Ultra-Thin Pizza 1/16"..Any Ideas?

[norma427]

rest of pictures

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

I was researching the problem that you mentioned but I could not find anything to explain why the par-baked crust turned color as you showed in the video. We need a chemist to help us on this one.

How did the pizza using the par-baked crust taste? And what other observations did you have after sampling the pizza?

Peter

[norma427]

Peter,

Thanks for researching why that happened.  It really puzzled me when I took the par-bake skin out of the freezer and as soon as it was removed it started getting dark around the edges.  When it was altogether defrosted it then was all darker.  I do think we need a chemist to explain what happened.

The pizza was good.  I could only detect a faint taste of garlic in the crust and couldn’t taste any baking soda.  The rim was crisp, but I think I could have baked the pizza about another minute.  As could be seen in the picture the pizza slice did have some droop.  The bottom didn’t crack this time.  I never made a cracker-style crust, so I don’t know if this compares to one or not.  The whole crust wasn’t crispy though.  I ate four slices and was trying to taste the crust.  With the topping added, they contributed to the overall taste. It puzzled me again, when the crust turned the natural color after being in the oven. 

Norma

[norma427]

Peter,

I noticed this par-baked crust seemed to have more moisture when putting it on the peel and it also seemed to have more moisture when handling it in the video.  I just started researching what might have caused the skin to get dark, and also how quick the par-baked skin wanted to stick to the peel. I just read this patent over quickly and it says moisture has to be between ranges.  I wonder by adding all the moisture I did today in the microwave if too much moisture was in this par-baked skin. I wasn’t on the phone that long, and was also surprised the par-baked shell wanted to stick to the peel.  I am just guessing and sure don’t know what happened..  Maybe I also left the par-baked crust on the kitchen table too long until I froze it.

http://www.patentvest.com/console/reports/docs/grant/06365210.html

Norma

[norma427]

I asked Tom Lehmann under my other thread at PMQTT, if he has any ideas about why my par-baked skin turned darker when I removed it from the freezer.  I also let him know how this experiment is going.

http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9046&p=62398#p62398

Norma

[norma427]

Tom Lehmann answered my question.  If anyone is interested in how he explained what happened when the par-baked skin turned darker here is the link.

http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9046&p=62402#p62401

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

Last night, after my last post, and after a few hours of research of the chemical properties and possible interactions of baking soda and garlic powder with each other and with other ingredients in the dough, I could not find anything to suggest that those ingredients were responsible for the darkening of the clone par-baked crust that you experienced. For example, I wondered whether the lack of an acid to interact with the baking soda affected its performance in some way and created a new problem, particularly since you did not use a high oven temperature that is common for baking baking soda pizza doughs. However, I doublechecked the Ultra-Thin ingredients list to see if I missed an acid ingredient, which I did not, and I had also found several other pizza dough recipes using baking soda but without any added acid, including one that also had garlic powder. I also wondered whether exposure of the clone par-baked crust to a high outdoor temperature was responsible for the browning in some respect. But the thing that puzzled me the most was why the real Ultra-Thin par-crust was not similarly affected, given that it included the same ingredients as your clone par-baked crust.

The above analysis finally led me to an explanation that is similar to Tom's. Because it was late and I was mentally tired from all the technical reading, I decided to wait until this morning to present my analysis to you and to suggest some possible experiments to lead us to an answer to the darkening problem you encountered. I theorized that because real Ultra-Thin par-baked crusts are immediately flash frozen at very low temperatures and your crust was not, it was possible that you ended up with more surface moisture that crystallized slowly as the crust froze and that it was the conversion of the ice crystals to water when subjected to the outdoor temperature and its migration and absorption back into the crust that created the darkened appearance. The fact that the par-baked crust returned to its normal color after you dressed and baked it pointed to the freezing/defrosting of the par-baked crust as the most likely cause. That might have also explained why the finished crust of the baked pizza was not particularly crispy and why the bottom of the crust was not as dark as one might have expected. I believe that you are correct that a longer bake might have dried out the crust some more by reducing its moisture content. What I did not know until I read your post at the PMQTT this morning is that you triple wrapped the clone par-baked crust with plastic wrap and let it sit for two hours before you put it into the freezer. Although not conclusive, that would have been a clue that would have dovetailed with my analysis because of the condensation of moisture between the cooling crust and the plastic wrap. But if Tom is right, it is good to see that maybe we can safely rule out the baking soda and/or garlic powder as the culprits.

Another thing I did not know until I read your PMQTT post this morning is that you put the cutter pan assembly with the dough skin between the pans on a pizza stone to par-bake the crust. I mention this only because that approach can lead to a different weight loss during the par-bake. I am not sure how Ultra-Thin bakes its crusts--on a stone surface or in a conveyor. I would have thought a conveyor if the skins are encapsulated during the par-bake.

I was also going to suggest that you post your results at the PMQTT just to be on the safe side, but I see than "Norma the Energizer Bunny" was up early this morning doing exactly that .

Do you have any idea as to how you would like to proceed at this point? I assume that you will try to fix your proofing box. Maybe you can repeat your last experiment but let the par-bake crust cool down before wrapping with plastic wrap and freezing. If you would like to modify the dough formulation based on what you experienced with the last clone crust, let me know.

Peter

[norma427]

Peter,

I had to chuckle this morning after I read Tom Lehmann’s post.  I thought how many times do I make things more difficult for myself, when I don’t need to.  I should have also thought about having the par-baked skin I made yesterday in the triple plastic wrap when taking it out of the freezer into the hot weather. I just removed the plastic wrap, right before I took the video. The real Ultra-Thin par-baked skins are only in a thin opaque plastic bag and are not separated by many waxed papers.  Maybe only about 5 waxed papers in the whole box.  The skins are hard to take apart when frozen.  So they didn’t have anything over them, when I took them out of the freezer.

I also read for about an hour last night and tried to figure out what was going on with the darkening of the skin. I sure can’t understand all that is written and let it all sink in my brain. This whole project can get very technical in all the reading and applying it to the finished product. I am sorry you had to go though all that reading, studying and getting mental fatigue. At least you came to some kind of analysis.  I thought this morning since Tom Lehmann has studied par-baking in depth, maybe he would have an answer for what happened.

I didn’t bake on the pizza stone. The skin was baked in the middle rack The stone was on the bottom rack. I think when I was writing that this morning, I was still tired, and I was only drinking coffee to be able to wake up.  I made a mistake in posting that.  I did post about the about the triple wrapped par-baked skin at Reply #275 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,11044.msg102261.html#msg102261

If Tom is right, I can compare in another attempt if the same thing happens.  Maybe I only would have needed to remove the plastic wrap, while it was still in the freezer and kept us both from having to think about this. I did notice though, after the par-baked skin sat on the table the top crust did become more moist.  It was drier when it first came out of the oven.  I did let the par-baked skin cool down before I wrapped it in plastic.

I do want to get another dimmer switch for my proofer box project sometime this week and see if that fixes whatever is wrong.  I don’t want to change the formula at this point, unless there is something you think should be changed.   Do you have any ideas on what I could do differently in relation to the whole process,  baking or otherwise, and if  you think I did anything wrong in the process for this first attempt at the new formula you set-forth?

Norma

[Pete-zza]

 Do you have any ideas on what I could do differently in relation to the whole process,  baking or otherwise, and if  you think I did anything wrong in the process for this first attempt at the new formula you set-forth?

Norma,

It looks like you did everything correctly under the circumstances (e.g., not using a proofing box as intended), although I might have been inclined to remove the pizza stone from the oven when par-baking the skin between the two cutter pans. That might mean having to monitor the temperatures differently to compensate for the lack of the heated stone and its effect on the cutter pan assembly and skin.

Another thought I had is to use a slightly larger skin than 13" as you cut it out of the larger skin, to compensate for the fact that it is likely to shrink back a bit. Ideally, you would want the post-shrink skin to be 13" as closely as possible. Of course, you also want to have the weight of the skin at 7.70 ounces.

In my research, I noted that the proof times of pizza doughs using baking soda are quite short, usually less than an hour and often not much more than 15 minutes. You were also using yeast but in such a small amount as to not play a major role in the fermentation process. It may well turn out that you won't need a long proof time, either in bulk or for the skin.

I asked about possible dough formulation changes only because you mentioned that you could detect the garlic powder whereas you did not detect it in the Ultra-Thin par-baked crusts. It would be simple enough to modify the dough formulation to use less garlic powder even though that might reduce its softening effect on the dough.

Maybe you indicated this before but did you do a side-by-side taste test of your clone par-baked crust and one of the Ultra-Thin par-baked crusts and, if so, did they taste differently (apart from the garlic powder flavor) and, if so, in what respects?

Peter

[norma427]

Peter,

Thanks for your ideas about what to change for the next attempt.  I will remove the baking stone and hopefully have my proofing box fixed.  I will cut the skin a little larger in my next attempt, too.  That is good to know that I probably won’t need a long bulk ferment or long second proof if that is needed.  I might have to try just proofing the dough ball and not the second proof of the skin, like I did yesterday. 

My thinking on the garlic powder is just to leave it the way it is now.  It sure wasn’t a noticeable taste and I really had to think about it to even taste the garlic at all. 

In my opinion the real Ultra-Thin and the clone that I tasted yesterday, didn’t taste that much different.  The crust still was bland in my opinion.  The only difference I could detect was the Ultra-Thin par-baked crust that was made at market was crisper.  Maybe after this experiment is over, I will find the par-baked crust really isn’t great, like I thought it was.  Like I mentioned before, I wasn’t making pizza when I had the real Ultra-Thin pizza in NY.  Maybe my tastes have changed.  I had never tasted a real thin pizza before that time.  I think if the crust can get crisper, without being crackery tasting, I would enjoyed it more. When Steve and I tasted a reheated slice the bottom was crispy last week.  Steve commented he doesn’t really like thin crusts, but it was different. I had some customers buy some of the Ultra-Thin crust pizzas and they seemed to like them. Even my local pizzerias taste different to me now and the ones I thought I really liked, I don’t even want to eat anymore. Horrors of all horrors if we go all though this and find it isn’t up to our standards.    In my short pizza making time I have found I really love NY style pizza, Foccacia, Sicilian, and Deep Dish Stuffed Crusts.  They are my main favorites at this moment. 

Of all the pizzas you have made and tried, do you also have favorites that you prefer?

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

I think repeating the last dough formulation makes a lot of sense. One of the things I would like to learn is whether the hydration of the dough is correct. You will recall that one of my early Ultra-Thin clone dough formulations called for a hydration of around 38%. That hydration value might lend itself to a crispier crust. However, if you are able to get a crispy crust with a hydration of around 41%, as by using a longer bake next time, then we may not have to worry about the hydration part of the dough formulation. It still isn't clear what flour blend Ultra-Thin is using, and why the blend includes whole wheat flour. It could be used to increase the protein content of the blend, which would seem somewhat unlikely if the white flour is a high-gluten flour, but it might also be used to add more flavor and color to the finished crust or to create a certain texture for the finished crust. From the photos of the Ultra-Thin crusts you have posted and the way you described the crust flavor, it doesn't look like there would be a lot of whole wheat flour in the blend.

With respect to the proof times, you may have to play around with those times. A lot of the recipes I saw with baking soda use a fair amount of it. I did not try to calculate the baker's percents but they may have been on the high side.

You asked me about my favorite pizzas. I am frequently asked that question. However, I have made so many different types of pizzas, with many of them in several different forms and variations (e.g., the Lehmann NY style and the Papa John's clones), that it is hard for me to pick just one or even a few as the best. However, I especially liked the pizzas made with doughs using natural starters/preferments and those using commercially leavened preferments. I also liked the pizzas made with doughs fermented for very long times, and I have enjoyed many of the pizzas that I tried to reverse engineer and clone because of their uniqueness and diversity. I don't believe that I have ever tried to perfect any single type or style or version of pizza to the point of becoming attached to it, nor do I expect that to happen anytime soon. I am always looking forward to the next pizza on my dance card and what I can learn from it. It is that mindset that led me to get involved with the Ultra-Thin clone project to begin with and also the Mack's clone project. I think you will agree that we have both learned a lot from those projects.

Peter

[norma427]

Peter,

I also think staying with the same formula is good, until we see if this formula can produce a crisper crust. Since I have seen the skins are something  like the real Ultra-Thin skins,   I think you set-forth a good formula. 

The proofing times did seem to work out, but more experimentation  will be needed to see how much these skins need. 

Thanks for telling me you don’t really have a favorite type of pizza and are always looking forward to trying the next kind of pizza. I haven’t even tried a WFO pizza or many others.  I guess my world was limited to basically NY style until I started looking at this forum.  I couldn’t believe all the kinds of pizzas different forum members made.  For a side note, when I first decided to open and pizza stand and before I became a lurker or knew about this forum, I thought about putting on my sign at market, that I sold NY style Neapolitan pizza.  That shows how much I knew about pizza.  I guess many things in my life are limited, when I look at the whole world and even pizza.

I had to Google dance card to see what it meant.  I heard of it before and thought it had something to do with dancing in older times, but see they have a new verison for the meaning, also. I also learned something from reading about that.

I agree we both have learned a lot from this thread and the Mack’s NJ Boardwalk thread. With each attempt, studying or trying new ideas, something is learned.  I need to make another dough for the Mack’s project, but the cheese is what puzzles me. I was going to make a dough today, but never got around to making it. I talked to my distributor last week and told him about the longhorn cheese and how it might be the cheese Mack’s is using.  He was really surprised and said how soft that cheese is and he couldn’t believe someone would be using that kind of cheese for a pizza.  Still makes me wonder about that.

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

I have been playing around with some numbers for a white flour/whole wheat flour blend that might fit the nutrition information for the Ultra-Thin crusts. As a rough estimate, I would say that a blend of 90% high-gluten flour and 10% whole wheat flour should come reasonably close to the Ultra-Thin nutrition data. The percents might vary somewhat depending on the brand of high-gluten flour and the brand and type of whole wheat flour (e.g., regular whole wheat flour vs. while whole wheat flour). If you have whole wheat flour on hand, either the regular or the white whole wheat flour, you might be able to try a blend with your Kyrol or Pillsbury Balancer flour. If you decide to try such a blend and you tell me what whole wheat flour you have on hand, I think I should be able to come up with a recommendation. When I was doing my calculations, I used the KASL and the KA regular whole wheat flour. However, I should be able to come up with comparable numbers using the KA white whole wheat flour.

Peter

[norma427]

I made another pizza today from the real Ultra-Thin par-baked skin.  For this pizza I used the top oven to bake the pizza, because the temperature is lower there.  This pizza came out a little crisper.  I did weigh two more par-baked skins and the weight of one was 8.2 oz  and the weight of the other was 8.5 oz.  The real Ultra-Thin skins seem to be drying out.  I don’t know what is causing that, but the one that I showed in the video the other day was drier and the ones I took out of the freezer this morning and then took to market are also drier, after defrosting.  The one skin today split when I was going to make a pizza.  I didn’t want the sauce to make a mess in my oven, so I wet the areas that split with water and then pasted them back together.  It seemed to work.  First picture is of the skin repaired with water.

Another interesting thing I found out today, was when Steve gave me some fresh yeast to try out.  He had purchased that at a grocery store, near where he lives.  He had also purchased some Fleischmann’s Pizza Crust Yeast to try out at home.  He brought the packets of the Pizza Crust Yeast over to show me.  He said that you didn’t need to let the dough ferment with this yeast.  I said I couldn’t believe it could produce a good pizza if you didn’t ferment at all.  I looked on the ingredients on the back and was surprised to see the second to last ingredient listed was L-Cysteine.  I told Steve about what Peter had posted of the ingredients of the L-Cysteine.  We both had a good laugh after the Pizza Crust Yeast having that ingredient. 

Peter, as I was ready to post this, I saw your post.  I would like to try adding the whole wheat to the formula since you have been figuring out how the nutritional data could fit with using whole wheat flour.  I am not sure what brand of whole wheat I have.  I bought it at our local Country Store for adding to natural starters.   Most of their flours aren’t labeled what brand they are. To see what brands the flours are, you need to look at a list posted beside where they sell the flours.  I will go to the local Country Store and see what brand it is.  I just have it in a plastic container now, labeled whole wheat flour.                                                           

Norma

[norma427]

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

When I spoke recently with the yeast specialist on the professionals side of SAF, I mentioned that I had read about the new Fleischmann's Pizza Crust Yeast but had not seen it in any of the supermarkets near me. She was not aware of that product. I told her that I suspected that L-cysteine was part of the formulation. I don't remember but maybe that is what prompted her to tell me about how the L-cysteine is produced. The other ingredients in the Fleischmann's Pizza Crust Yeast--sorbitan monostearate, ascorbic acid, and enzymes--are fairly standard although I don't know what the enzymes are specifically. The sorbitan monostearate helps keep the yeast dry and facilitates the rehydration of the yeast. The L-cysteine is a dough relaxant, so it helps keep the dough from shrinking. Otherwise, you would have to let the dough relax for several minutes before proceeding to use it. Most consumer yeast products are used for short term doughs so some time may be saved using the new Fleishchmann's Pizza Crust Yeast. I think what speeds up the process is using a lot of yeast and very warm water. See, for example, the dough recipe at the Fleishchmann's website at http://www.pizzacrustyeast.com/Detail.aspx?id=8abc6c42-6877-4d25-9254-99ada3ddf285.

As we discussed before, if dough shrinkage is a problem, such as you mentioned earlier in this thread, one can use L-cysteine, glutathione (dead yeast cells) or PZ-44.

I forgot to mention in my last post that since folic acid was not formally adopted for use in flours until 1997, the ingredients list that you got from Ultra-Thin may have pre-dated 1997. At that time, I do not believe that the white whole wheat product existed. If I am correct on this, the whole wheat flour might have been the regular whole wheat flour. Of course, that doesn't rule out the possibility that they are now using the white whole wheat flour. All the ingredients list says is whole wheat flour.

Peter

[norma427]

Peter,

Your suspicions were correct in the Pizza Crust Yeast having L-cysteine.  That is also interesting to know what sorbitan monostearate is and how it helps to keep the yeast dry and also facilitates the rehydration of the yeast.  I knew the L-cysteine was a dough relaxant, and I told Steve that is probably why the pizza could be made so fast when using the new Pizza Crust Yeast.  Just to see that name of L-cysteine made me laugh so much, I got side stitches.  I sure don’t think I want to try the new Pizza Crust Yeast.

I don’t know what year the Ultra-Thin Company started, but I thought I read somewhere it wasn’t too many years ago.  I didn’t think is was pre 1997.  What I have is the whole wheat flour, but am not sure what brand it is. I just took a picture of the whole wheat flour shown below.  I wonder now if I should use the whole wheat flour I have or look for a white whole wheat flour.

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

Under the circumstances, I would go with the whole wheat flour that you have on hand and use a 90/10 blend. So, if you use the dough formulation at Reply 218 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,11044.msg101909.html#msg101909, with 173.54 grams of flour, you would use 0.90 x 173.54 = 156.19 grams (5.51 ounces) of the Kyrol high-gluten flour and 0.10 x 173.54 = 17.35 grams (0.61 ounces) of your whole wheat flour. What you would be looking for is whether the clone par-baked crust with the whole wheat flour looks or feels different than a real Ultra-Thin par-baked crust.

If you were using a weaker flour as the base white flour, such as all-purpose or bread flour, the percents would be different in order to match the Ultra-Thin nutrition data. At this point, we don't know what Ultra-Thin is using as its base flour.

Peter

[norma427]

Peter,

Thanks for telling me to try whole wheat flour I have on hand.  I will look today at the Country Store to see what brand it is.  I will also note the weights of Kyrol and Whole Wheat Flour that you posted to use in the next attempt for the formula for the par-baked skins.

I tried another experiment yesterday, with the preferment for the Lehmann dough and using two regular 16" pizza pans.  The experiment was with a smaller dough ball.  I wanted to see if baking in my higher temperature oven, would give some of the same results, using a different dough.  I rolled out the skin, placed it between two pizza pans, baked in the top oven with 5 pizza screens placed underneath the pizza pans.  I didn’t have my IR thermometer at market, but decided to keep checking the skin between the two pans.  In about three minutes the skin looked finished.  The experiment didn’t work out well, because when I tried to get the par-baked skin off the pizza pan it stuck to the bottom pan.  The top pan came off easily.  That experiment really didn’t show any positive results, but I just wanted to see what would happen.  The last time I tried the preferment for the Lehmann dough in between two pans, I had oiled the pans.  I might try this experiment again, because I have always been interested in seeing if I could par-bake a skin, then add sauce and cheese and take it home to bake the next day.

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

I, too, was thinking more broadly about some of the possibilities of using other doughs to make ultra-thin par-baked crusts. I think it can be done and that you might be able to get par-baked crusts that are flexible and rubbery but the character of the finished par-baked crusts might vary quite widely, with the hydration of the dough being a dominant factor and also dictating whether you end up with a pizza that you will enjoy eating. For example, it might turn out that you won't like a pizza made from a high-hydration ultra-thin par-baked crust. It might be like eating a thin floppy piece of rubber with sauce and cheese. But, that aside, I think it is possible to use other doughs to make ultra-thin par-baked crusts.

I was also thinking of other ways to bake the clone Ultra-Thin par-baked crusts. One of the possibilities that occurred to me would be to use two 14" pizza screens with a 14" skin between the screens, possibly with some metal oven-safe clamps (they shouldn't be subjected to damaging oven temperatures for this application) to clamp the two screens together so that the skin does not bubble during the par-bake and lift the top screen off. Since the skin would be of fairly low hydration, it shouldn't stick to the screens, or else you can spray the screens with an oil spray before placing the skin between the screens. One of the advantages of this approach is that you would be able to see the skin as it bakes and maybe take its temperature more easily, allowing you to monitor the bake more closely, especially for color. You might end up with some screen grid markings on the skin and the resulting par-baked crust, but they shouldn't alter the function or use of the par-baked crust. If this method works, I would think that it would simplify making the ultra-thin crusts. Some adjustment of the dough formulation might be needed to compensate for an increase in weight loss during baking in the more "open" environment, but that shouldn't be a major obstacle.

Peter