White Pizza, Lehmann dough

This is just another white pizza made with my same one day cold fermented Lehmann dough. I still find it interesting how the rim crust bakes differently on white pizzas than my regular cheese or meat pizzas.


Norma

Norma bakes on Steve's 1/2" steel plate in the deck oven

Steve was kind enough to bring his ½” steel plate for me to try out in the top of my deck oven. My top deck runs cooler than the bottom deck, but has a lower head space than my bottom deck. The bottom deck was about 548 degrees F. Steve and left the steel plate on the top deck for about 4 hours before we tried to make two pizzas. The steel plate did take a long time to get to the same temperature as the deck, but surely not the 4 hrs. The temperature on the steel plate was 500 degrees F when the first pie was made. The dough used is my regular Lehmann dough made with Kyrol flour. The first pie baked in about 6 minutes, or a little longer. The bottom crust didn’t burn at all. The second pizza tried went okay too with the steel plate, but the temperature of the steel plate then had fallen to about 438 degrees F. I don’t know why it fell so fast. The bake time for the second pie was a little over 7 minutes.


The 1/2" steel plate sure is heavy. When I lifted the ½” steel plate, I can now understand why people say it is so heavy.

Norma

Four day cold fermented preferment dough worked okay

The four day old preferment Lehmann dough worked out okay, but I think I added too much yeast to the final dough, or either my final dough temperature was too high. There was a bubble starting to form in the top of the dough ball before it was left to warm-up. The dough ball was then left to warm-up for 2 hrs at room temperatures. The dough ball was very easy to open.


The taste of the crust was very good from the 4 day cold ferment, but I didn’t think there was enough rim crust browning and there was a little to much bottom rim crust charring. The rim crust was moist. The bottom rim crust charring wasn’t noticeable when tasting the pizza, but I don’t like that much edge rim crust browning. Also the pizza wanted to bubble a little in the middle of the pizza during the bake. I don’t know why that was since the dough ball was warm-up enough. I also didn’t think the rim was brown enough in some places, even though I did add some sugar to the formulation.

Norma

lol, another Mack's attempt 8/21/2012

I didn’t know how to go about changing the last formulation for the dough to try another Mack’s attempt, so I just used the same formulation I attempted the last time, but used a little less sugar. I sure wouldn’t think the little less sugar changed the crust of the attempt I did yesterday, but it seemed like it did. I didn’t change the TF at all. The resulting pizza crust did come out different though. I have no idea why that was, unless I didn’t place the pizza the same place on the deck and didn’t rotate the same, or the sauce and cheese were different. In the last minute of the bake, the pizza was seeming to brown more on the bottom crust than I wanted it to, so it was moved to the top deck. I then even put a screen under the pizza for the last 30 seconds.


This attempt at a Mack’s pizza is the closest I have come so far, at least in Steve’s and my opinions. I used 50/50 Great Lakes sharp cheddar and Nasonville cheddar. The Nasonville cheddar is soft, creamy and without much flavor and the Great Lakes sharp cheddar has the sharper flavor and tang. I know Nasonville does melt well when baked on a pizza, but I don‘t like the way it clumps after grating. The Great Lakes sharp cheddar did help some with the clumping since it was added. I had grated the cheddars on Monday, but then purchased a new cheese yesterday at market. It was Amish butter cheese. I decided not to add it to the blend, but would think if I did it would have given the attempt a buttery flavor. I let Pete taste the Amish butter cheese and it does taste like butter, but I didn’t know how it would melt when baking the pizza. That is why I didn’t try it. We did add a little more than 8 oz. of the cheese blend yesterday.

Steve and I were trying to decide if we should make the sauce a little thicker than last week. We decided to make it a little thicker, but not near as thick as in other attempts. It still squeezed out of the plastic squeeze bottom well. I let Steve decide how much spices to add to the Gangi sauce. He came up with the best taste so far using the Gangi sauce. I think he added about 1 teaspoon of Kosher Morton salt, ½ tsp. of regular pepper and a lot of oregano. That amount was for a bigger amount than what was in the squeeze bottle though. We probably would have had enough sauce for at least ½ of another pizza. When I tasted Steve’s additions to the sauce it tasted just like the sauce on a Mack’s pizza. Great job Steve on the sauce!!

This whole attempt produce a very enjoyable pizza and the taste was almost like a Mack’s pizza. The only thing missing was a little buttery flavor and also a little tang. Other than those two things I would rate this Mack’s attempt successful.

Norma