Well, the experiments I was running concerning the water/flour ratio, were consistently producing the same results (or near enough that the criteria I was working with wasn't greatly affected). However, what I did notice was that a water/flour ratio above 0.7 resulted in pizza dough that was hard to work with. I was constantly having to flour it and apply fresh cornmeal to prevent it from sticking to the counter while forming the shell as well as sticking to the peel while assembling the pizza toppings.
The bread on the other hand, does not need to be worked, so stickiness does not factor into it. A higher ratio would be possible without any added difficulty. However, there did come a point where the the bread no longer grew larger (lower ratios had a smaller loaf produced). Luckily for ease of the math involved, this also occurred around the 0.7 ratio mark as well.
All of this combined, has led me to believe, that my maximum water ratio is 7 parts water and 10 parts flour, both by mass.
My next task is to expand on this. Since varying the water didn't enhance the flavours (probably because water isn't flavourful...) is to vary the liquid I use. My current experiments are with substituting some of the water with milk. I chose milk because of its fat content which in theory will help add flavour, I had originally wanted to test oils and butter, which are both fats. But the ease of using milk called to me and overruled my better judgement. I have started with a ratio of 1:1 (1 part water and 1 part milk). I should find out how this turns out in a few days once the dough has fully matured. I don't knead bread right now (pun intended), but I will be wanting pizza. So my experiment is continuing there.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Potatoe Wedges
So, not to let the other starches feel left out, I made potatoe wedges for supper tonight. Not shown is the Honey Dill sauce that accompanied this meal.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Bread and Pizza
Well, I cooked the bread today, followed immediatly by the pizza. Both turned out exceptionally well. As you will remember, these were the 0.700 ratio doughs. I will move onto the 0.750 dough later this week.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Bread
I have recently started making my own bread again (my old loaves were never that great, so I stopped work on them). The reason for starting again is my experiments with pizza dough. I noticed all the big bubbles that formed in the dough while it was rising in the fridge (The higher mositure doughs I made in the past). I was always anoyed when I made the pizza crusts, all those bubbles were destroyed and I never got to taste them. How wonderful it would be in a bread loaf! But alas, taking it out and shaping it into a loaf would damage the bubbles and they would never fully recover, even after allowing to rise again.
Enter my stroke...of genius! Make the dough, place it in a loaf pan, cover with plastic wrap and let it rise in the fridge before baking. BRILLIANCE!
I was concerned at first about putting cold dough directly into a preheated oven, so the first experiment (which I am keeping lock stepped to my pizza dough tests), with a ratio of 0.667 was allowed to sit out at room temperature for about an hour before baking. I preheated the oven to 400ºF and cooked for 10 minutes before reducing the temperature to 350ºF for a another half hour. No washes or steam was added before, during or after cooking.
When it came out it looked a little dark, which made me fearful of how the loaf would taste. Luckily when I ate the first slice I was relieved, it tasted great! It was also a tough bread, something I definetly enjoy. However it did tend to stick to the loaf pan.
The second loaf (again lock stepped) was 0.650 and to avoid the sticking issue, I placed the doughin a silicone loaf pan that I have to rise. This one I took straight from the fridge into the oven, without any noticeable difference in the final product. When it was cooking, I could faintly smell silicone, so I am wary of trying the pan again. However when I unmolded it, it had an awesome texture and did not stick at all. After some trepidation as to whether I should try some or not (after all I did smell silicone while baking), I tried it. I was expecting a silicone taste, which was lacking. I can happily say that I have nearly eaten the whole loaf, and it was delicious all the way through.
There was a problem with both loaves though, the water ratio wasn't high enough to create the really big bubbles that I want, so the loaves were slightly denser than I want. This problem should go away as I increase the ratio. While this ratio seems to be working well for pizza dough (so far), it isn't quite cutting it for bread.
The current loaf is at 0.700 (again lock stepped) and is currently rising in the metal loaf pan I started with. This time I lightly greased it with some olive oil.
Enter my stroke...of genius! Make the dough, place it in a loaf pan, cover with plastic wrap and let it rise in the fridge before baking. BRILLIANCE!
I was concerned at first about putting cold dough directly into a preheated oven, so the first experiment (which I am keeping lock stepped to my pizza dough tests), with a ratio of 0.667 was allowed to sit out at room temperature for about an hour before baking. I preheated the oven to 400ºF and cooked for 10 minutes before reducing the temperature to 350ºF for a another half hour. No washes or steam was added before, during or after cooking.
When it came out it looked a little dark, which made me fearful of how the loaf would taste. Luckily when I ate the first slice I was relieved, it tasted great! It was also a tough bread, something I definetly enjoy. However it did tend to stick to the loaf pan.
The second loaf (again lock stepped) was 0.650 and to avoid the sticking issue, I placed the doughin a silicone loaf pan that I have to rise. This one I took straight from the fridge into the oven, without any noticeable difference in the final product. When it was cooking, I could faintly smell silicone, so I am wary of trying the pan again. However when I unmolded it, it had an awesome texture and did not stick at all. After some trepidation as to whether I should try some or not (after all I did smell silicone while baking), I tried it. I was expecting a silicone taste, which was lacking. I can happily say that I have nearly eaten the whole loaf, and it was delicious all the way through.
There was a problem with both loaves though, the water ratio wasn't high enough to create the really big bubbles that I want, so the loaves were slightly denser than I want. This problem should go away as I increase the ratio. While this ratio seems to be working well for pizza dough (so far), it isn't quite cutting it for bread.
The current loaf is at 0.700 (again lock stepped) and is currently rising in the metal loaf pan I started with. This time I lightly greased it with some olive oil.
Pizza Dough
I have been working on the dough for two weeks now. Unlike my cheese fiasco, I am being much more careful with the dough. To that extent I am trying different flour to water ratios, the only quantity I am changing is water; Nothing else is changing. The recipe has been reduced to:
600 grams Flour
1 tbls Sugar, Salt and Yeast
X grams Water
I am measuring the flour and water to the nearest gram. This is important, because the water is changing by as little as 10 grams per test, so a gram off from what I want to test would create a large difference. You will also note that I have removed the fat from the recipe. Gone for now is the 2 tbls of olive oil or butter I used to add.
As for the procedure, I am mixing all of the dry ingredients in the mixer bowl while on top of the scale, I am then adding filtered cold water. I use my stand mixer to knead the dough until it separates from the sides of the bowl. However in the future, as I increase the water content, I will need a different criteria for knowing the dough is "done". From here I put it into a bowl and cover with saran wrap and put it in the fridge for 2-3 days. The dough will rise and become spongy during this time. The dough is taken out and can be used for three pizza crusts. The oven is preheated to 500 ºF with a pizza stone and then allowed to sit for roughly half an hour before baking (I used to start baking as soon as it was preheated). It isn't removed until the cheese is showing signs of browning (~10 minutes).
I started the test with a 1:2 water to flour ratio (0.667), this has been my basic dough ratio for awhile now. The dough came out nice and flavourful, it browned nicely in the oven where it was touching the stone and developed a few big bubbles (3-4 cm above the average top).
The next test was the 13:20 (0.650) which turned out very similarly. This was mix up, I had intended on increasing the ratio, but I was destracted by something shiney. There was no noticeable difference, both of the doughs were moist and tacky to the touch, but not sticky. Both tasted great.
The current test, which I just finished making is 7:10 (0.700). I have high hopes for this one.
In the future, I am going to increase the ratio by 0.050 until I believe I have over shot my optimal ratio, at which point I will start doing a successive approximation strategy until I find the ratio I like the most.
I forgot to mention that, for consistency sake, I am spraying the top of the dough down with olive oil (a light coating), I'm using pureed reduced salsa for the sauce, 28MF%/42% moisture mozzarella cheese and red pepper topping (placed under the layer of cheese). To prevent sticking to the peel, I am using a dusting of cornmeal.
600 grams Flour
1 tbls Sugar, Salt and Yeast
X grams Water
I am measuring the flour and water to the nearest gram. This is important, because the water is changing by as little as 10 grams per test, so a gram off from what I want to test would create a large difference. You will also note that I have removed the fat from the recipe. Gone for now is the 2 tbls of olive oil or butter I used to add.
As for the procedure, I am mixing all of the dry ingredients in the mixer bowl while on top of the scale, I am then adding filtered cold water. I use my stand mixer to knead the dough until it separates from the sides of the bowl. However in the future, as I increase the water content, I will need a different criteria for knowing the dough is "done". From here I put it into a bowl and cover with saran wrap and put it in the fridge for 2-3 days. The dough will rise and become spongy during this time. The dough is taken out and can be used for three pizza crusts. The oven is preheated to 500 ºF with a pizza stone and then allowed to sit for roughly half an hour before baking (I used to start baking as soon as it was preheated). It isn't removed until the cheese is showing signs of browning (~10 minutes).
I started the test with a 1:2 water to flour ratio (0.667), this has been my basic dough ratio for awhile now. The dough came out nice and flavourful, it browned nicely in the oven where it was touching the stone and developed a few big bubbles (3-4 cm above the average top).
The next test was the 13:20 (0.650) which turned out very similarly. This was mix up, I had intended on increasing the ratio, but I was destracted by something shiney. There was no noticeable difference, both of the doughs were moist and tacky to the touch, but not sticky. Both tasted great.
The current test, which I just finished making is 7:10 (0.700). I have high hopes for this one.
In the future, I am going to increase the ratio by 0.050 until I believe I have over shot my optimal ratio, at which point I will start doing a successive approximation strategy until I find the ratio I like the most.
I forgot to mention that, for consistency sake, I am spraying the top of the dough down with olive oil (a light coating), I'm using pureed reduced salsa for the sauce, 28MF%/42% moisture mozzarella cheese and red pepper topping (placed under the layer of cheese). To prevent sticking to the peel, I am using a dusting of cornmeal.
PIZZA!
Well I am back to experimenting with pizza. For now I have putoff testing the chemical leavener in favour of experimenting with other factors. The only things you can really change on a pizza are:
1) Dough
2) Sauce
3) Cheese
4) Toppings
I recently went through the cheese phase (which I will have to go through again). I tried Provolone and Havarti (under recommendation from a cheese monger, err I mean retailer). While good, the cost increase with both compared to Mozzarella was a little prohibitive compared to the flavour imparted. That, and Havarti is hard to shred! I went back to mozzarella, broken and defeated until I realized that Mozzarella comes in multiple different types. The majour differences are the moisture content and milk fat content (As far as I was able to find out, please correct me if I'm wrong).
There were noticiable differences between each cheese, but the two main criteria I selected that I wanted to optimize for was stringyness (I like some, but not a lot) and browning (browned mozzarella tastes much better). This experiment failed, mainly because I didn't cook them side by side or one right after another. I didn't take pictures, and I wrote a quick note on the qualities. There were no real controls and the criteria was entirely objective, no measurments at all. So alas, dear reader, I can't tell you the optimal values for a non-stringy, nicely browning cheese. What did come of this experiment though was a reduction in the amount of cheese I use, I found that I enjoyed the crust with minute amounts of cheese more than the solid sheet in the center. I am still working on finding the optimal cheese amounts.
1) Dough
2) Sauce
3) Cheese
4) Toppings
I recently went through the cheese phase (which I will have to go through again). I tried Provolone and Havarti (under recommendation from a cheese monger, err I mean retailer). While good, the cost increase with both compared to Mozzarella was a little prohibitive compared to the flavour imparted. That, and Havarti is hard to shred! I went back to mozzarella, broken and defeated until I realized that Mozzarella comes in multiple different types. The majour differences are the moisture content and milk fat content (As far as I was able to find out, please correct me if I'm wrong).
There were noticiable differences between each cheese, but the two main criteria I selected that I wanted to optimize for was stringyness (I like some, but not a lot) and browning (browned mozzarella tastes much better). This experiment failed, mainly because I didn't cook them side by side or one right after another. I didn't take pictures, and I wrote a quick note on the qualities. There were no real controls and the criteria was entirely objective, no measurments at all. So alas, dear reader, I can't tell you the optimal values for a non-stringy, nicely browning cheese. What did come of this experiment though was a reduction in the amount of cheese I use, I found that I enjoyed the crust with minute amounts of cheese more than the solid sheet in the center. I am still working on finding the optimal cheese amounts.
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