Home Run Inn Success and Final Formulation

[gns67]

Welcome to the forum, George.  You'll see that Peter is a superstar around here on multiple fronts and his help in putting together this clone was nothing short of stellar.  And we should also acknowledge his excellent new avatar! 

I haven't tried to come up with a mix of mozzarella cheeses for this yet as I usually have only one type of mozz on hand at a time.  One way to try to cheat this mix and get that smokey flavor would be to try to blend in some provalone and see how that works as far as replicating HRI's blend.  Tinkering and making it your own is what makes this so great. 

Loo

Thanks Loo, I'm going to give this a try this weekend. 

As anyone else noticed that Reggio's frozen pizza is almost identical to HRI?

[loowaters]

As anyone else noticed that Reggio's frozen pizza is almost identical to HRI?

Yes, quite similar.

[gns67]

100% AP Flour
42 Water
24 Corn Oil
1.75 ADY
1.75 Salt
Thickness Factor = .111

The pictures are a 14" pizza.

Could somebody help me convert this based upon 2 1/2 cups of flour?  I'm still new at this and not used to working with percentages or weights.  Any help would be much appreciated!  Thanks.

[Pete-zza]

George,

I think there may be an easier and better way to proceed than starting with an amount of flour. Since we know the baker's percents and the thickness factor, all we need to know is how many pizzas and what size you want them to be. Then, we can use the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html to do all the number crunching for us. For example, if you want to make one 14" pizza, using the thickness factor 0.111 and the recited baker's percents in the tool yields the following:

Flour (100%): Water (42%): ADY (1.75%): Salt (1.75%): Corn Oil (24%): Total (169.5%):

285.79 g  |  10.08 oz | 0.63 lbs 120.03 g  |  4.23 oz | 0.26 lbs 5 g | 0.18 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.32 tsp | 0.44 tbsp 5 g | 0.18 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.9 tsp | 0.3 tbsp 68.59 g | 2.42 oz | 0.15 lbs | 5.08 tbsp | 0.32 cups 484.42 g | 17.09 oz | 1.07 lbs | TF = 0.111

To convert the weights of flour and water to volumes measurements, you can use member November's Mass-Volume Conversion Calculator at http://tools.foodsim.com/. If you use the pull-down menu to find the Gold Medal all-purpose flour, which we will use here as a proxy for whatever brand of all-purpose flour you will be using, and if you enter 10.08 oz. in the "Total" box and then click on the background, you will see that 10.08 oz. of flour converts to 2 cups + 1/4 c. + 1 T. + a bit less than 1/2 t. The flour has to be measured out in a specific way. Specifically, you should first stir the flour in the container to loosen it, and then lift the flour from the container using a tablespoon or scoop into the measuring cups just to the point of overflowing. You should then level off the tops of the measuring cups. You shouldn't shake or tamp the measuring cups on a surface.  

To convert the water from weight to volume, you should use the pull-down menu to find the water (Fluid, Water) and enter 4.23 oz. in the Total box. You will see that the 4.23 oz. of water converts to 1/2 c. + 0.33 t. To measure out the 1/2-cup amount, you should fill your measuring cup with water until the lower meniscus is at the 1/2-c. marking. This should be done at eye level on a flat surface.

It is possible to start with 2 1/2 cups of flour as you requested, but you would have to first convert that amount of flour to a weight (November's tool can do this also), and then determine the weights of all of the other ingredients, and add them up. The total can then be used in the expanded dough calculating tool to determine the amounts, by volumes, of each of the ingredients other than water. You would have to use November's tool to convert the water to a volume measurement. I can walk you through the exercise in greater detail if you'd like, but I think the more accurate way to go is to use the method described above.

I think you can see from the above analysis why many of us prefer to work in weights rather than volumes.

Peter

[gns67]

Thank you very much Peter for all of your help and attention to detail!  It makes it much easier for people like me to learn.

[Pete-zza]

George,

Actually, you weren't all that far off with your 2 1/2 cups of flour. For example, if you used 2 1/2 cups of General Mills all-purpose flour and measured it out textbook style using both a 1-cup measuring cup and a 1/2-cup measuring cup, the final dough formulation would look like this:

Flour (100%): Water (42%): ADY (1.75%): Salt (1.75%): Corn Oil (24%): Total (169.5%):

312.31 g  |  11.02 oz | 0.69 lbs 131.17 g  |  4.63 oz | 0.29 lbs 5.47 g | 0.19 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.45 tsp | 0.48 tbsp 5.47 g | 0.19 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.98 tsp | 0.33 tbsp 74.95 g | 2.64 oz | 0.17 lbs | 5.55 tbsp | 0.35 cups 529.36 g | 18.67 oz | 1.17 lbs | TF = N/A

As you will note, the difference in total dough weight is a little over 1 1/2 ounces (18.67 ounces minus 17.09 ounces). That means that if you used the full 18.67 ounces of dough to make a 14" pizza, the crust would be a little thicker than what Loo intended with his dough formulation. To retain the same crust characteristics, which is what you really want to do, you would just make the pizza a bit bigger. In this case, the pizza would be a bit over 14.5". That's not a big difference, but to be a purist that is what you would use.

Peter

[LPcreation]

I tried your pizza loowaters.  It came out pretty well but I had a problem getting any color in the crust.  I didn't have any sausage either so I used pepperoni.

[loowaters]

I'm not the expert on things like this but I'm pretty sure a longer ferment like a one or two day fridge rise to fully develop the sugars that create that browning could be useful for you.  I haven't had problems with the color but I also haven't had that big of a crust ring on my pie.  I pinch up the sides a bit and top right to that rim.

Loo

[Pete-zza]

LPcreation,

Despite his thoughtful disclaimer, Loo is the expert on the HRI pizza and its finished characteristics. However, I think it may help him and others to know exactly how you made the pizza. As Loo noted, dough made using all-purpose flour and with only a few hours of fermentation will often result in a finished crust with poor coloration because it takes time for the biochemical activity to extract the natural sugars from the flour (damaged starch) to then be available as residual sugar at the time of baking to produce good crust coloration. Instead, you have to rely more on the improved heat transfer characteristics of the large amount of oil in the dough and also how you bake the pizza (e.g., directly on a preheated stone, using a pan or disk or screen of the proper type, etc.) and where the pizza is positioned in the oven for baking. The bake time and temperature will also be critical factors in achieving good crust coloration. Providing this level of detail may offer clues as to what happened in your case. If you changed any of the ingredients or amounts or if you deviated from Loo's instructions, it will, of course, be necessary to have that information in order to conduct a proper diagnosis.

Peter

[LPcreation]

Begin by dissolving salt in 110-115* water.  Add ADY and stir it in then let bloom for five minutes.  Add half of the flour and begin to mix.  I did the mixing with the dough hook of my Kitchen Aid mixer.  Once it comes together add the oil and half of the remaining flour (3/4 of all flour now in mixer).  Once that comes together, knead on 3 speed for 5 minutes.  Add remaining flour and mix until combined then knead for 3 additional minutes on 3 speed.  If it seems a little scrappy, add water one teaspoon at a time until it comes together.  This will be a pretty stiff dough.

I follow his recipe/bake times/temps exactly except for the following....

1 - I forgot to add the salt to the water to bloom the ADY.

2 - I didn't follow his flour timing, meaning after the ADY bloomed, I threw everything in the KA and mixed it.

I plan on making it again so I'll be more aware of the timing of when to add ingredients.

[Pete-zza]

LPcreation,

I doubt that the changes you made were responsible for the lack of crust coloration. What kind of disk did you use?

Peter

[LPcreation]

LPcreation,

I doubt that the changes you made were responsible for the lack of crust coloration. What kind of disk did you use?

Peter

I put it right on the stone.  I didn't think that would make a difference because of the heat from the stone.  Maybe I thought wrong?

[Pete-zza]

LPcreation,

When I made my initial HRI clone, I used a pizza stone, which is equivalent to the deck oven method still used by HRI at its original location (the other locations have gone to disks and conveyor ovens). However, in my case, I used a 24-hour cold fermentation, which no doubt allowed for more sugar extraction. I described my efforts at the original HRI thread at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6009.msg51985.html#msg51985 (see Replies 26-29). In my effort, I was trying to replicate the methods used at the original HRI location.

If, in your case, the bottom browned before the top crust did, causing you concern that the pizza would burn, then that suggests a couple of possible solutions: using either a longer bake at lower oven temperature or else moving the pizza off of the stone to a higher oven rack position to get more top heat to help brown the top crust. I do the latter all the time in my oven, even if the instructions I am following do not call for doing so. Going to a longer fermentation should also be a solution. However, because of the high amount of yeast in the dough, it may be better to cold ferment the dough rather than ferment it at room temperature. Otherwise, you may find that the dough blows, or overferments, before the sugar levels in the dough have meaningfully increased. Of course, one way to mitigate that effect would be to just use less yeast. However, when I did my research on the HRI pizza, achieving a "yeasty" flavor in the crust was something that was considered an important part of the authentic HRI pizza experience.

Peter

[LPcreation]

Thanks Peter, I'll try your suggestions.

[Pete-zza]

Thanks Peter, I'll try your suggestions.

LPcreation,

I hope you will report back with your results.

Peter

[zitomj]

I used to have a pizza place in the Chicago area and I bought my cheese from the same supplier as HRI. Their salesman told me it was equal parts of red blue and green cheese which I also bought and never paid attention to what it was other then mozzarella but I think it might have been skim, 2% and whole milk mozzarella. This is the company that supplied them back then

Battaglia Distributing
2500 S Ashland Ave
Chicago, IL , 60608-5321 
Phone: 312-738-1111
FAX: 312-738-4030

[loowaters]

I used to have a pizza place in the Chicago area and I bought my cheese from the same supplier as HRI. Their salesman told me it was equal parts of red blue and green cheese which I also bought and never paid attention to what it was other then mozzarella but I think it might have been skim, 2% and whole milk mozzarella. This is the company that supplied them back then

Battaglia Distributing
2500 S Ashland Ave
Chicago, IL , 60608-5321 
Phone: 312-738-1111
FAX: 312-738-4030

This is a good piece of info.  I know a guy (and play golf with him, too) that owns a pizza place in Cedar Rapids that uses Battaglia as his supplier.  I'll be seeing him in a couple weeks again and I'll ask about Battaglia's cheese options.  Thanks.

[BTB]

I thought I would give a try at making an HRI pizza along the lines that Loo indicated in the start of this thread.  The results were both good and bad.  The good was that the pizza tasted great.  The bad was that it lacked a lot of the characteristics of an HRI pizza that I previously knew.  I thought I followed the instructions well, but something just didn't come out right, so I thought I'd describe what I did here and see if I can learn more about doing this better.
 
Since I got use to using bakers percentages, I used those in Peter's Reply #23 above for a 14" pizza, which were as follows:
 
Flour (100%):  285.79 g  |  10.08 oz | 0.63 lbs
Water (42%):  120.03 g  |  4.23 oz | 0.26 lbs
ADY (1.75%):  5 g | 0.18 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.32 tsp | 0.44 tbsp
Salt (1.75%):  5 g | 0.18 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.9 tsp | 0.3 tbsp
Corn Oil (24%):  68.59 g | 2.42 oz | 0.15 lbs | 5.08 tbsp | 0.32 cups
Total (169.5%): 484.42 g | 17.09 oz | 1.07 lbs | TF = 0.111
 
I began by dissolving salt in water warmed to 110 degrees, then added the ADY and let it bloom for 5-8 minutes, then added half the flour (sifted) and mixed with a wooden spoon and hand.  After mixing for a number of minutes, I added the oil and about half of the remaining flour and kneaded some more for a few minutes.  Then added the remaining flour and kneaded yet some more.  The dough was very scrappy and crumbly., so much so that I had to add an additional teaspoon of water . . . and another . . . and another . . . probably about 6 or 7 teaspoons more in total.  It was a pretty stiff dough and except for the amount of oil, it seemed similar to cracker crust dough. 
 
I placed the formed dough ball in a bowl, covered with a kitchen towel and put it in a warm oven (about 80 degrees) for a couple of hours.  I could then see some action of the yeast in little bursting buds on the exterior of the dough ball, but the ball didn't seem to be expanding much.  Since I wasn't going to use the dough until the following evening, I put it into a ziplock bag and into the refrigerator (as is my usual practice on most kinds of pizzas).  In the morning after reading one of the threads on cracker crust methods, some had suggested that cracker crust dough balls don't do well cooling in the refrigerator, so I took the ziplocked dough ball out of the refrigerator and left it on the counter for about 10 hours, even tho this technically wasn't a cracker crust.
 
Later that evening, I put the dough ball, which hardly rose at all, in a covered bowl and back in a warm oven for a short while in preparation for rolling out the dough (anticpating that this was going to be hard to roll out).  As was suggested in another thread, warm dough, especially when stiff, is easier to roll out when warm.  But even when a little warm, this dough was still pretty difficult to roll out.  I rolled out the dough as best I could, then rolled up the skin onto my rolling pin, then rolled it off onto my slightly oiled 14" dark, anodized nonperforated cutter pan.  The dough was very crumbly and scrappy and I had to patch up the skin a lot (as you can see from the picture below).
 
I started to attempt to create a small rim on the skin (like exists on HRI pizzas), but it was a little difficult, so I just left it as is.  I debated whether to par bake the skin, but did not.  I simply topped the skin with around 8 to 10 oz. of non-drained 6 in 1 sauce (with a mix of Penzeys pizza spices, minced garlic, white pepper, sea salt, ginger, and a dash of honey).  Then I put on some raw sweet Italian sausage that I got from my favorite Italian sausage shop (99% of all Chicago pizzerias put their sausage on their pizzas raw without pre-cooking).  I then added about 2 oz. of cut-up provolone cheese and about 6 oz. of shredded low moisture part skim mozzarella, and about 2 or 3 oz. of some good fresh mozzarella that I had left in the refrigerator.

[BTB]

I then preheated the oven to 450 degrees -- a little less than Loo's suggestion -- to cook a little longer, which helps with cooking the sausage better.  I know N.Y. and other style pizzas cook at a much, much higher temperature, but not Chicago thin or pan pizzas normally.  I cooked this pizza on the second to the bottom rack for about 18 to 19 minutes, turning 180 degrees halfway through that time.
 
The pizza, which turned out very good and tasty, had a much thinner crust than I anticipated.  But it was still a pretty crispy and delicious pizza.

[BTB]

I wondered afterwards why the dough ball didn't expand or rise very much.  I couldn't punch it down like Loo suggested because it never expanded to the point where I could do that.  My ADY was good with the expiration date about 7 or 8 months hence and I used another one of packets in the same strip a couple of weeks earlier and the yeast worked well.  In reading several other postings, I noticed Tom Lehmann's pizzamaking advice in one of them " . .  don't mix the yeast with the salt  . . . This is bad for the yeast as it will have an inhibiting affect on the yeast in the concentrated solution."  Oh well, I had mixed the yeast in the water with the dissolved salt, so I will probably refrain from doing that the next time I try this formulation.  Also I think I will increase the hydration as well as the TF (Thickness Factor) to .125 or more (I noticed afterwards Loos thought to do so).  While I don't think so, I do wonder if sifting the flour had any affect.

The evening after I made this pizza, my adult son came over and saw the leftover pizza (pictured below) in a bag in the refrigerator and he then ate a piece.  He commented that he thought it had a hint of HRI flavor in it and loved the taste.  He liked it so much that he took the remaining pizza home with him to snack on later.  Now there's nothing left for me to snack on.