Felice Anno Nuovo! Pizza Sfincione to greet the new year.

[norma427]

My next attempt for this kind of pizza was made at home this evening.  This dough was also sticky, but it came around after doing more stretch and folds than my last attempt. I just dumped the dough into the deep-dish pan and then spread it around with my fingers.  I used 85% Durum flour and 15% Caputo flour for this attempt. My home oven can only go a little over 500 degrees F, so I baked this pie in the pan on the stone. This pie was also leavened with milk kefir, but it took way over 24 hrs.for it to ferment, at room temperature. I hadn’t planned on this dough taking so long to ferment.

The dressing were simple on this pizza. I used fresh rosemary, sea salt, and grape tomatoes.

Pictures below

Norma

[norma427]

rest of pictures

Norma

[norma427]

I don't know why some of my pictures came out blurry, but I took 2 more pictures of a slice, after it cooled down.  The slice tastes good cold.

Norma

[Jose L. Piedra]

Looks like the interior blossomed nicely. What were its eating characteristics? (lightness, crispiness or softness, taste, etc.).

JLP

[norma427]

Jose,

The eating characteristics of this attempt were the interior was soft and light.  The bottom was crisp.  The taste of the crust was excellent, but I wasn’t satisfied with this last experiment because there wasn’t enough oven spring or as many irregular holes in the crumb (which makes this kind of pie lighter).  Since this last attempt wasn’t baked at higher bake temperatures, it makes me wonder if my home oven doesn’t get high enough to bake this kind of pizza right, or if my techniques aren’t right.  I didn’t change that much in this current formula. This dough felt elastic and did rise well after a long room temperature ferment. The dough could even windowpane while in the pan. I don’t know if that makes a difference or not, how well this dough was mixed and handled. I know even one variable can change any pizza, but I did have better results at market, both times with baking at a higher temperature on the stone and in a pan.  This has me puzzled if I ever will be able to bake a decent pizza at home at my limited bake temperatures. The pie did taste good cold, even the next day. This pie took 14 minutes to bake. If anyone is interested I will post the formula I used.

Norma

[Jackie Tran]

This dough felt elastic and did rise well after a long room temperature ferment. The dough could even windowpane while in the pan. I don’t know if that makes a difference or not, how well this dough was mixed and handled. I know even one variable can change any pizza, but I did have better results at market, both times with baking at a higher temperature on the stone and in a pan.  This has me puzzled if I ever will be able to bake a decent pizza at home at my limited bake temperatures. The pie did taste good cold, even the next day. This pie took 14 minutes to bake. If anyone is interested I will post the formula I used.

Norma

Norma, I think you are doing a great job and making good progress.  I do empathize with your fustrations with experimentation in the home setting.  It often doesn't go my way and it's not due to lack of desire, willingness, or effort.  I'm left dumbfounded at my failures sometimes and also wonder if it's just my lack of skill or lack of specialize equipment. 

I think great products, including this particular pie, can be made in the home setting but it can also be much more challenging.   I agree that you may need a higher heat initially to boost the oven spring as well.  I have experimented with superheating the stone near the heat source and moving it away prior to loading your panned dough.  Or even loading the pan on a superhot stone with the top burner going for just the first 2-3 minutes of the bake to get that spring and then moving the pan away from the heat source with the temps dialed down for the remainder of the bake.  I don't know if these tricks do make a difference at this point but I try anyway. 

For me, not having the proper equipment forces me to be more aware of what I'm doing and why and therefore forces me to improve my techniques and understanding.  For this disability I am thankful and can really appreciate even more great products from home settings knowing the tremendous amount of effort and skill involved.

Keep it up Norma, I believe you WILL achieve your goals. 

Chau

[Jose L. Piedra]

If anyone is interested I will post the formula I used.

I'd be very interested.

JLP

[norma427]

Norma, I think you are doing a great job and making good progress.  I do empathize with your fustrations with experimentation in the home setting.  It often doesn't go my way and it's not due to lack of desire, willingness, or effort.  I'm left dumbfounded at my failures sometimes and also wonder if it's just my lack of skill or lack of specialize equipment. 

I think great products, including this particular pie, can be made in the home setting but it can also be much more challenging.   I agree that you may need a higher heat initially to boost the oven spring as well.  I have experimented with superheating the stone near the heat source and moving it away prior to loading your panned dough.  Or even loading the pan on a superhot stone with the top burner going for just the first 2-3 minutes of the bake to get that spring and then moving the pan away from the heat source with the temps dialed down for the remainder of the bake.  I don't know if these tricks do make a difference at this point but I try anyway. 

For me, not having the proper equipment forces me to be more aware of what I'm doing and why and therefore forces me to improve my techniques and understanding.  For this disability I am thankful and can really appreciate even more great products from home settings knowing the tremendous amount of effort and skill involved.

Keep it up Norma, I believe you WILL achieve your goals. 

Chau

Chau,

Thanks for your encouragement.    I am a lot like you, that I do enjoy experimenting and then seeing the results, but sometimes, the results are confusing, and then I don’t know what plan of attack to try next.  This dough looked the same as my dough at market, but I sure didn’t know what was going on inside the dough, or if the lower bake temperatures were the difference in this attempt.

I also believe this kind of pizza can be made in a home oven, but haven’t found the right combination of dough or either another kind of pan to try.  This kind of dough and pizza are harder to understand, in my opinion, than any other doughs I have tried.  The combination of high hydration and oil can make this dough tough to understand.  My first pizza at market didn’t use any oil and it was the lightest pie made. The added oil does contribute to a soft crumb though.  That was my second attempt at market.

Thanks for giving me ideas about tricks to try.  I will take your advise, when I do the next attempt at home.  I am still going over what I could have done wrong.  I had watched many videos of people baking this type of pie in home ovens, and it looked like they were successful, but the crumb didn’t look as irregular as the pizzerias. 

I know you have done many experiments to find out what works best and are very successful in trying out all your ideas for pizzas or breads.  I commend you for taking the time to learn and to help others on their journey to learn. 

Norma

[norma427]

I'd be very interested.

JLP

Jose,

This is the formula I used.  If you need to know to know anything else I did to this dough, let me know.

Norma

[Jose L. Piedra]

Norma: I was cruising through the Molino sul Clitunno site at http://www.molinosulclitunno.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=35&Itemid=55

I note that their 00 Pizza Classic flour, which the blurb says is recommended for pizza in teglia, has a protein rating of 13-14.5%. The 00 SR Pizza, which they recommend for pizza alla pala (i.e. the same style baked directly on a stone) has an even higher protein rating. Do you think using a flour high in protein would help get the results you want?

JLP

[norma427]

Norma: I was cruising through the Molino sul Clitunno site at http://www.molinosulclitunno.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=35&Itemid=55

I note that their 00 Pizza Classic flour, which the blurb says is recommended for pizza in teglia, has a protein rating of 13-14.5%. The 00 SR Pizza, which they recommend for pizza alla pala (i.e. the same style baked directly on a stone) has an even higher protein rating. Do you think using a flour high in protein would help get the results you want?

JLP

Jose,

Thanks for referencing the link from Molino sul Clitunno. 

I am not sure what kind of flour will give the best results in trying to make this kind of pizza.  I have seen people that have used Caputo Red and Blue in combination and have gotten great results. 

In my opinion we could try experiments on combining higher and lower protein flours to see if the desired results could be achieved, but I don’t know what my next attempt will include at this point. 

I am still trying to figure out how to bake this kind of pizza in temperature and whether to bake it on a stone or in a pan.  Also what oil percent to try, is confusing me.

Let me know if you have any ideas for me to try.

Norma

[norma427]

These are 3 experimental pizzas I made that were Sicilian style, last evening.  All three used the poolish from my preferment Lehmann dough.  They were all high hydration doughs and had varying amounts of bulk room temperature and cold temperature ferments.  Each dough had different flours added.

I did post the other pictures at Reply 716 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9908.msg123330.html#msg123330

These pictures were taken this morning after the slices were cold.  I will take these slices, (plus the rest of the slices) along with some of Les’s sauce and other foods to my great-granddaughter’s first birthday today.

Pictures below,

Norma

[Jose L. Piedra]

Norma,

Your latest look very much like the ones Bakerboy sells commercially at Black Lab Bakeries, pictures of which you posted in this thread at reply 105 over a year ago. Did they eat as well as they photographed? You mentioned that they were made according to different formulas; although they all look similar, did some eat differently from the others?

JLP

[norma427]

Norma,

Your latest look very much like the ones Bakerboy sells commercially at Black Lab Bakeries, pictures of which you posted in this thread at reply 105 over a year ago. Did they eat as well as they photographed? You mentioned that they were made according to different formulas; although they all look similar, did some eat differently from the others?

JLP

Jose,

I don’t know if you saw my post in the preferment Lehmann dough thread or not, but the first pizza pictured was the lightest pizza made.  At reply 721 I told about the three experiments and some of the things I learned from them. http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9908.msg123366.html#msg123366

These were all good pizzas, but still not what I am trying to make.  The crust on the first pizza was light and there was a good taste in the crust. All three pizzas used a poolish. I don’t know what would have happened if I would have made these three attempts thinner.  I think I would have gotten more oven spring, but don’t know. 

All three did eat differently.  These really aren’t like Bakerboy’s, that I had tried awhile ago.  When I tried Bakerboy’s although they did have good oven spring they were drier. 

I only did these experiments because I had leftover poolish from market last week.  I baked all three pizzas on an upside down steel pan in my home oven.

Norma

[norma427]

I made this dough yesterday and use the formula posted below.  I used the slowly mixing in of the flour over stages to strengthen the dough.  I could see by adding the flour slowly how much better the gluten formed.  The dough was sticky, but became less sticky after folding it over on itself different times. The pictures of the dough were taken yesterday.  Now it is cold fermenting. This dough did feel strong this morning.  It did rise about three times its initial size until lunch today.  Until this afternoon the dough had hit the lid on the container.  I am going to try and bake this dough tomorrow and see if it get anything like a Pizzarium pizza.  If it doesn’t I will post the pictures under this thread.  If this dough behaves it will get some Prosciutto Di Parma placed on it. 

I’ve had enough problems trying to make a pizza something like Pizzarium.  That is why I am posting under this thread, until I see the results tomorrow.

I will see if the sun sets on this dough like the last picture.

Pictures and formula below

Norma

[norma427]

Norma

[norma427]

This post is just to link the pizza and pictures I made with the abovementioned formula and dough at Reply 295 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9989.msg124520.html#msg124520

At least this pizza did get the Prosciutto Di Parma placed on it.    Some days there are good results and some days not when it comes to pizza making.

Norma

[Jose L. Piedra]

A Palermitan fellow had the excellent idea of filming his elderly parents making sfincione at their home according to traditional methods and uploading the video to Youtube so the whole world could see it. The video is priceless as a document of social history and highly instructive for anyone interested in recovering Italian pizza-making traditions. Of particular interest is that they place the cheese underneath the sauce (in America, L & B Spumoni Gardens does the same with their well-known Sicilians, except they slice the cheese instead of cube-cutting it), and also that they bake the pies directly on the deck of their WFO instead of panning it.

Check it out:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxxxhOmOd7U" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxxxhOmOd7U</a>

JLP

[norma427]

A Palermitan fellow had the excellent idea of filming his elderly parents making sfincione at their home according to traditional methods and uploading the video to Youtube so the whole world could see it. The video is priceless as a document of social history and highly instructive for anyone interested in recovering Italian pizza-making traditions. Of particular interest is that they place the cheese underneath the sauce (in America, L & B Spumoni Gardens does the same with their well-known Sicilians, except they slice the cheese instead of cube-cutting it), and also that they bake the pies directly on the deck of their WFO instead of panning it.

Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxxxhOmOd7U

JLP

Jose,

Thanks so much for putting the sfincione video under my thread.    I really loved watching the video.  I also think the video is priceless in documentation of their social history.  I was also interested in seeing how they had a WFO in their home. 

Norma

[Jose L. Piedra]

Here is some video of the American descendant of this sfincione:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kO0Q0pywLQ" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kO0Q0pywLQ</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ocs79_IbJ-g" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ocs79_IbJ-g</a>

They don't seem to be all that concerned about getting a highly open crumb. Indeed, they probably don't want one; L&B uses a sheeter, while Rosalia's pan-rises their dough. For all I know, there may be some practical advantage to having a tighter, more uniform crumb when there's huge slabs of mozz melting right on top of it.

Neither of their doughs looks all that heavily hydrated. It's a safe bet they're made with normal American flour and not Italian grades, or Semolina.

They dust the top with hard cheese (Pecorino) but not breadcrumbs, and nor do they use onions in the sauce. L&B will put anchovies on their pies as an extra topping.

The bake times of 15 minutes for L&B (whose cornicones and bottoms seem to by typically quite dark, often almost burnt) and 15-20 minutes for Rosalia would seem to correspond to a baking temp of ca. 500 and 450, respectively. If and when I get around to trying it, I'll use 450 and see how it goes.

JLP