pizzaplacesanfrancisco,
Any basic NY style dough formulation should work with your hearth oven. An example of one such formulation that is popular at this forum is this one:
http://www.pmq.com/recipe/view_recipe.php?id=52. For your hearth application, this might be a possible formulation based on the one at the PMQ Think Tank:
100%, Flour (13.5-14.2% protein)
60%, Water
0.33%, IDY (or 0.5% ADY, or 1% fresh yeast)
1.75%, Salt
1-3%, Oil
You can also add about 1-2% sugar if the bottom crust won’t burn in your oven. For a typical bake temperature of around 700 degrees F for a hearth oven, that is a possibility, so you will have to do some testing if you decide you would like to use sugar in your dough. A typical NY pizza size is 16” or 18” and is quite thin (more on this below).
In terms of the flour to use, not all of the flours you mentioned fall within the 13.5-14.2% range noted above. The flours you mentioned have the following protein content:
General Mills (GM) Supreme, 13.6%
GM All Trumps, 14.2%
GM Superlative, 12.6%
GM H&R flour, 11%
Mondako (Pendleton), 11.9%
Power (Pendleton), 13.5%
You didn’t mention any specific Giusto’s flours, King Arthur flours or ConAgra flours, but Giusto’s (which is a quality producer right in your own back yard) has a high-gluten Hi-Performer flour which has a protein content of 14%, ConAgra has a couple of high-gluten flours (Kyrol and Producer) that should work for your application, and King Arthur has a high-gluten flour (KASL) with a protein content of 14.2%. You will have to determine which of the flours is most readily available in your area and at what prices. Most sources of flours will give you samples of their flours to test. You may also want to do some of your own research on flours, or have someone do it on your behalf.
You can get some basic information on GM flours at
http://www.gmflour.com/gmflour/pflour.asp and on ConAgra flours at
http://www.conagrafoodingredients.com/products/products.jsp?cat=Bakery%20Flours. You can view the specs for the King Arthur KASL at
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/stuff/contentmgr/files/85e624febf29e4c7836066cc68c71648/miscdocs/BFS%20Specs%20-%20Customer%20Copy.pdf. King Arthur also makes a good bread flour for professionals (called Special) with a protein content (12.7%) that is slightly below the range mentioned above but it works well for the NY style. Before high-gluten flours became popular for the NY style, bread flour and all-purpose flours were the flours used by the old New York City pizza masters for their high-temperature ovens that were typically fueled by coal. Some pizza operators still use bread and all-purpose flours for the NY style.
As noted above, a typical NY style pizza size is 16” or 18”. However, other sizes are possible. The amount of dough you will need to make any given size will depend on the desired thickness of the crust of the pizza. A handy tool that you might want to use for this purpose is the Lehmann dough calculating tool at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/dough_calculator.html. For purposes of using the tool, you may want to experiment with thickness factors of between 0.075 and 0.105 (you will also have to enter the baker’s percents and other requested information). This range is fairly representative of the thicknesses of different NY style crusts. You didn’t indicate what model or type oven (gas or wood-fired, or both) you will be using, so you will have to do some tests with different dough thicknesses in your oven to get the one you like best. You most likely will also have to modify the basic dough formulation discussed above (or any comparable dough formulation) to meet your particular needs. The Lehmann dough calculating tool should also be able to help you in that regard. Ultimately, you will have to find the right match between your dough formulation and your oven.
You can see an example of a Lehmann NY style pizza baked in a hearth (Forno Bravo) oven at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,2003.0.html.
Peter
