A few more toppings for Detroit style pizzas and an experiment with a week old dough ball

I had been making larger batches of the Detroit style doughs the last three weeks.  I am not sure how much dough to make for this time of the year, when the temperatures swing so much and also since it rains some Tuesdays.  I did have one left over dough ball from last Tuesday and just let it sit in the deli case until this past Monday to see what it looked like.  I had a little extra dough leftover from scaling Monday, so I took the week old dough ball out of the deli case on Monday.  The dough ball was very wet and clammy and had slumped a lot.  It still looked like it had a some fermentation bubbles though, so I just balled the extra piece of dough with the week old dough ball.  The dough ball then became normal in feel.  I tried that dough ball out at the end of yesterday to see if when using a dough ball with a higher than normal weight and also a mixed dough ball would rise in the bake.  Vermont smoked pepperoni and peppered smoked bacon were added as the toppings.  I should have applied the Vermont smoked pepperoni in the middle of the bake, because it wanted to brown too much, but I was more interested if this dough would rise right in the bake.  It did rise normally in the bake, but I found it interesting that the rim crust didn’t get those extra crispy caramelized edges, I guess that was from the higher height when the cheese melted along the sides of the steel pan.  The bottom crust did get browner and crisper though.  At least I found out that old dough can be added to freshly made dough and it still rises well in the bake.  The taste of the crumb really didn’t improve any in flavor though.

I did season my steel pans the last two weeks after baking in them.  The one photo shows what my steel pans look like after the seasoning yesterday.  The pizzas are a lot easier to remove after the seasonings.  I don’t know if I will have to season the steel pans every week now, or if they will be okay for awhile.

I tried a veggie pizzas three different ways yesterday.  The first bake had no sauce, the second bake had pretty much sauce and the third baked had a little sauce.  I think I like the third bake better.  Customers seem to like the veggie Detroit style pizzas.  I had purchased a big bag of spinach for .75, a bunch of broccoli for .50 and 3 colors of peppers at market yesterday for .50 a piece.  It doesn’t cost much to purchase veggies at market.  This was the first time I added the broccoli to the spinach on the dough first before the cheese and other toppings.  This style of pizza lends itself well to many toppings.

I also tried out one other kind of topping pizza yesterday.  The sausage was applied raw.  The sausage did cook well in the bake, but I think I added too much sauce to that pizza.

Norma

Bubbling on inner crust, really don't know what that was from :(

I have been using the Occident flour only to make what I call the boardwalk style pizza dough for the last few weeks.  Since I had a 50 lb. bag of Kryol, and also another part bag of Kryol flour I decided Monday to add some Kryol flour to the Occident flour to use the Kryol flour up some in two batches of dough.  I didn’t measure exactly how much Kryol flour I added to the Occident flour, but for both batches of dough, but it was approximately 2 lbs. of Kryol flour added to each batch.  I knew when I balled the dough balls Monday that the dough felt drier even though I used the exact same formulation as I had been using and also the same mix time I had been using.

When opening the dough balls yesterday, the dough balls openly differently.  The dough balls weren’t hard to open, but they sure weren’t as easy to open as when I just used the Occident flour.

The other thing I noticed yesterday when using the blend of flours in the dough was that the middle of the crust wanted to get bubbles while in the oven.  Even if the dough balls were warmed up properly, and pressed on really well when opening the dough balls into skins, the middle of the pizzas had those bubbles in the bake.  I used the bubble popper yesterday more than I ever have.  I even warmed some dough balls up in the one warming unit I use to temper the Detroit style doughs.  I  sure don’t know why the inner crust wanted to develop those inner crust bubbles in the bake.

Those unusual bubbles led me to do another experiment to see if I could get rid of them.  I used one dough ball and rolled it out with a big rolling pin and rolled aggressively.  That still didn’t get rid of the inner crust bubbles in the bake.  There was still a little rim crust rise in the bake after using the rolling pin.  Steve told me I should have tried my docker to see if I would get rid of those inner crust bubbles, but I said how many people use dough dockers on this style of pizza and anyway my docker was at home.

The first set of photos are when I used the rolling pin and the second set of photos is when I just pressed on the dough ball when opening.

All the pizzas tasted the same in the crust yesterday as before.

I want to try and use up all of the leftover Kyrol flour, but am not sure what to try next.  I don’t want that bubbling on the middle of the crust.

 Steve and his wife were in Ocean City, NJ and visited Manco and Manco on the boardwalk on Monday.  T  I was anxious to hear what Steve and his wife thought of Manco and Manco pizzas.  Steve said he wasn’t going to report on the pizzas they ate because he had forgotten to take his camera in to take photos and it was windy and cold on the boardwalk, so they weren’t going to stay long there.  What surprised me was that Steve told me that Manco and Manco cheese didn’t have any tang in the taste of the cheese.  He also said they their crust was really bland and he had to add salt to make the slices of pizzas he ate taste okay.  He also said he had to add oregano to the slices he ate. Steve also said he really didn’t know what kind of cheese Manco and Manco was using, but as far as he could tell it tasted like regular mozzarella and the cheese didn‘t taste like cheddar.  Steve did say the slices he had were right out of the oven from a whole pizza.  He also said Manco and Manco dough balls looked fermented well and even ran together in the pans like they use at Mack’s.  Steve told me he wouldn’t go back to Manco and Manco.  Steve's wife didn’t like Manco and Manco slices either.

Norma

New Sign for market since the one ripped that Dave made for me

The sign that my friend Dave made me for outside of market ripped (the paper sign part was made on butcher paper) this past Tuesday from the windy conditions outside.  I painted both sides of the sign white and did try to paint the sign somewhat like Dave made the sign in the first place, but since I am not an artist like Dave is I can not draw like he does.  The two-sided sign is one heavy bugger to move for me.

I purchased a few Italian tomato plants, some different peppers and two basil plants to plant outside when the danger of frost is over.

Norma

Another Home Run Inn Pizza Attempt

This is how this attempt went on an the HRI clone dough and HRI clone pizza.

The dough ball didn’t double in size by the measurements of the poppy seeds spacing, but the dough ball did look fermented enough. The dough ball was taken out of the fridge at 6:30 PM and I thought I would first try to roll the dough out to a skin a little and then try to press out the skin by hand.  After rolling for a little I tried to pressed it out the rest of the way and even tried to pick it up and stretch by hand, but as can be seen there wanted to be two tears in the skin, so I finished rolling the skin out to 13”.  I rolled to 13” to see if a thinner crust might be able to be crisper on the bottom crust.  I first folded over the edges of the rim and then fluted.  The skin was docked before fluting.  The skin on the dark disk was tempered for 20 minutes at room temperature at about 70 degrees F.  A couple parts of the fluted rim wanted to fall some so I pushed them back up and fluted those parts again.

The pizza was dressed right after the skin was tempered.  Until the sauce and mozzarella were applied the one side of the fluted rim wanted to sag down, so I fluted that again.  Until the whole pizza was dressed the fluted edges seemed to behave better, in that they did stay upright then.  I didn’t use a lot of bench flour when rolling, so I don’t know if I would have used more bench flour if that might have made the fluted edges stay upright better.  I could see that even before trying to flute the skin that it was going to give those dimples right near the edges of the dark disk.  I don’t know if more flour would have been used when rolling if that would improve those dimples either, but I did see that the longer the fluted skin sat out the more it wanted to stay upright without sagging.

The pizza was dressed with a hot sausage I had purchased at my local supermarket on sale for .99.  The amounts of ingredients used on this pizza were 7 ounces of the hot sausage, 6.5 ounces of LMPS mozzarella, 14 slices of pepperoni, 1.1 ounce of diced green peppers and 4 ounces of sauce.

The pizza was baked on the second to the top rack of the oven at 425 degrees F for 15 minutes, then I removed the bottom rack and put it on the top oven rack position for the last 2 minutes because the cheese wasn’t browning enough.  I would have put the top rack in at first, but I thought it would be too close to the pizza for me to be able to watch what was going on in the bake.  Total bake time was 17 minutes.  The fluted edges did stay upright in the oven, with no sagging.  The edge crust got a little too brown.  There was no real gum lines as can be seen in the photos.  The baked pizza was 11 ½ “.  I liked the thicker rim crust better than when I fluted thinner in the looks and taste.  The bottom crust didn’t seem any thinner to me though.

The HRI clone pizza did turn out very tasty in my opinion, in that the crust did have a good taste and the bottom crust and fluted edges were flaky.  I sure don’t know though if they were flaky enough, since I never ate any real HRI pizzas at their pizzerias.  I did really like the combination of toppings on this pizza.  At least I also found out a pre-bake of the skin really wasn’t needed to make a decent pizza.

Don’t mind my fingers because I was outside working today, so my fingernails aren’t in the best shape.

Norma