Chicago Deep Dish without Corn Oil

[La Sera]

Since I can't get corn oil anymore, anyone have any ideas to make a decent commercial dough without it? Canola oil tasted awful. Even a mix of olive and canola was dreadful. Any ideas appreciated...

[The Dough Doctor]

L.A.
There are a whole bunch of other options that you may not be as sensitive to:
Sunflower oil
Peanut oil
Blue Bonnet Margarine (ya gotta try it)
Straight olive oil
Are you sure the canola oil you tested wasn't rancid?
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

[La Sera]

It was freshly opened, Tom. I don't think it was rancid.

Here is the recipe I've tried, based on a high oil content.
Flour (A 12+% protein, "hard" flour)
Water 50%
Oil 21%
Salt 0.55%
Sugar 0.4%
IDY 0.4%

I mixed for a shorter time than usual, about 5 minutes only.
Baked for 35 minutes @ 220C
I laid a BBQ grill grid on the bottom stone of one of my ovens as a heat buffer and set the pans on it, using the bottom burner only.

This will be a new product for me, in addition to my regular pizza.

I can't get Blue Bonnet margarine, but I've thought about using margarine with corn oil instead of some of the oil. Maybe a mix of margarine and olive oil? Do you think I should I melt it to a liquid and add it, just add it in clumps to the mixer if I try it?

I plan to make only about 5 Kg of flour for each batch I mix a few times a week and freeze it, doing a 2 day thaw, ferment cycle.

I use pure olive oil in my regular pizza dough, but it's pretty expensive for high oil content/Chicago dough. (costs me over US$22 for a 5 liter bottle of Costco oil. The other oils are prohibitively expensive for me.)

Thank you for any ideas or thoughts you may have.

[Pete-zza]

La Sera,

I can see the fix that you are in. Corn oil is a staple for Chicago deep-dish doughs. It is used, along with a small amount of olive oil, by Malnati's and Gino's East if what is reported on this forum is correct and up to date. Home Run Inn uses all corn oil for its flat pizzas. In its early days, Giordano's used a mixture of vegetable oil and margarine, but the total fat content was only around 6%, and I don't know what form the vegetable oil took. Based on the feedback of the members of this forum, I cannot see using 21% olive oil, even if price were not an issue. It's also hard to imagine using 21% margarine or shortening, and I don't know what blend of oil and solid fat would be cost effective or functional on the palate. As for the form of the solid fat, that is, liquid or solid, if it is liquid it can be treated the same as oil. If it is solid, it can be added in that form to the flour in the mixer bowl without having to liquify it. If you are using magarine, depending on the amount that you would use as part of the final blend, you may have to adjust the formula hydration to reflect the fact that margarine is about 17% water.

We have some members who are experts on the Chicago deep-dish style and oil/fat levels for that style. Maybe they can offer up a possible solution, bearing in mind that you are in Japan.

Peter

[pizzard]

Since I can't get corn oil anymore, anyone have any ideas to make a decent commercial dough without it? Canola oil tasted awful. Even a mix of olive and canola was dreadful. Any ideas appreciated...

Why can't you get corn oil anymore?  I don't like the way canola tastes when exposed to high heat either...very strong off flavor.

[norma427]

La Sera,

If this corn oil available near where you live in Japan?  http://www.japanfs.org/en/pages/032393.html

Norma

[vcb]

Can you get coconut or palm oil?
I know the quality and flavor varies, depending on the brand, but you might find one that you like.

[La Sera]

Thank you for your replies.

I can get corn oil, but I can't get reasonably priced corn oil or commercial size quantities anymore.
It's scarce and expensive because corn and corn oil is very difficult for importers to source from the U.S. now. Farmers and corn oil produces are riding the crest of the ethanol subsidies and there is no corn left for export.

The oil Norma gave me (thank you) the link for is almost US$10/liter. That's almost 5 times the price of gasoline! Ouch!

Palm oil does sound interesting and is available and reasonably priced. I'll try it soon and see what happens.

I know I can't make a clone of traditional Chicago pizza, so I'll have to make my own concoction. Maybe that's a good thing. I do like the taste corn oil in the old Chicago pizzas, but corn oil is not used widely in Japan, so there is no history of that flavor. The flavors you eat as a child become nostalgic flavors as you get older.

I want to introduce Chicago deep dish style and people have raved over the mediocre ones I've tried to make so far, but they aren't as good as they should be yet.

Thanks for the input and I welcome any recipe suggestions.

[Garvey]

I can get corn oil, but I can't get reasonably priced corn oil or commercial size quantities anymore.
It's scarce and expensive ...

The oil Norma gave me (thank you) the link for is almost US$10/liter.

A single deep dish needs about 3 Tbs of oil.  There are approximately 67 Tbs of oil in a liter, which means you could make 22 deep dish pizzas.  So at $10/liter, your oil costs per pizza are about 45 cents per pizza.

We all make choices.  I'd bet your time is worth more than your ingredient costs.

This post isn't meant to knock your choices but to encourage you to go ahead and buy the real thing.  Heck, a real deep dish in a restaurant in Chicago is gonna cost you $30.  Add in a round trip ticket from Japan, and...well....you get the idea... 

Cheers,
Garvey