Mack's pizza attempt almost turns into a Best Pizza!! 1/17/2011

I am glad my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to try Peter’s DeLorenzo formulation. Although the formulation didn’t lead me to a better Mack’s crust, it will lead me to a new adventure.


There are a few things I would like to post about this experiment.

1. I don’t understand how long mixing can affect a dough and make it tougher (at least this dough). From the long mix I did, the dough turned out well, and was so soft when opening the dough. It makes me wonder just how bad a long mix is for some doughs. The tight dough turned into something altogether different. I wish I knew more about longer mix times in some doughs and why a longer mix might be better.

2. I left the dough ball ferment at room temperature for about 6 hrs. at market yesterday. The dough fermented a lot and then was so soft to open. The dough ball was so easy to open that I stretched it much more than 18” before I knew it. Then the dough hung over the 18” pizza peel. I then wasn’t sure if I could launch the pie off the peel into the oven (with the overlapping skin off the peel), so I decided instead of ruining the pie (with maybe a bad launch from the peel into the oven) to cut off the extra dough with a scissors. That is why in the pictures the final pizza doesn’t look round and some jagged edges can be seen. Because of cutting the dough off the TF changed to a much thinner pizza. I wish I had weighed the pieces of dough that I had cut off to be able to know what TF this pizza really was, but didn’t think about doing that right at that moment. I just threw it away.

3. This dough skin had a lot of fermentation bubbles and I think if I wouldn’t have pressed so hard on the skin (like Mack’s piemen do) and broke edge bubbles, this pie would have been light and airy in the rim. That is the next experiment for next week on another thread.

4. The resulting pizza from all of this reminded me of the pizza I ate at Best Pizza in Brooklyn, NY. The crust had about the same TF and was just about the same in being crispy. What a wonderful find from just doing one experiment. Maybe I will be able to make a Best Pizza style of pizza in my deck oven. Only one more experiment might be able to tell me if that would work or not. Steve, Randy, and my other taste testers really thought this was a really different pizza and enjoyed it. The manager of the flea market usually comes over to sample test pizzas and he wanted to buy the 3 leftover slices, but I said the extra slices weren’t for sale and Steve, Randy and I had second slices. Even the bottom crust seemed to brown like a Best Pizza. All cheddar on a pizza is great, if the right kind of cheddar can be found

5. The Cracker Barrel extra sharp cheddar tastes a lot like the cheese on a real Mack’s pizza. It isn’t exactly the same, but does have the tang that Mack’s cheese gives, and also is very oily. On the pictures it can be seen just how much oil the Cracker Barrel extra sharp cheddar gives when baked on the final pizza.

6. Pinocchio and Geppetto were also so excited about this new pizza and were watching over this experiment They both said hat’s off to Peter’s formulation. Pinocchio and Geppetto still want me to try the Cracker Barrel extra sharp cheddar on my other formulation for a Mack’s dough. Can’t they ever be satisfied.

7. I wouldn’t have been able to toss and throw this dough. It opened way too easily.

Norma

Next Experiment with Caputo with other added ingredients baked in a deck oven 1/17/2012

I mixed another all Caputo flour dough this to be tried in the deck oven Tuesday. This time I added 9 grams of Golden Supreme Baking Molasses, 9 grams of DME Dry Malt, and 5 grams of whole dried eggs (instead of the whole fresh eggs I used before), in addition to all the same other ingredients I had used for my last attempt. The mixture didn‘t need any extra water added. I am going to try and let the dough ball room temperature ferment until tomorrow. At least the dough ball is a little darker in color this time, but I still don’t know if what I did will give a better coloration to the crust, or even if the pizza will be okay.


I never would have believed it until I did this experiment, but Caputo with other added ingredients can be baked at lower temperatures and can have a browner crust, great taste in the crust, a moist rim, oven spring, and good bottom browning.

This was one of the most different pies my taste testers and I have tried. I couldn’t believe how moist the crumb was and the bottom crust stood out when it was held out. We all really enjoyed the taste, texture and the different taste in this Caputo pizza.

Randy got me to reheat a slice and it was even better after a reheat.

Now I wonder how I can use a combination of cake flour and AP or another combination of flours that are cheaper than Caputo and achieve the same pizza.

Norma

Link to next experiment.

http://learningknowledgetomakepizza.blogspot.com/2012/01/next-experiment-with-caputo-with-other.html

Six Lehmann dough pizzas for my great-granddaughter’s 2nd birthday party

I mixed enough dough for 6 Lehmann dough balls for 14” pizzas on Friday. These Lehmann dough balls were for my great-granddaughter’s birthday party yesterday. The dough was mixed in my Kitchen Aid mixer. I thought since children and adults both like pizza, I would make some pizzas at my granddaughter’s home and teach my youngest daughter how to stretch open a dough ball, dress a pizza, and slide it into the oven from a peel. My youngest daughter had lived in Brooklyn, NY for a long while, so she never had a chance to learn to make pizza.
I mixed the Lehmann dough by first putting the water in the mixer bowl, followed by the oil in the water, then dumped the flour with IDY and Morton’s Kosher salt, (sprinkled the Morton‘s Kosher salt on the one side of the flour and IDY on the other side of the flour) and mixed until the mixture came together, and then mixed for 6 minutes on speed 1. Then the dough balls were formed and lightly oiled with olive oil, before putting them into plastic containers.

The Lehmann dough balls had a two day cold ferment. I wanted to see how dough balls would ferment in different size plastic containers, so I used different size containers to place the dough balls in. I was somewhat surprised at how the different dough ball expanded in the different containers. They looked like the dough balls expanded differently, but I can understand that the smaller plastic containers had no where else to go but up in the smaller plastic containers when fermenting.

I never baked in a natural gas home oven before, so I had no idea of how the pizzas would bake. I had forgot my IR gun at market Friday, so I had no way of knowing what temperature the oven or pizza stone were. I guess my granddaughters natural gas home oven gets higher in temperature than my home electric oven because the pizzas did seem to bake faster than my home electric oven. I made the first pizza and let my daughter watch how I stretched the dough ball out, dress the pizza, and slide it onto the stone, then let her try to open the rest of the dough balls, dress the pies, and slide the pizzas onto the stone in the oven. The Lehmann dough even was so easy for my daughter to work with and she had no trouble opening the dough balls. For my daughter being a first time pizza maker she did a great job! The only problem she had was when she went to slide the one pizza off the peel onto the pizza stone. It wasn’t perfectly round, but that sure wasn’t bad for a first time pizza maker.

Everyone at the birthday party really liked the Lehmann dough pizzas. Now my youngest daughter also wants to learn how to make pizza dough.

Norma