Home Run Inn Success and Final Formulation

[loowaters]

I have two 15" dark anodized disks from American Metalcraft.

Loo

[parallei]

Here's a photo of my 2nd attempt at the HRI pie.  These things are great!  I'm still not pleased with the lack of browning on the bottom.  I'm using a dark perforated anodized disk and have tried it both on the stone and on the rack at 475F.  Any suggestions? 

Thanks...

[Pete-zza]

Paul,

Have you been fermenting the dough at room temperature and, if so, for how long and at roughly what room temperature? Apparently Loo has been getting decent bottom crust browning with his dark anodized disks so there may be a reason why you haven't been getting the desired degree of bottom crust browning. Maybe Loo has an opinion or advice on this.

Peter

[parallei]

Pete:

I've been doing a room temp fermintation.  That would be about 65-68F this time of year in my kitchen, and I seem to get a fairly strong rise. I let it go two hours,  punch down, and two hours more.  Maybe I need to buy that sweet 14-inch anodized pan I saw in KA's latest catalog.  That's what I'm thinking.....

Paul

[Pete-zza]

Paul,

Are you thinking of an unperforated dark anodized pan so that you can use some oil in it to get more of a "fried" effect on the bottom of the crust?

Another possibility to get more bottom crust coloration is to use some honey in the dough. It can take several hours for the enzymes in the flour to extract enough natural sugars to feed the yeast and also to produce sufficient residual sugars to contribute to crust coloration. The yeast in the recipe you have been using is 1.75%. That is a lot of yeast, even for a room temperature fermented dough and it is possible that the yeast is gobbling up too much of the natural sugars, leaving too little residual sugars to get better bottom crust browning. I have used honey to get the added crust color, not only for its natural color but because of simple sugars it includes. You might try about 3% by weight of flour. It depends on your sugar sensitivity, but at 3% honey you might not detect the sweetness it contributes on the palate. I have used 5% honey and have not found it to be objectionable.

Peter

[scott123]

Paul, if you haven't tried the bottom shelf, try it. If you've tried bottom shelf and it didn't give you the browning you wanted, try bottom shelf with the door ajar.  With the door slightly open the heat won't collect in the headspace and the bottom element will have a tendency to stay on- in essence broiling the pizza from beneath.  Because the heat won't collect, the top of the pie will cook very slowly- possibly too slowly.  The first time you attempt this, maybe go half oven ajar, half closed- preferably the first half ajar as bottom heat is better for oven spring.

[parallei]

Peter-

Yes, exactly, I was thinking of the "fried" effect it the pan.  I think I'll give the honey a try first, I always use a bit in my NY style pies. However, my birthday is coming up and a fellow could always use another pizza pan!  I wonder why I can't get the color Loo got with Loo's recipe?  Thanks for the reminder on the honey.

Scott-

I'm as low as I can go in my Viking oven, with the disk on the stone at 475F.  I preheat for an hour minimum.  I'll try your tip with the door.  Maybe I'll also try directly on the stone as WestCountry suggested.

Thanks to both of you...   

[scott123]

Scott-

I'm as low as I can go in my Viking oven, with the disk on the stone at 475F.  I preheat for an hour minimum.  I'll try your tip with the door.  Maybe I'll also try directly on the stone as WestCountry suggested.

Paul, try bottom shelf, no stone.  If the stone is thin, it will only pass a certain amount of heat to the disk and then it will act like an insulator.  If the stone is thick, it might be made from a poorly conductive material and might not sufficiently preheat in that 1 hour minimum time frame. Try once without any stone whatsoever. Oh, and no convection. You want the convective heat going straight up from the element to the disk, not swirling around the oven.

[firefly765]

Loo,

Thanks for the great recipe. I've done it twice now with awesome results. I tweeked it a little as I have no mixer (just a food processor). I copied & pasted your recipe then changed to my way of doing things. Here is my version:
I have a couple issues which I'll address after the recipe.

Flour (100%): 204.22 g  |  7.2 oz | 0.45 lbs
Water (42%): 85.77 g  |  3.03 oz | 0.19 lbs
ADY (1.75%): 3.57 g | 0.13 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.95 tsp | 0.32 tbsp
Salt (1.75%):3.57 g | 0.13 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.64 tsp | 0.21 tbsp 
Sugar (1%): 2.04 g | 0.07 oz | 0 lbs | 0.51 tsp | 0.17 tbsp
Oil:  (20%): 40.84 g | 1.44 oz | 0.09 lbs | 9.08 tsp | 3.03 tbsp 
Total: 340.03 g | 11.99 oz | 0.75 lbs | TF = 0.10605
12” diameter  .105 thickness factor
Begin by dissolving salt & sugar 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 in food processor 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 until comes into a ball.  Add remaining flour and mix until combined.  If it seems a little scrappy, add water one teaspoon at a time until it comes together.  This will be a pretty stiff dough.

Place in bowl and cover with a tea towel then let rise in warm oven (light on is good enough for me) for two hours with a pan of hot water on the rack beneath to provide some humidity.  Punch down and let rise again for another two hours.  Remove from oven.

Preheat oven to 475*

Portion dough for same day use but try not to over handle.  Pat out to size then place on a pizza stone  Pinch up the edge to create a rim.  Top skin with 6 3/4 oz. sauce, preferred toppings and 10 oz. shredded low moisture part skim mozz.


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What i do after the 2nd rise is place in covered oiled bowl overnight in fridge. Remove from fridge for ~ 2 hrs. form shell on a floured counter w/o kneeding.
the dough is very fragile at this time. 
I'm not kneeding, would it help to kneed a couple minutes prior to forming into a shell?
 It's very tasty & flaky, almost like pastry, but not very elastic. If i were to pick it up & try to stretch it, my hand would go right through it.

Thanks for any help.

[Pete-zza]

I'm as low as I can go in my Viking oven, with the disk on the stone at 475F.

Paul,

I wasn't aware of the fact that you were using the disk on a stone. You might want to try scott123's recommendation before altering your dough formulation.

Peter

[Pete-zza]

Pat out to size then place on a pizza stone  Pinch up the edge to create a rim.  Top skin with 6 3/4 oz. sauce, preferred toppings and 10 oz. shredded low moisture part skim mozz.

firefly765,

As a point of clarification and to help Loo better respond to your questions, are you saying that you are placing the skin directly onto a preheated pizza stone and then forming a rim, dressing the pizza, and baking it?

Peter

[loowaters]

Firefly, a couple things to clarify.  First, like Peter asked, we need to know if you're placing your skin onto a stone then making a rim.  That would mean removal from the oven and a probably a significant heat loss.  Also, you've placed a disk on to the stone?  Honestly, if you're placing the disk on to the stone in the oven you're going to get less than effective use of both.  Dark disk right on to, probably, the middle rack.  Dark disk too low will overcook the crust.  Or you can move it to a higher rack position to finish the top after several minutes into the cook.

You don't want to knead before forming the skin as it will probably make it a bit bucky for you.  With the high oil content of this dough it will seem like it's not going to stretch very well without ripping.  Pat it or roll it out to form the skin.  It's been discussed in a couple of the HRI threads that the frozen operation uses a hot dough press to form the skins.  I've found that pressing it out with our fingers and hands is good enough for home pizza making.

Do you have any pics?

Loo

[firefly765]

actually that's just part of my cut & paste from Loo's original recipe. I form the skin on a floured counter then slide it onto a stone via a peel w/ cornmeal.

firefly765,

As a point of clarification and to help Loo better respond to your questions, are you saying that you are placing the skin directly onto a preheated pizza stone and then forming a rim, dressing the pizza, and baking it?

Peter

[firefly765]

Loo,
That was someone else's qoute he was responding to. I'm cooking directly on a 13" pizza stone on a big green egg (I'm that guy again).
so my dough should be "fragile"?
I'll just be careful with it & take some pics next time. Maybe this weekend.

Is my prep method OK per your guy's opinions?

Firefly, a couple things to clarify.  First, like Peter asked, we need to know if you're placing your skin onto a stone then making a rim.  That would mean removal from the oven and a probably a significant heat loss.  Also, you've placed a disk on to the stone?  Honestly, if you're placing the disk on to the stone in the oven you're going to get less than effective use of both.  Dark disk right on to, probably, the middle rack.  Dark disk too low will overcook the crust.  Or you can move it to a higher rack position to finish the top after several minutes into the cook.

You don't want to knead before forming the skin as it will probably make it a bit bucky for you.  With the high oil content of this dough it will seem like it's not going to stretch very well without ripping.  Pat it or roll it out to form the skin.  It's been discussed in a couple of the HRI threads that the frozen operation uses a hot dough press to form the skins.  I've found that pressing it out with our fingers and hands is good enough for home pizza making.

Do you have any pics?

Loo

[loowaters]

You don't have a mixer and if you wanted to forego using the food processor, with this type of dough and it's high oil content, you do a hand knead you won't have to do it too long.  Probably 5-6 minutes would do depending on how aggressively you go at it. 

I really don't know how cooking in a Big Green Egg or Little Blue Egg (does that exist?) for that matter works so helping you on that front...well, I'm not able to give you anything. 

This is one of those pizzas where one of the toughest things to pin down was hit right away.  The sauce.  It's an Escalon product but it's a watered down, pretty thin, puree with salt and pepper.  Thin enough that I'll pour it in the center and pick up the disk and let the sauce run around on the skin to cover completely.  I use an immersion blender to puree 6 in 1's.  A hand shake of oregano on the sauce before topping and that's it.

I'm going to repeat something that I think is really weird about this type of pizza.  It's better after being reheated.   Big oven, toaster oven, either way,  just no microwave.  I dont' know if that's because HRI frozens are 90% cooked and we finish them in the oven or what, but to really get a great recreation of HRI's pizzas a next day reheat makes this pizza shine.  Strange.  The neapolitan guys will roll their eyes at that.

Loo

[Pete-zza]

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What i do after the 2nd rise is place in covered oiled bowl overnight in fridge. Remove from fridge for ~ 2 hrs. form shell on a floured counter w/o kneeding.
the dough is very fragile at this time. 
I'm not kneeding, would it help to kneed a couple minutes prior to forming into a shell?
 It's very tasty & flaky, almost like pastry, but not very elastic. If i were to pick it up & try to stretch it, my hand would go right through it.

firefly765,

Loo's recipe as posted at the start of this thread is intended to be used a fairly short period of time after the dough has been made. To this end, a lot of yeast, 1.75% ADY, is used. If you choose to place the dough in the refrigerator after the second rise, there is a high probability that the dough will overferment and become overly extensible and prone to tearing and thin spots. Re-kneading or reworking the dough will not be successful, as Loo noted. The dough simply wasn't designed for refrigeration. If you want to come up with a refrigerated version, you would have to significantly reduce the amount of yeast and possibly make other changes in the fermentation protocol. Whether you will get comparable results as the same-day version or whether you like the results as well are questions that you can only answer by trying a cold fermented version of Loo's recipe or a combination of room temperature fermentation and cold fermentation.

Peter

[firefly765]

Thanks for all the help. As far as the egg goes I don't need any help there. I've got that thing pretty dialed in.
As for my sauce, I'm not really trying to "clone" the HRI pizza. I am from Chicago, but I don't remember ever having eaten there. Maybe on my next visit. So, I wouldn't really know how to compare. I've never seen the 6 in 1's down here in S FlA. I'm Using Fratelli's (Sp?) canned pizza sauce. It's cheap ($1.49/can) and tastes really good to me. I'll probably try to tweek it with some fresh chopped tomatoes.

It's probably better reheated because of all that oil....good for the hangover!

You don't have a mixer and if you wanted to forego using the food processor, with this type of dough and it's high oil content, you do a hand knead you won't have to do it too long.  Probably 5-6 minutes would do depending on how aggressively you go at it. 

I really don't know how cooking in a Big Green Egg or Little Blue Egg (does that exist?) for that matter works so helping you on that front...well, I'm not able to give you anything. 

This is one of those pizzas where one of the toughest things to pin down was hit right away.  The sauce.  It's an Escalon product but it's a watered down, pretty thin, puree with salt and pepper.  Thin enough that I'll pour it in the center and pick up the disk and let the sauce run around on the skin to cover completely.  I use an immersion blender to puree 6 in 1's.  A hand shake of oregano on the sauce before topping and that's it.

I'm going to repeat something that I think is really weird about this type of pizza.  It's better after being reheated.   Big oven, toaster oven, either way,  just no microwave.  I dont' know if that's because HRI frozens are 90% cooked and we finish them in the oven or what, but to really get a great recreation of HRI's pizzas a next day reheat makes this pizza shine.  Strange.  The neapolitan guys will roll their eyes at that.

Loo

[firefly765]

OK my yeast must be overfermented. If i want an overnight should i cut back to 1% ADY?
or, just throw right onto the fridge with no room temp rise?
or, just make it the same day like LOO meant for it?

The reason i ask is because sometimes it's more convienent for me to prep the dough the day before and just be ready to go the next day with no extra mess & time.
I'm going to mix up another batch tonight & maybe a whole wheat the wife has been asking about. Look for me on the Specialty-Grain Pizzas forum next!!


Thanks,
AC

firefly765,

Loo's recipe as posted at the start of this thread is intended to be used a fairly short period of time after the dough has been made. To this end, a lot of yeast, 1.75% ADY, is used. If you choose to place the dough in the refrigerator after the second rise, there is a high probability that the dough will overferment and become overly extensible and prone to tearing and thin spots. Re-kneading or reworking the dough will not be successful, as Loo noted. The dough simply wasn't designed for refrigeration. If you want to come up with a refrigerated version, you would have to significantly reduce the amount of yeast and possibly make other changes in the fermentation protocol. Whether you will get comparable results as the same-day version or whether you like the results as well are questions that you can only answer by trying a cold fermented version of Loo's recipe or a combination of room temperature fermentation and cold fermentation.

Peter

[loowaters]

Either way will work for you.  Maybe cut the warm ferment time to one rise then into the fridge.  If you're giving it two rises then to the fridge overnite, cut in half.  It won't hurt.  Plenty of ways to tinker that won't affect results too much but will increase the life of the dough before use.

Loo

[parallei]

I'm almost there.  I tried Scott's suggestion and placed the disk on the lowest rack without the stone, cracked the door a bit, and no convection.  Additionally, I preheated for about 1 hr 15 min. to just below 475F and then cranked the temp up a bit once the pie was in the even to get the bottom element going again.  Much better results browning on the bottom, but still not as brown as I'd like it toward the center.  Next I'll try Peter's suggestion, with the addition of a bit of honey.  But I'll probably cut the yeast down to 3 or 4 % and let it go overnight.  Sorry for the blurred bottom shoot!