Harvest King Gold Medal Flour

[Randy]

Last night I tried my American recipe using Harvest King Gold Medal Flour.  To my surprise, the flour mad an exceptional pizza.  Solid oven spring on a stone.  Sorry about the poor quality pictures as they were a last minute thought.

Randy

[Pete-zza]

Randy,

I know that there has been some general discussion in the past about using your original American style dough with a stone, but that you typically use a pizza screen. In your recent effort, did you experience much browning of the bottom crust at the sugar/honey levels that your recipe calls for? I have often recommended your dough recipe to others but have worried a bit about recommending a stone rather than a screen for fear that the bottom crust may get too dark or even burn before the rest of the pizza is done. At times, I have even suggested lowering the amount of sugar and honey when using a stone just to be on the safe side. Do you do anything different when using the stone, such as the oven temperature, bake time, etc.? Thanks.

Peter

[Randy]

No, the browning is perfect with the pizza baking in 6- 8 minutes using the same recipe for the stone as I use for the screen.  When it turns cold we like using the stone because as you know, it adds a bit more character to the bottom of the crust.  Of course, during warmer weather we will go back to a screen.  The recipe is essentially the same with a few changes as experimenting continues.  I have enclosed the latest version featuring a larger batch size.

I still use a KitchenAid mixer, so the kneading times are based on that.

22 oz High Gluten Flour, or Bread flour or Harvest King
Note: If you use Harvest King plan on adding a tablespoon of flour during the kneading but it will still be wet.

13.6  oz Water by weight warm 110deg.

2 TBS + 2 teaspoons raw sugar

1 TBS + 1 ts Honey

1 Tbs + 1 ts  Classico Olive Oil

2 ¼ ts salt

1 ¼  teaspoon SAF yeast

Put flour, yeast and salt in mixer bowl then run on stir.

Mix sugar, honey, oil and water then add to bowl on stir, stop after 2 minutes
Rest 5 min
Run 7 min on speed 2
Rest 5 min
Run 7  min on speed 2
Turn out on floured board and shape.
Place in an oiled bowl then cover before going in the cooler for one or two nights. Take dough out of cooler three hours in advance of shaping.  Divide dough in half and cover until time to shape. 
Bake at 500 on stone or screen.

[Pete-zza]

Randy,

Thanks. A lot of members have been asking for your American style dough recipe, so it is nice to see your latest version.

Are you still using the SAF Gourmet Perfect Rise yeast or are you using the SAF Red instant dry yeast (IDY)?

Peter

[Randy]

Peter, for this pizza I used.SAF Gourmet Perfect Rise yeast.

[DKM]

One of my favorite styles of Pizza is Randy's American.  Glad things have calmed down enough for you to post again.  Guess I need to make one again.

DKM

[Randy]

Today was very tasty and a big surprise this flour produced such a good flavor.  The flavor is so close to high gluten KA brand that this may be the flour of choice for this recipe.
DKM, I have built two new barbecue cooker since we last posted.  I have four butts and a brisket on today.

[DKM]

My smoker bit the dust.  A storm knocked down the fence, the fence hit the rusting fire box, and the fire box it the ground.  At least I know what I'm getting for my birthday.

DKM

[Randy]

Sorry to hear about that.  Here is the one I built for my son for Christmas.
http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m251/StumpSmoker/2BQ1c.jpg

[DKM]

Nice!  Well he is off my Christmas list!

[November]

Randy,

That is a marvelous looking smoker.  It appears some very solid engineering went into it.

- red.november

[Randy]

Thank you Red.  Inside is a removable TEE pipe that delivers the heat and smoke evenly across the chamber giving me dead even temperatures, front to back, left to right and up and down.  With the distribution pipe removed, it becomes a good sized charcoal grill.

[November]

Randy,

I am dually impressed.  Both the design and engineering are well thought out.  I forwarded your image link to a DOD engineer friend of mine, and he was impressed as well.  He worked on an autonomous submersible that actually looks a lot like the main section of your smoker.  He's also in the market for a new grill.

- red.november

[giotto]

I couldn't help but notice the incredibly high amount of sugar in this recipe as well. Interestingly enough, Gold Medal King Harvest flour (a 12% protein flour) was developed to provide a natural production of sugar commensurate with longer fermentation times required by artisan bakers.

The impact of sugar on crust is easy to measure with pizza crust color... Without sugar, you get white pizza. I once found a friend (who is now a diabetic) using 1/4 C of sugar for a single pizza. This was substantially more than any professional that I had ever witnessed. 

As you can see in the hyperlink that follows, I received beautiful pizza crust color and a wonderful outer edge crust spring with my usual 1 tsp of sugar for my 14" white sauce pizza. As the text in the hyperlink explains, this amount of sugar is to be expected with flours that contain Malted Barley.

http://home.comcast.net/~keck-foundation1/pizza-crust-color.html

[Pete-zza]

giotto,

I enjoyed reading your blog. I hope you will continue to write on pizza related topics and bring them to our attention.

I recently converted Randy's recent American style dough recipe to baker's percents at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1846.msg35902.html#msg35902. As you will note, there are high levels of total sugar (sucrose and honey), but there are also high levels of salt and IDY which should counteract some of the effects of the high total sugar. Also, honey is favored more than sucrose by yeast because of the fructose and glucose in honey, plus minerals and other substances, so that may be a factor also in the performance of Randy's dough. Having tried Randy's original American style dough recipe, I can tell you that it works (see, for example, the photos at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1707.msg15310.html#msg15310). I also found that I could reduce the baker's percents of all of the ingredients to keep them within standard ranges and still get good results. I haven't yet tried Randy's most recent recipe but, based on what I learned from his other recipes, I am confident that it too is a good recipe.

Peter

[Randy]

In new recipe, I used less IDY, and reduced water temperature as suggested by Peter and I really like the improvement.  And Thank you Peter for the nice compliment.

Gitto suggestion to try this new flour with lower sugar and salt levels is a good one.  My original recipe quest was to emulate the wonderful pizza flavors that Papa Johns had developed before changing their product.  In the beginning, the only flour I knew of was KABF.  Then when I came to this site when Steve first started I learned from him the advantages of KASL.  Now we have this new flour that is very interesting.

I think you and Peter are both right.  I will leave this recipe as is but start a new round of pizza testing reducing IDY, temperature, sugar, honey and salt.  I think for the first test I will cut these in half and if that works for me, cut it in half again.

[giotto]

Sounds good. My goal is to provide alternatives so others don't walk away from a good thing. The 1 tsp of sugar noted in the pizza dough in my hyperlink above is actually a combo of honey and sugar.

Even though 1 tsp of honey is just over 1 tsp of sugar in nutrition, I've found that I can use honey with less of an effect on pizza crust color and browning. Honey can be a bit magical in taste/texture.

Here is what I did for two 16.75 oz pizza doughs. I've found this to be flexible for many styles of dough. For American, you can make two 12" or 13"; for just a bit thinner, you can make two 14" with a nice outer edge, which is what I did in the picture:

1) 20 oz of Harvest King (*King Arthur Bread, All Purpose or combo works*)
2) 12 oz of cool water (60% hydration with wet weather. Use part non-fat milk for taste... American style pizzerias benefit from milk sugar left alone by yeast.)
3) 1 tsp sugar + 1 tsp honey (a dab or two of honey... too hard to get off spoon. Total additional sugar: 1.25g per serving. Sometimes I do a complete swirl, about 2 tsp.)
4) 2 TBL corn oil (thought I'd use the oil in Chicago recipe. Oils soften inside of crust and are useful for higher protein flours).
5) 1 tsp salt (salt tightens the dough. For American style, I like an easier stretch. US team uses several times this for tossing).
6) 1 tsp active yeast (not proofed)

*KA Bread is 12.7% protein; KA All Purpose is 11.7% (nearly 1% higher than most All Purpose). Harvest King is 12% +-.3%, which puts it in the middle. Harvest King is a bit lower in Falling number; but they are close and both include Malted Barley, which impacts pizza crust color and fermentation. More on this here: http://home.comcast.net/~keck-foundation1/pizza-crust-color.html (which I've upated to link to this recipe).

Add ingredients 2-5 in full amount of liquid. Then about 60% of flour or equivalent to weight of liquid. Spread the active yeast unproofed over flour, and mix with spatula. It comes together very quickly. Let dough sit for 10 - 15 minutes (or until I feel like getting back up).

Add rest of flour. Then let mixer with dough hook form it into a pizza dough at lowest mix (#1). Less than a minute. Take it off the dough hook and set in bowl. Let it rest a minute or two.

Once it is together, run it for 3  minutes at #1 mix, performing less than a minute of hand kneading in between to test it. The less the mix, the more airy and light crust. Harvest King flour seems to lick the bowl clean, and it is like clay. No stickiness at all... No lumps, no bumps, pretty darn smooth. Other bread flours like King Arthur will be ready by now as well.

Split it off into 2 doughs, bag it, and place it in the refrigerator for 2 or so days. With this pizza, no growth in the refrigerator.

Take pizza dough out of bag, and lay on top of doused flour on board. Cover with lightly wet rag for just over 1 hour.

20 minutes before cooking, set oven to 530F. Lay out dough by hand (quite extensible at room temp) and place on screen in middle of oven for 50 seconds. Then dress it up and tell it you're taking it out to eat.

Finally, 6 1/2 minutes in the oven at 520F - 530F.

Pizza crust has nice overall color. Harvest King creates a bit breadier/tighter pizza crust than King Arthur bread flour. But light with nice presentation of puffy outer edge crust and taste is like a basic fermentation bread roll.