Home Ground Flour Pizza Dough

[boudie]

I appreciate your comments and suggestions. 

It makes a lot of sense to have the higher hydration and slow bulk rise to soften the gluten, especially on 100% home ground flour.  I also like the sifting and re-grinding ideas.  I guess I will have to make some more dough!

My 25% Kamut dough is doing really good.  It has been slowly fermenting and I plan to bake it off tomorrow night.  Yesterday I pulled out one of the balls and let it sit at room temperature. (I could not wait to see how it was doing.)  I must say it handled great after a few hours of warming up. It spread out real well and was very soft and supple.

[norma427]

Bert,

Best of luck with your dough.    It sounds like the your recent dough will do well, since you posted that it is soft and supple since you let it warm-up some.   Will be interested on seeing the pizza produced from your dough, with the 25% Kamut.

I was at our local country store today and saw some Kamut grains.  Do you know if this would be the kind of grains I could grind to try out in dough?  I am not familiar with wheat berries, so I don’t know it they are the wheat berries or not.  I never tried to grind any flour before, but had thought about trying grinding some flour from wheat berries.  I have a old hand grinder that I purchased at our local Salvation Army Store that has a grinding attachment for flour.  I don’t know if that would work to grind Kamut or not. 

Thanks for your interesting thread.

Norma

[boudie]

Norma:

That is exactly what you want. Berrie or whole kernels are the same.

Your grinder should work fine. If you can adjust the mill, you want to set it on the finest grind possible.

Have fun.

[norma427]

Norma:

That is exactly what you want. Berrie or whole kernels are the same.

Your grinder should work fine. If you can adjust the mill, you want to set it on the finest grind possible.

Have fun.

Bert,

Thanks for telling me that berrie and whole kernels are the same.  I don't know if I can adjust the grinder or not.  I will get it out and buy some of the Kamut I saw and see what happens.

Norma

[norma427]

Bert,

I bought some Kamut organic grains today.  I first tried the old grinder that I had bought at Salvation Army. That grinder could be adjusted, but I don’t even know what that grinder is for.  That didn’t do a good enough job in grinding the grains.  I then got out my other grinder that I use for many other things, including grinding dried corn.  I managed to grind up the grains with another attachment that is meant for grinding nuts into for things like peanut butter or other butters. I am not sure if these grains are ground up enough, but I am going to try to combine some KASL with the ground-up flour to make dough today. 

Pictures below of what I tried to grind the Kamut grains with today and the flour when finished grinding.

Norma

[boudie]

Wow Norma!

First of all the Kamut you bought is the right stuff.  I don't know what type of grinder that is.  The grind is a little coarse in my opinion.  I do think if you used it in moderation, say 10% - 20% it will work fine.  Good Luck!  FYI - did you taste the Kamut?

Here are some pictures of the 25% Kamut pizza's I did last night.  They where just beginning to have the "whole wheat" texture/chew but the taste was really good.  Several folks mentioned they liked that dough better than others I had.  (I had two other types both using commercial flour; one with IDY and one with Ischia.)  The spring on the Kamut one I did was fairly normal and the dough was great to work with.  It ended up not quite as easy as the 100% commercial ground flour but still very easy.

I think I am going to try this blend again with Ischia starter and see how that turns out.

Bert

[norma427]

Bert,

That’s good to hear I got the right kind of Kamut.  My grinders really aren’t any kind of commercial grinders.  They are just ones I use for different things.  I don’t know if am commented enough right now to buy a commercial grinder.  Yes, I did taste the Kamut and it had a good taste.  I also saw at our local store that they sell Prarie gold (86) grains.  I think they are high in protein.  They are a lot cheaper than the Kamut.  For a bag twice or more bigger, the price is less than half.  Did you ever try that kind of ground flour in a dough?  I also think my flour wasn’t ground up enough, but I did make a dough.  The dough is going to be cold fermented for a few days.  On the dough ball there is some small pieces of grains that can be seen.  Will be interesting to see what happens with the pizza that is make with that dough ball.

Your pie made with the Kamut really looks tasty.    It is interesting to hear how you described the pie in terms of taste.  Looking forward to see if you try the same pie with the Ischia starter.

Norma

[boudie]

I believe Prairie Gold is a hard winter white wheat.  It is a type of brand of this winter wheat and has a good reputation.  Hard winter wheat is what most white flours are milled from.  Kamut will have more protein in it than PG. 

I look forward to seeing how your Kamut pizzas come out.

[charbo]

Prairie Gold is hard white spring wheat.  See the Wheat Montana website.  Another name for it is Golden 86.  Kamut is a branded name for a wheat very similar to durum (pasta) wheat.

[norma427]

Bert,

Thanks for your information.  Who knows how this dough that I added the Kamut to will turn out.  I used a regular Lehmann dough and will post the formula, after I try to make a pizza.  I am going to let this dough ball cold ferment until Tuesday.  This is a picture of the dough ball taken today.  You can see how the little pieces of not ground-up flour look on the dough ball.    I will post some pictures even if this dough doesn’t work out. 

Picture below

Norma

charbo,

Thank you also for your helpful information about Prairie Gold grains.    I might try the Prairie Gold grains if the part Kamut pizza works out okay. 

Norma

[norma427]

Bert,

Steve and I made the pizza with the dough I had posted last.  The dough was a Lehmann dough with KASL and the Kamut I ground.  Both Steve and I thought that when the pizza was baked that there would be some kind of crunch from the grains that weren’t ground enough.  Much to our surprise, after the pizza was baked, neither Steve or I could find any grains.  They must have baked into the pizza.

Thanks for giving me the idea of using Kamut in a dough.    The taste of the crust was very good and different.

Pictures below

Norma

[boudie]

Here are some pictures of an attempt with 100% fresh ground Kamut. 

Specifics:

80% HR
4% of flour Italian culture from sourdo.com (This was not included in the HR)
2.5% sea salt
pinch of IDY

I let the flour and water autolyse for three hours.  The dough was actually pretty smooth and it spread pretty well.  I mixed with a Bosch Universal Plus for 15 minutes on low speek.  My observation was it still needed a little more gluten development.  I tried some "Tartine" type folds for the first couple hours of its room temperature rise and it helped.  It opened up easily but when it got out to about 13" I had to be real careful not to tear it.  (260 gram dough balls)

The taste was okay.  It did not have that thick whole grain taste at all which was a pleasent surprise since it was 100% fresh ground. 

Pies cooked at 850+ in my WFO and had some really nice coloring.  Spring was okay but not great. 

More experimenting to do but in my assessment not a bad attempt.  There is a great formula out there somewhere with the fresh ground grains.  Just need to try some other things.

Bert