From the summary I gave in the previous post: Instead of using a recipe, I decided how much bread I wanted to bake and then worked backwards to determine how much of each ingredient (by weight) I would ultimately use. I determined that I would need to use 16 oz. of flour as a starting point for a single loaf of bread. To achieve a 65% hydration, I used 10.4 oz. of water. For amounts of yeast and salt, rather than prescribing exact amounts, I went with approximations based on what would work with my 16 oz. of flour. For 16 oz. of flour, I used about .5% of that weight in yeast and about 2% of that weight in salt. This approach is called using Bakers Percentages: planning out the amounts of ingredients you’ll need for baked goods using the weight of the flour as a baseline.
To restate this in tabular form:
Total Flour – 100%
Total Liquid – 65% (of the total flour weight)
Yeast – .5% (of the total flour weight)
Salt – 2% (of the total flour weight)
So if I plan to use 16 oz. of flour:
Total Flour = 16 oz.
Total Liquid = 65% x 16 oz. = 10.4 oz.
Yeast = .5% x 16 oz. = .08 oz.
Salt = 2% x 16 oz. = .32 oz.
–Since my scale isn’t sensitive enough to measure the yeast and salt in such small amounts, I made conversions to teaspoons based on information provided on the packages.
Goal – I want to make a couple of 9″ pan pizzas using only a slightly modified list of basic ingredients.
How did I decide on making two 9″ pizzas? Easy – I have two 9″ round cake pans that aren’t busy making layer cakes so I might as well put them to work.
Guideline 1 – Milk softens bread. Using milk as part of the liquid in the dough makes a softer bread. Also, brushing the exterior of a loaf with milk prior to baking makes a softer crust (I will be doing this in my next bread post on wheat and rye breads).
Guideline 2 – Before incorporating milk into bread dough, scald the milk first and then allow it to cool to room temperature. Scalding is not necessary if you use instant nonfat dry milk mixed with water.
Guideline 3 – A little bit of oil in the dough makes a softer bread and extends the shelf life of the bread – but remember that oil is a fat, not a liquid, and its addition does not alter the hydration of the dough.
Terminology – Many people use the terms “pan pizza” and “deep dish pizza” interchangeably – I see them as physically and culturally distinct. I identify most pizza styles as falling into one of four categories based on crust characteristics: (1) Pan Pizza – pizza baked in a pan and characterized by a thick doughy/bread-y crust (the topic of this blog posting), (2) Chicago Style Deep Dish or Stuffed Crust Pizza – characterized by a thick crust but made from dough with a significantly higher percentage of oil in the mix (like 20% of the total flour weight) and baked in a heavily oiled pan so the crust “fries” a little bit during baking to make it crisp and to strengthen it for the huge load of toppings it will typically support, (3) New York Style Thin Crust Pizza – characterized by a thin but foldable crust where the dough is given a longer prefermentation period with less yeast and is baked in a very hot oven directly on a baker’s stone, & (4) Thin-and-Crispy Crust Pizza – OK, I’m not a huge fan of this approach to pizza – might as well just give me a cheese cracker and call it a day.
I’m going to use a slightly modified recipe for my pan pizza dough – here it is expressed using Bakers Percentages:
Total Flour – 100%
Total Liquid – 60% (of the total flour weight) – lower hydration – a little easier to handle
Yeast – .5% (of the total flour weight) – same as in my loaf bread
Salt – 2% (of the total flour weight) – same as in my loaf bread
Oil – 6% (of the total flour weight) – a new addition
Procedure – pretty much the same as before except we won’t be making loaves this time: start with a preferment, mix in the remaining ingredients, knead, rise, deflate and shape, rise, assemble toppings, and bake.
Spoiler alert – hindsight is 20/20: In keeping with the weights and measures from the previous blog entry, I decided to use 16 oz. of flour to make two 9″ pan pizzas – as it turns out, that was a little heavy-handed and I wound up with too much crust on the pizzas – I probably should have started with 10-12 oz. of flour. You’ll see my results below – you can be the judge.
Let me break down my modified recipe with physical amounts of each ingredient:
Total Flour – 16 oz. – I was out of bread flour but used all purpose flour successfully here. Also, I decided to use a small amount of semolina flour in the dough – semolina flour is used primarily in noodles, but I find that it contributes a great aroma and texture to pizza crust when used sparingly. The semolina is a personal preference here – using all AP flour or bread flour would have been just fine. So in the end, for this recipe, I used 16 oz. Total Flour = 14 oz. All Purpose Flour + 2 oz. Semolina Flour.
Total Liquid – My goal for the pizza crust dough was 60% hydration (meaning I added liquid in an amount of 60% of the total flour weight) – 60% x 16 oz. (total flour weight) = 9.6 oz. of liquid. Here I used a slightly lower hydration than before (60% versus 65%) because I wanted to be able to work this dough with my hands without it being too sticky. Next, instead of using water for this dough, I used milk for the liquid – more specifically, I used milk that I made by mixing instant nonfat dry milk with water. As stated in the guideline at the beginning of this post, using milk as the liquid in my dough will produce a bread with a softer texture – in this case it will produce a softer baked pizza crust.
Yeast – .5% (of the total flour weight) – .5% x 16 oz. = .08 oz. of yeast. This is too small an amount for me to scale so I looked to conversions to estimate a physical measure. The standard I use for physical yeast quantities is based on the contents of a typical packet of yeast: 1/4 oz. = .25 oz. = 2 1/4 tsp. The amount I need is .08 oz. which is about 1/3 of a packet: 1/3 x 2.25 tsp. = .75 tsp. Like I said in my previous post, you need to be in the neighborhood on this weight but don’t get too micromanage-y. That .75 tsp. is between 1/2 tsp. and 1 tsp. I used 1 tsp. I could have used 1/2 tsp. just fine. I could have micromanaged 3/4 tsp = 1/2 tsp. + 1/4 tsp. I used 1 tsp. here – follow your heart on this amount and do whatever you want to do.
Salt – 2% (of the total flour weight) – 2% x 16 oz. = .32 oz. of salt. Technically, I could have used my scale to measure out .3 oz. of (sea) salt, but went to conversion tables to get a physical measure. Again, without micromanaging, the conversion chart told me that .32 oz. of sea salt was equivalent to 2.11 tsp. – I used 2 tsp.
Oil – 6% (of the total flour weight) – 6% x 16 oz. = .96 oz. of oil. I used olive oil here. Since this was close to 1 oz., I just used my scale to measure the correct amount of oil – please note that 1 oz. of olive oil is only about 2 Tbsp.
So let’s go through the procedure:
(1) Start with a preferment. I covered this in the previous post – giving the yeast time to work improves the flavor and the texture of the bread/crust. I made a poolish using half of my flour weight (using just the AP at this juncture) with an equal weight of liquid (milk) and the yeast. So here is 8 oz. of AP flour + 8 oz. milk + 1 tsp. yeast.
I mixed these ingredients into a paste.
This paste is the poolish which I covered and allowed to, pre-ferment at room temperature overnight. With the flour hydrated and the yeast doing its job, the next day my poolish looked like this:
I went ahead and greased a mixing bowl and a spatula.
(2) Measure out the remaining ingredients – the remaining flour (in this case, 6 oz. of AP flour + 2 oz. semolina flour), the remaining liquid (1.6 oz. of my reconstituted milk), 2 tsp. of salt, and about an ounce of extra virgin olive oil.
(3) Knead using a stand mixer.
Note: the dough will look shaggy for a few minutes at the beginning of the machine-kneading process. This is normal.
As the ingredients fully integrate and the remaining flour gets hydrated, the dough will change form and look more smooth and elastic.
I stuck with my 10 minute kneading guideline. Here is what my dough looked like when the kneading was done:
(4) Into the greased bowl it goes to rise until about double in bulk.
Covered.
And finally about two and a half hours later:
(5) Deflate and shape. After coaxing the risen dough out of the bowl, I used my handy bench scraper to deflate it by folding the edges over a few times. Then, since I’m making two pizzas, I divided the dough in half.
I used my hands to form the halves into disks.
Forget tossing, I used a rolling pin to roll-out the disks into circles slightly smaller than the 9″ pans they would fit into. Also, I greased my pans lightly with vegetable shortening.
Into the pan (you can see that there is some room around the edges).
I used my fingers to press the dough out evenly to the edges of my pan.
(6) Cover and allow to rise. Because the dough is quite thin, don’t look for it to double in bulk – look for it to be puffy of pillow-y.
An hour later, here’s my puffy pan.
(7) Assemble toppings: about 2/3 cup of sauce (see comments on this below), about 1 cup of shredded mozzarella, pepperoni and salami (see comments on this below), and a little more mozzarella and Parmesan on top.
(8) Bake at 400° F for about 20 minutes. The pizza will be done when it looks done – the exposed crust will have browned and the cheese on top will have started to brown.
Out of the pan – good grief that’s a LOT of crust! Remember…I warned you at the beginning of this post that my crust was excessive. Behold!
Awesome taste but definitely too much crust. Oh well, I’ll adapt accordingly next time I make pizza and promise to illustrate the corresponding change in depth.
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Pizza Sauce – MAKE YOUR OWN!
PLEASE don’t ever buy prefabricated pizza sauce. Life is too short to eat bad pizza sauce, especially when it is so simple to make your own. Just remember that great homemade pizza sauce basically comes straight out of a can of crushed tomatoes.
Here’s the setup. That’s a 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes, four cloves of garlic (OK…that’s pretty garlic-y…feel free to back-off to two cloves), salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, and olive oil (used to saute the garlic).
Mince the garlic and saute in olive oil over medium heat – allow the garlic to get a little color but saute it gently using plenty of oil to make sure it doesn’t burn. I sauteed for about 5 minutes.
The garlic goes into the tomatoes. For seasoning, I added 1 tsp. salt + 1 tsp. pepper + 1 tsp. Italian seasoning.
Finally, simmer this mixture for 15 minutes – stir frequently to prevent the tomatoes from scorching on the bottom. Simmer – don’t boil. This brief cooking allows the flavors to meld nicely and thickens the tomatoes slightly. Cooking longer and the tomatoes start tasting more like stewed tomatoes – you don’t want that – stick with about 15 minutes of simmering.
Here it is, your quick-and-easy pizza sauce. Enough for about four 9″ pan pizzas.
Pepperoni and Salami – Kill the Grease!
Pepperoni and salami are notoriously greasy on pizzas. Do yourself a favor and remove some of the grease before dressing your pizzas.
Check this out – I placed one pizza’s toppings on two layers of paper towels:
I covered them with one additional layer of paper towels and microwaved them for 30 seconds. Look at all the grease that got wicked away:
Clean-up your pizza toppings – you’ll be glad you did!
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