Just prior to leaving town for the holidays, I made and froze another MM clone dough. For the most recent experiment, I used all Steen’s 100% Pure Cane Syrup. I had used all Steen’s before but the last time I did so I used less and I also used wheat germ, which I was not particularly crazy about. Also, this time, I decided to use a different approach to get the desired crust color rather than focusing as much with sweetness as I have done with all of my past MM clone doughs.
So, instead of determining a desired “sucrose equivalency” value, I tried instead to use an amount of the Steen’s to get me close to the desired dough coloration and then tweaked it bit by bit until I got the color of the dough to something that I believed was close to a real MM clone dough. In this case, I started with 12.5% Steen’s and kept adding more to my Cusinart 14-cup food processor bowl as the dough was mixing until I got the desired degree of dough coloration. When I calculated the final amount of Steen’s, it was 16.94%. When I calculated the “sucrose equivalency” value for that amount of Steen’s, using data that was given to me by the folks at Steen’s, I got a value of 8.47%. I might add at this point that I am suspicious of the sweetness data that Steen’s gave me. So, before I left for vacation, I sent an email to Steen’s in order to get a better handle of the types and amounts of “sugars” used in Steen’s. I am still waiting a response. Without intending to do so, I think my questions may have them flummoxed.
The other baker’s percents I used were 50% hydration, 0.70% IDY, 1.5% salt, and 2.45% oil. The oil this time was canola oil that I decided to use as a test to see if I could detect any difference using that oil. The calculated values of “adjusted hydration” (that takes the moisture content of the Steen’s into account) and “effective hydration” (that also takes the oil into account) for the final quantities of ingredients were 53.9% and 55.3%, respectively.
The frozen MM clone dough ball remained in the freezer for almost 9 days, whereupon I moved it to the refrigerator compartment of my home refrigerator to start to slack out (thaw). I originally intended to use a two-day defrost but a scheduling conflict made it necessary to use a three-day defrost. In retrospect, I was actually happy for the delay because it gave me a chance to see how an MM clone dough, with a fair amount of yeast, might behave with a longer defrost time. As it turned out, the MM dough ball, even while in the refrigerator compartment, was quite gassy. I allowed it to warm up at room temperature (around 65 degrees F) for about an hour and even then it was still gassy and in an expanding mode. I decided to use the dough ball at that time even though it was still cool to the touch and knowing that there might be a lot of bubbling in the finished crust. I had no trouble working with the dough. It behaved just as prior MM clone dough balls behaved, but more billowy. After forming the skin and dressing it, the pizza was baked on a pizza stone that had been positioned on the lowest oven rack position and preheated for about an hour at 500 degrees F. It took only six minutes to bake the pizza. There was no need to raise the pizza to a higher oven rack position to get more top crust coloration or to cook the toppings more (I used a combination of green peppers, onions, mushrooms and pepperoni). I might add that for the sauce I used a defrosted Papa John's clone sauce as described at Reply 31 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6633.msg61296.html#msg61296. That sauce uses fresh-pack tomatoes, as does MM, but it is not the same sauce as MM uses. However, I was very pleased with the PJ clone sauce.
The pizza turned out very well. However, it did have a lot of large, but soft, bubbles in the finished crust (that I pierced when I removed the pizza from the oven) and the rim of the pizza was large but soft, rather than chewy. The crust was nicely sweet but not cloyingly so, as the 8.47% sucrose equivalency value noted above might have suggested. I can’t say that the canola oil made a difference but, at the same time, it did nothing to detract from the eating experience. I concluded that if one were interested in a softer MM clone pizza rather than a fairly stiff and chewy one, the dough formulation as noted above, along with a three-day defrost and a one-hour warm-up at room temperature, is a very good option. After I was done with the pizza, I went back and, using the expanded dough calculating tool at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html, I revised my original MM clone dough formulation to reflect the final amount of Steen’s that I used. It is as follows:
KABF/VWG Flour Blend* (100%):
Spring Water (50%):
IDY (0.70%):
Salt (1.50%):
Canola Oil (2.45%):
Steen’s 100% Pure Cane Syrup (16.94%):
Total (171.59%):
| 211.65 g | 7.47 oz | 0.47 lbs
105.82 g | 3.73 oz | 0.23 lbs
1.48 g | 0.05 oz | 0 lbs | 0.49 tsp | 0.16 tbsp
3.17 g | 0.11 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.57 tsp | 0.19 tbsp
5.19 g | 0.18 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.14 tsp | 0.38 tbsp
35.85 g | 1.26 oz | 0.08 lbs
363.16 g | 12.81 oz | 0.8 lbs | TF = N/A
|
*The KABF/VWG blend comprises 205.8 grams (1.26 oz) KABF and 5.9 grams (0.21 oz) Hodgson Mill vital wheat gluten, with an effective protein content of 14.2%
Note: The 12.81 ounces of dough should be reduced to 12 ounces for a 10” pizza or else be used to make a slightly larger pizza; no bowl residue compensation
When I made the dough as reflected in the above dough formulation, I made a bit extra dough to conduct another “hydration” experiment using my countertop toaster oven. Starting with a flattened (2 ½” diameter) 10-gram piece of dough, I ended up after the prolonged bake at about of 212 degrees F with a weight of a shade under 6 ounces, which was a value that said that my latest MM clone dough was a bit under 40% water. When I calculated the moisture content of the KABF (I used 14%), the moisture content of the Hodgson Mill VWG (using a generic value of 8.2%), and added in the formula water, the final value was 39.97%, or a shade below 40% water. So, my numbers were on the money. All we now need to know what MM is using for hydration is a 10-gram piece of an MM dough ball.
For my next MM clone experiment, I think I will be using a combination of Steen’s 100% Pure Cane Syrup and a molasses product along the lines of a Brer Rabbit Full Flavor molasses. Although I was happy with the all-Steen’s MM clone dough, I think I need to get a bit more “brown” rather than “golden” color in the finished dough. From what Norma has reported from her experiments, I am inclined to believe that the Golden Barrel Supreme Baking Molasses, with 10% blackstrap molasses, may be closer to the type of molasses product that MM is using. So, I may use 10% or maybe a bit more of the Brer Rabbit Full Flavor molasses in my next experiment, and use the same approach I used with my latest dough to get the desired degree of dough and crust coloration.
Peter
