Here is the last recipe I used for a 14" pizza that pushed the hydration up a bit in attempts to make this more extensible:
300 g King Arthur Bread Flour
9.3 g Hodgson Vital Wheat Gluten Flour
176.3 g filtered tap water
2.2 g Fleischmann's Rapid Rise Yeast (unopened package)
4.6 g table salt
7.9 g Colavita extra virgin olive oil
7.7 g Plantation Blackstrap Molasses
30.9 g table sugar
Fred,
Thank you for the details of the MM clone dough formulation you used. As a point of clarification, I assume that you meant to say that you added the salt to the water and molasses and sugar, not to the other dry ingredients (flour, vital wheat gluten and yeast). Is that correct?
Using the expanded dough calculating tool at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html, and also the Mixed Mass Percentage Calculator at
http://tools.foodsim.com/, I converted your recipe to the dough formulation format as set forth below. I also calculated the percent of water in your MM clone dough, the "adjusted" hydration that takes into account the water content of the Plantation blackstrap molasses (I assumed 21% water), and the "effective" hydration that also takes the oil (2.554%) into account. I also came up with a sucrose equivalency value. I'd like to commend you for the very nice and meticulous job you did in creating your MM clone recipe. The numbers lined up nicely, although I think I may have diagnosed the problem, about which I will have more to say below.
Here is what your MM clone dough formulation looks like, together with the related metrics:
Fred's MM Clone Dough FormulationKABF/VWG Blend* (100%):
Filtered Tap Water (57%):
Fleischmann's Rapid Rise IDY (0.7113%):
Table Salt (1.4872%):
Colavita Extra Virgin Olive Oil (2.554%):
Table Sugar (9.99%):
Plantation Blackstrap Molasses (2.4895%):
Total (174.232%):
| 309.3 g | 10.91 oz | 0.68 lbs
176.3 g | 6.22 oz | 0.39 lbs
2.2 g | 0.08 oz | 0 lbs | 0.73 tsp | 0.24 tbsp
4.6 g | 0.16 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.82 tsp | 0.27 tbsp
7.9 g | 0.28 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.76 tsp | 0.59 tbsp
30.9 g | 1.09 oz | 0.07 lbs | 7.75 tsp | 2.58 tbsp
7.7 g | 0.27 oz | 0.02 lbs
538.9 g | 19.01 oz | 1.19 lbs | TF = N/A
|
*The KABF/VWG Blend comprises 300 grams KABF and 9.3 grams Hodgson Mill vital wheat gluten, with a total protein content of 14.32%.
Note: Dough is for a single 14" pizza; no bowl residue compensation
Related Metrics:Percent of water in the dough = 40.95% (this is a bit high but not too far out of line)
Nominal "Adjusted" hydration = 57.52%
Nominal "Effective" hydration = 60.08%
Sucrose equivalency = 11.48%
After taking everything into account, I think your problem is related to the amount of sugar you used. What you did was creative in seeking a combination of ordinary table sugar and a small amount of the Plantation blackstrap molasses that would give you both sweetness and flavor in the finished crust and color in the dough and finished crust, much like brown sugar would, but I think that the large amount of sugar (about 10%) had the effect of lowering the formula hydration. Sugar is a hygroscopic ingredient. That means that it attracts water from its surroundings. Molasses is also a hygroscopic ingredient, maybe even more so than sugar, but at about 2.5%, its impact is likely to be slight. Since sugar is dry, you effectively have to take that dryness into account in arriving at a final hydration value. For example, if we were to add the sugar to the KABF/VWG blend for hydration calculation purposes, and accounting for the water in the molasses, the hydration becomes 52.3%, which is much lower than the nominal adjusted hydration value noted above. Adding the oil percent to that number, we get an effective hydration of 54.85%. If my analysis is correct, that would be too low, and may well have contributed to the increased elasticity you experienced. If you had added other dry ingredients to your mix, such as whey, dry milk powder, more vital wheat gluten, etc., you would have experienced a similar hydration deficiency. People often fail to take these effects into account when they decide to modify an existing dough formulation by adding other ingredients. In your case, it was a dry ingredient but the same problem occurs when people add wet ingredients, except in that case the formula hydration has to be lowered rather than raised.
To the above, I would add that when sugar gets above about 5% in a dough formulation, it has an osmotic effect on the yeast that can impair its performance. That seems not to have been a problem in your case. Sometimes the effect of too much sugar can be offset to a degree by using more yeast, and maybe that was the case with your dough since the amount of yeast I have been recommending is higher than normal.
In terms of altering your MM dough clone formulation to make it more workable, as by increasing the formula hydration, I would have to spend some time playing around with possible solutions. For example, increasing the formula hydration might have the effect of increasing the total water content of the dough above around 40%, which is the value our hydration bake tests have established for a real MM dough. There is not much that can be done with the molasses since there is too little of it.
In a sense, I think you may have wandered too far off of the MM reservation with your particular MM clone dough formulation but if you would like me to try to repair it, I am willing to give it the old college try.
Peter
