Home Ground Flour Pizza Dough

[boudie]

I have long been a bread baker and have ground my own flour at home for years.  We have been doing this for the nutritional value and taste.  You can do a quick web search on the health advantages of doing this but long story short commercial milling, even if it is WW flour, has to remove the wheat germ from the berry.  The wheat germ contains oils that can turn rancid fairly quickly.  About 90% of the nutrients in wheat are found in the germ.  So if you grind your own flour and then use it right away you get all the benefits.  Here is one website I saw that is pretty clear about it.

http://www.nutritionlifestyles.com/homemill.htm

I started several years ago making pizza's.  I bought a hearth kit and used it in my unmodified oven.  This summer I had a WFO installed in my backyard.  I have been working with different dough recipes with commercial flour to get what I want.  I have been working on Neapolitan style.  I bought the Bosch Universal Plus mixer and now I am getting pretty close.  (Special thanks to Scott R for his post, very helpful.)

Well now I am trying to incorporate at least some fresh ground flour into my dough.  Because of my experience with baking bread with fresh ground flour here are some potential issues I see:

- I have not found a home grinder that can grind as fine a flour as a commercial miller.  Even at the finest settings it is still more coarse.
- The bran is kind of like a thin layer of plastic over the berry.  When it is ground it has a tendency to have some sharp edges.  Sharp edges can "pop" the gluten while the dough is rising.

So here is my first experimental recipe:

140 grams of fresh ground Kamut flour (10%)
630 grams of Caputo OO Pizzeria (45%)
630 grams of Harvest King (45%)
826 grams Dasani water (59%)
35  grams of sea salt (2.5%)
1.4 grams of IDY (.1%)

Kamut is a great berry.  It has a natural hint of butter to its taste.  It is also high in protein when compared to the other types of wheat berries. 

I added all the ingredients to my Bosch and mixed it together.  Then I waited 20 minutes before mixing it on low speed for 11 minutes.

The picture below is after I let it rest 20 minutes.  I am letting rise at room temp 2 hours and then balling into 310 gram dough balls.  I plan on making pizza's on Sunday. 

I also have the exact same dough recipe made for a comparison but with no Kamut.  It is 50/50 Caputo 00 and Harvest King.  Both doughs are very soft and smooth and I can't really tell a big difference.  (I know, 10% of fresh ground is not a lot of the total but it is a start.)

Thoughts?  Suggestions?

Thanks,

Bert

[Jackie Tran]

Welcome.  Your dough looks good.  It should make fine pizzas.

Chau

[scott r]

my only thought is that this looks like a great recipe.     Its almost surreal, as my last batch of pizzas were made with EXACTLY the same recipe, but minus the home ground flour.   I mean, this is really weird.   Same yeast percentage, same hydration, same salt percentage, same blend of flours (50/50 caputo/harvest king).   I mixed for 9 minutes instead of 10 in my bosch.   The dough turned out amazing, and the caputo harvest king blend was perfect for higher baking temps because the caputo slowed down the browning, yet the harvest king gave up some char.    I think yours will turn out perfect, and I am very interested in the differences between your two batches.   Welcome! 

[boudie]

Scott:

The dough should sound familiar.  It is from your post under "Video of dough that just came out of a Bosch universal plus mixer."  Look at the last few posts on that topic.  I took all your advice. I even got a 50lb bag of Harvest King per your recommendation.  I just had to play around a little with the mixing time due to the 00 flour. 

My next test on the home ground flour will be to increase the percentage of the Kamut. 

Thanks again,

Bert

[scott r]

haha, of course!!!  too funny.   well, I hope it all turns out great for you.  You should know that Chris Bianco told me that if he were a home pizza maker he would be playing with kaumt and spelt flour.   Lets hear about your experiments!   

[dellavecchia]

Bert - Do you have an opinion on what the best home mill would be? Best source for Kamut? Any info appreciated.

John

[Matthew]

Bert - Do you have an opinion on what the best home mill would be? Best source for Kamut? Any info appreciated.

John

Hey John,
This may be of help.  When I had my DLX, I purchased it through them.

http://shop.mountaintopsmilling.com/Grain-Mills_c5.htm

Matt

[norma427]

Bert,

Your post is very interesting about grinding your own flour and your dough looks great.    Will be look forward to seeing how your pies turn out.

Thanks for posting about grinding your own flour.

Norma

[boudie]

Dellavecchia

Here is a website that has a couple videos that compare the three top electric mills out there and one hand mill.  I grind a lot of wheat so I can't comment on the hand ones, just the electric ones. 

http://www.breadtopia.com/

Currently I own the Wonder Mill.  I am in the process of gitting the the KoMo or another name for it is the Wolfgang.  I am making the change mainly due to my daughter is getting married and moving to Mexico.  She is getting the hand me down.  The KoMo has been getting great reviews and it seems you can adjust the grind a lot easier.  In addition, the temperate of the fresh ground flour is cooler in comparison.

FYI - grinder attachments on most mixers are usually not good options.  They are too slow and really heat up the flour. 

I absolutely love Kamut.  It is a very interesting grain with some great qualities.  The dough I made yesterday, even though it had only 10% Kamut, still had a noticeably different taste.  I liked it.  I am looking forward to baking them off tomorrow.  I am lucky that I live close to Atlanta and have several options.  There is a place you can order it from outside of Atlanta.  Here is the link:

http://www.breadbeckers.com/store/pc/home.asp

Also most big cities have "grain co-ops."  We have one that comes through once a year.  I buy a couple hundred pounds of it and it works out to about have the cost for me.  I would try a web search for grain co-ops in your area.

If you want to try some PM me.  I will see what we can do.

My next experiments will be to increase the fresh ground flour content.  Once I get to a max percentage and still keep the right texture of the dough I want I want to try it with Ischia starter!  We will see!

Scott R - very interesting comments you shared Bianco made.  I have not thought about spelt but that sounds interesting as well.

Thanks for the posts,

Bert

[dellavecchia]

Bert and Matt - Thanks very much for the guidance. Very helpful. Looking forward to seeing your results with the dough.

John

[boudie]

I baked off the pizza's last night and below are a few pictures.  I could notice a slight difference in taste but not a lot.  I noticed no difference in baking, spring, etc.

A few notes:

- I have been practicing the "slap" technique - as you can see I still need more practice
- The WFO was running high on the temp side.  I like to cook right over 800 degrees.  These were baked at 900.
- Yes that is cooked sauce on the pizzas.  People just love it so over the summer when we can find nice fresh Roma's we can 90 pints
- Buffalo Mozz is from Whole Foods
- First time taking pictures of pizza's - like the slap test I need more practice

Suggestions are always appreciated.

I am going to try a new batch an increase the Kamut to 25% of the flour.

Bert

[boudie]

Here is the picture of the 25% Kamut instead of 10%.  As you can see the coarseness of the home ground Kamut is beginning to come through.  You can feel it in the dough.  We will see if the "sharp edges" I mentioned above will effect how it rises.

Bert

[norma427]

Here is the picture of the 25% Kamut instead of 10%.  As you can see the coarseness of the home ground Kamut is beginning to come through.  You can feel it in the dough.  We will see if the "sharp edges" I mentioned above will effect how it rises.

Bert

Bert,

I can see how the coarseness of the home ground Kamut can be seen in your dough.  I wonder if you increased the hydration any when trying the additional amount of Kamut flour.  I did use King Arthur Whole Wheat flour in some of my formulas and found that I should have increased the hydration when using that flour, because the KAWW does also have more sharp pieces in the flour than some other flours.  I don't have any idea if increasing the hydration would help while using the increased Kamut.  Looking forward to see how your dough behaves. 

Norma

[boudie]

Norma:

I will try your recommendation.  What does your experience say you should increase to?  Right now it is a 59% hydration dough.

In breads they recommend adding a dough enhancer.  The dough enhancer is supposed to strengthen the gluten.  They usually have lecithin and citric acid in them among other things.  I have not tried the dough enhancer yet but thought that could be another option as well. 

I would love to figure out how to get 30%+ of fresh ground flour into my doughs.

Thanks,

Bert

[scott r]

citric or ascorbic acid is fine, but beware of lecthin in pizza dough.   It is good for bread, but makes an unusual texture for pizza.   Also, every dough enhancer I have found geared toward bread tends to have a lot of sugars or malts and will probably make your pizza burn too fast.   It often turns out unusually crispy as well.  Try it, but I think with pizza you are going to prefer a less is more approach even with unusual flours.   

[boudie]

Thanks Scott; makes sense!

[norma427]

Norma:

I will try your recommendation.  What does your experience say you should increase to?  Right now it is a 59% hydration dough.

In breads they recommend adding a dough enhancer.  The dough enhancer is supposed to strengthen the gluten.  They usually have lecithin and citric acid in them among other things.  I have not tried the dough enhancer yet but thought that could be another option as well. 

I would love to figure out how to get 30%+ of fresh ground flour into my doughs.

Thanks,

Bert

Bert,

I haven't tried that many formulas with whole wheat flour, but Villa Roma has experimented with Whole Wheat Flour quite a bit.  If you have time you might want to read his thread, starting about at this post.
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5682.msg48252.html#msg48252

In Villa Roma's thread Furo talks about using Kamut wheat at Reply #15 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5682.msg48512.html#msg48512 and further down in that thread.  If you keep reading in this thread, there is a lot of information. 

I have only used Whole Wheat flour in a low hydration dough, but could see the effects that Whole Wheat had on the dough. 

Maybe someone else that has used Whole Wheat flour more can help you better in the search for what hydration to try when using the Kamut that you are grinding.

I haven't tried any dough enhancers either.

Norma

[Crider]

I got a Retsel Uni-Ark hand grinder with stones a couple of moths ago and it's been great (except the hand-grinding part). If I had to do it over again, I'd go with an electric mill.

I use a 75% hydration for fresh 'hard red winter wheat', and the dough goes into the refrigerator for at least a day. It's important so that the bran softens. Flavor is superb.

I don't use any additives, such as citric acid, 'dough enhancer', or vital wheat gluten. VillaRoma was up to 100% hydration at one time, but I don't know what he's using now.

The fineness of the grind really matters, and for consistency, I make sure that most of  my grind can pass through a #50-mesh Keene Classifier sieve.

There's all sorts of exotic wheat berries out there if one looks. I got a quantity of a heritage variety called Ethiopian Blue Tinge from a local farmer. It has a unique aroma, color and savory flavor, akin to how Basmati rice has it's own aroma and flavor. I'll attach a photo of a pie-crust dough made with Ethiopian next to a dough ball of 100% hard red winter wheat.

[charbo]

Crider,

#50-mesh is pretty fine for a home-miller.  Do you re-mill or set aside the retained particles?  When sifting, do you shake up and down, sideways, or use some other technique?

How is the gluten strength of the Blue Tinge?

[Crider]

I'll re-mill unless there isn't much left behind. In that case I save it to feed my sourdough starter. The Keene Classifier fits on a food-grade bucket. I rock the bucket back and forth which provides an extra 'whap' to the flour in the sieve.

The Ethiopian is harder than my 'hard red winter wheat', but has less gluten! Go figure, I sure can't. There isn't much written about it. I've made tortillas with it, but so far loaves just don't work.