the pan with the dough.
Toppings:

1. Sorrento part skim mozzarella cut into slices and made into a layer right on top of the dough.
2. Hormel turkey pepperoni
3. Sauteed mushrooms and peppers
4. Bertolli mushroom and garlic pasta sauce

Another layer of crust on top

Placed in a 400 degree oven lowered to 375 after placing the pizza in the oven
about 20 min on the bottom rack.
about 17 min on the middle rack.

Nothing burned. Crust was golden brown.

Didn't care for the cornmeal though.  Crust was "biscuity" kind of like a thick layer of bisquick dough.

Uno's crust is more like pie or pastry dough and is thinner.  This could not be rolled thin.

No complaint about the toppings.  Sauce was not sweet (that's ok)

It's the crust.

This was thick and biscuity.
Uno's chain has much more oil in the dough.  They still use cake flour though.  No cornmeal.
This recipe had 5 tbsps of oil per 4 cups of flour.
I know I didn't adhere to the recipe strictly but I think what I am looking for is different.

I think what I am looking for just has a lot more oil in it.

Will continue to experiment.

All for now,

Ed

[Ed]

I know I am kind of reinventing the wheel here, but I am kind of trying to catch on with some help.
I know Uno's tastes more like pie or pastry crust so I started with a pie dough recipe and modified it.
If the dough just held together a little better it would be good.
The dough is pressed into a pan greased with margarine and baked at 400 for 10 min by itself (probably 90 sec too long).  It tastes strikingly similar to Uno's.
Looks like Buzz has got the Giordano's recipe down.  I might need to add more flour and get closer to his recipe.

Here's what I am working with:

6.5 oz King Arthur All Purpose flour
6 tablespoons canola oil
3 tablespoons ice water (temp probably isn't a big factor here since the dough is left out to ferment)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon instant dry yeast

In a mixing bowl, I added the water, oil, salt and sugar.  I then added the flour on top of the ingredients in the bowl and then the yeast, stirring the yeast into the flour and then mixing the whole mixture together.

I kneaded probably something like 15 sec and formed the mixture into a ball.
Dough was fermented for 2 hours.

Maybe 1 oz more flour and another tablespoon of water and the dough would have held together better or maybe just a longer knead.  But it tasted right.  Their crust is closer to pie dough.  They use soybean oil too but the canola oil tasted fine.

All for now,

Ed

[buzz]

Ed--

None of the chains use cornmeal--I honestly think this fallacy was started when Jeff Smith (The Frugal Gourmet) years ago started publishing his version of Uno's recipe (which was way off the mark) to account for the yellow color of the crust. Pat Bruno, in the first edition of his Chicago deep dish book, used this same recipe, but in the second edition he changed the formula, stating that the chains use a food coloring called "egg shade" to achieve the golden brown color of the cooked crust.

I'm not personally fond of Uno's/Malnati's (they just closed down the Uno's around me, BTW!), but their crust is quite greasy, which means a very high fat content. So your 6 TBS oil per 6.5 cups flour is way too low. Try the ratio of 6 TBS oil to 2 cups flour. You might want to experiment using an oil/shortening combination (Uno's always tastes to me like there's shortening in the crust).

Also, I believe that Uno's uses crushed whole tomatoes instead of a sauce (drain them first).

As for your kneading time, I would experiment with between 1 and 2 minutes. 1 minute, I believe, mimics the Uno's dough more correctly. if you only knead for 15 seconds you really have a biscuit dough.

As for cake flour, James McNair in his book "New Pizza" recommends using a proportion of cake flour as the secret to great pizza-making. I tried it once and the result was a Sbarro-type crust--it might be worth exploring in the future. But if you're looking to duplicate Uno's, and they say they use cake flour, then I'm sure it would be worth your while to try some!

[elsegundo]

Let me see if I have this correct. UNO:

1. Uses something different from all-purpose flour
2. Uses a special pan to achieve their results
3. Uses something other than olive oil 

They might be on to something. I've eaten UNO there in Chicago. So let's ask ourselves:

1. What does UNO know about pizza?
2. How long have these upstarts been making pizza?

Some authors claim the word pizza means pie and pizza pie is redundant.
Some people don't think Chicago pizza is pizza.
I would hate to give my opinion, being on the shy side.  Sounds like pie to me.

My suggestion is: if you like UNO and Chicago style, you use only their listed ingredients based on the order of weight given, and keep trying until you love the Cubs.  Pete-zza is really good at deconstructing recipes. Follow his advice.


No olive oil or AP, and using special equipment.  What are they thinking? 


Good luck and I hope you bear up during the NFL playoffs.

[Ed]

Buzz,

I apologize.  I gave the flour by weight instead of by volume.
The ratio is more like 6 tbsp oil to 1.5 cups of flour.
I must admit it does taste like Uno's has shortening in their crust but on their ingredient list on their website they only claim soybean oil.
The crust is greasy at Uno's and very much like pie dough (as I remember).  I guess I would need to mail order a Giordano's or visit Chicago to get a better understanding of how Chicago style deep dish should be.  We don't eat at Uno's often but we like it.   I like thin crust pizza better though.  My wife likes the New York style I make too.
Will try a longer knead first then maybe the cake flour.
I appreciate the help.
Will get back into the kitchen in the next few days to do more experimenting.

Thanks,

Ed

[buzz]

Uno's, of course, invented deep dish pizza. Deep dish is awesome pizza!

Peter might know if the cake flour would add to the greasiness of the pizza. Uno's and Malnati's are basically the same recipe (I think both are terrible)--maybe it's the cheap soybean oil that gives it the shortening taste, because Crisco is made from soybean oil.

IMO, Giordano's blows Uno's away--better ingredients (canola and olive oil), Stella cheese, 6-in-1 tomatoes.