Gluten Development

Last summer, Jim Dodge came down to try my pizza. He very politely informed me that it was very nice, but that it wasn't quite kneaded enough. We later got into a discussion via email about how to tell if you dough has been kneaded enough. He outlined for me the four stages of gluten development, as follows:

1. When you first begin kneading the dough and it forms a ball, it will stick to the sides of the bowl and look rough. When you touch the dough is will be very sticky and stick to your fingers. When you pull the dough it tears easily and quickly.

2. After slow kneading the dough begins to form a smoother shape, stops sticking so much to the side of the bowl, mostly sticks just on the bottom. When touched sticks less to your fingers. When you pull a peace of dough it stretches slightly and then tears. If you were to knead the dough by hand it would start to form a smooth ball, but then blister.

3. The dough has formed a ball, has pulled completely from the side and bottom of the bowl. There is very little dough left on the side of the bowl. When you touch the dough it is not sticky, but firm and very elastic. Pulling a peace oft dough it stretches thin and translucent. When you knead the dough it quickly form into a ball with a very smooth exterior skin and does not tear or blister.

4. If you continued to knead this dough it would revert back to step 2, which is and indication the gluten has broken down.

The same is true when you over whip eggs, it will go from 1.Soft peaks (wet & sticky), 2.firm peaks (slightly sticky), 3.stiff peaks (dry), 1. soft peaks (wet & sticky).

Our goal as pizza makers is to take the dough to the 3rd stage, as outlined above. I would say that this is the absolute core of proper pizza dough technique. You can get everything else right, but if you mess this part up, it's not going to be as good as it can be. You can do it in any manner of mechanical mixer, by hand, heck by some method not yet devised, but you gotta do it. Since I do all my dough preparation several days in advance, usually on a Wednesday or Thursday night, there's no way I can get someone like Jim to come down to Santa Cruz on some weeknight to make dough with me. So, it took me a lot of trial and error to really get my gluten development to the right level, but now that I know what to look for, it's quite easy.

The absolute best indicator of proper gluten development is contained in the sentence "The dough has formed a ball, has pulled completely from the side and bottom of the bowl." That's pretty much the whole thing right there folks. If you're mixing your dough in a mechanical mixer, and it hasn't pulled away from the sides of the bowl - ie the bowl should look CLEAN in the areas where the dough is not - then guess what? Your dough isn't done. So keep mixing. Until it happens. Simple as that.

Another good indicator, is how smooth the dough balls are when you go to divide them up. When you are dividing up your big ball of dough into individual dough balls (more on that later), if you’re getting blisters or funny textures, it’s because your gluten is not fully developed. Properly developed gluten will result in a super smooth and silky dough ball.

When the gluten is properly developed you'll notice that the taste is markedly improved. You'll get a much more bread-ey flavor. Also you'll find that the dough is easier to work with, since it is a bit more elastic and won't tear as easily. So, like I said, keep that mixer going until you see it pull away from the sides of the bowl!

PS - I'm having some problem with the Blogger application keeping all the text the same size and font, just in case you thought I was truly graphically challenged.

Crust Crust Evolution

Well my oven has certainly been busy, but this blog has been long neglected. I've had several requests for my dough recipe, so to kill two birds with one stone, I'm going to make an effort to update this blog and also share what I've learned.

To start with, the more I make pizza, the more I realize that the most important part of the equation is technique. Not some fancy salt from some far off place or water imported from the other side of the planet, but what you do to the four basic ingredients. So while this post will deal with the proportions and ingredients, subsequent posts will deal with the techniques used to make and form the dough.

I'm still using my excel spreadsheet to generate my recipe each time. You can download the spreadsheet here.

Taking the ingredients one at a time, starting with flour. I'm using a 50-50 mix of King Arthur Italian-Style and King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour. Those playing along at home may notice that while the Italian Style is sold in 3 lb. bags, the Bread Flour is sold in 5 lb. bags. Annoying right? So buy 15 lbs. of each, if you're going to be making lots of pizza like me. I used to have this line in the spreadsheet that spit out half of the flour weight, so I could measure each flour out. Now I make large batches of the 50-50 mix in a nice airtight tub, and simply measure out of that. A word on flour hygiene. I have noticed on some occasions (not in my pizza flour mind you, but in the all purpose stuff I keep separate) that it is possible to get some wee beasties in your flour. With the AP flour, I can throw it out and go to the store and get more, but not so with my pizza mix. So, I make sure to never ever put anything back into the tub. If you've got some extra flour from dusting? Throw it out. Measuring your flour out? Get a squeaky clean big spoon, don't touch the business end, and measure your flour out. Don't get such a big tub that you won't see the bottom of it for a year. As soon as you do see the bottom of it, give it a good wash with a little bleach and let dry thoroughly.

Water. This is easy. I take the filtered chilled water out of my fridge door. Since I'm using active dry yeast, the water needs to be heated to between 120-130F. I asked Jim Dodge if this step was really still necessary, and he informed me that it was. Besides, the nice warm dough on your hands feels better than really cold dough. At one point, I had this super nerded out section of the spreadsheet that would actually calculate how long I needed to put the water in the microwave in order to bring it to the right temp. Mind you it was calibrated for my fridge water temp, bowl and microwave. Then the microwave went kaput and I haven't yet bothered to update it, but I probably will in the near future, and I'll post on how you can calculate it for your setup as well.

Salt. I use Kosher Salt.

Yeast. I use Red Star Active Dry Yeast.

A note on weighing these ingredients. I keep two scales on hand, one for the flour and water, and one for the salt and yeast. The reason is that my flour/water scale weighs in 5 gram increments, which is too coarse for the amounts of salt/yeast usually called for in the recipe. My salt/yeast scale gets maxed out a 1 kg., which is too low to measure the flour/water amounts. If anyone has a scale that can weigh up to around 5 lbs, and has a resolution of 0.1 gram, please let me know!

My dough ball size has recently been bumped up from around 200-250 grams, to 275 grams. This was after a trip to Delancy in Seattle. Maisie took me there on my birthday, and we had a wonderful meal. If you're in the area I can't recommend it highly enough. We sat at the bar so I could watch Brandon at work, and he was kind enough to share some of his tricks with me. I really loved the large, puffy delicious crust, and so ever since then I've been making my dough ball a bit bigger, so I can get the same. I'm happy to say that I can now get the same big crust that I so enjoyed there.

A note on max mixing capacity. I've found that in my Electrolux DLX 2000 mixer the maximum number of 275 gram dough balls I can make is around 10. Any more, and it becomes much harder to get everything properly kneaded. If you're using a Kitchen Aid, it's probably far less, depending on what model you have. More on proper kneading later.

Also, I always add one "phantom dough ball" to the spreadsheet when I am making a batch. If you try to make exactly 6 275 gram dough balls, you'll inevitably lose some dough along the way, and then you'll end up with a half sized ball. Just add one dough ball to the number you actually want to make, and you'll always have enough.

That pretty much covers the ingredient side of things, on to mixing/kneading/dough ball formation.

New Season, New Dough, New Pizzas

It's been a while since I've updated this blog, mostly due to the lack of oven use in the rainy season and winter. Now that spring is here and the rain has stopped, it's pizza time once again.

The biggest news is the evolution of my dough recipe and technique. After making all my pizzas using a Caputo 00 flour, I decided to try something suggested by Jeff Varasano's on his excellent pizza website. I have incorporated quite a few of his suggestions into my pizza making. They are as follows:

1. I Switched from 100% Caputo 00 flour to 50% King Arthur Bread Flour and 50% King Arthur Italian-Style Flour.

2. I'm using his wet kneading technique with my Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

3. I'm allowing my dough to cold rise in my fridge for several days in small, individual re-usable containers.

These three changes have made a marked improvement in my dough. I liked the 100% 00 dough, but it didn't have much chew to it, and the middle of the pizza was often lacking structure. The Bread Flour addition seems to remedy this, and the cold rise in the fridge has added a a lot more structure and bubbles - both of which are very nice. The cold rise also seems to have added a lot more color to the dough once it's cooked - much more browning without any hint of burning. For the first time since I starting making pizza I am experiencing a brand new feeling - a lack of desire to mess with my dough recipe. I'm sure at some point in the future I'll be tinkering and changing things, but for now, I'm really happy with my dough.

I know a lot of people swear by a sourdough starter for their pizza dough. At this point in my life, I'm just too busy and sourdough starter seems like one more thing to take care of. I read Ed Wood's book, and while it's all straight forward and simple enough, it still just seems like more time than I'm willing to invest in dough. I love the results I'm getting, and now that I'm making the dough several days in advance of baking, it's extremely convenient. I can knock out a weekend's worth of dough balls on a week night with very little active time in the kitchen.

Salt seems to be a subject that generates a great amount of passion. I had some very nice high end sea salts that my mother gave me for Christmas a few years back. I used them in my first few batches, but they soon ran out, and the prospect of spending $10-$20 for a tiny bit of sea salt seemed silly to me. If I've got some really nice salt on hand, sure I'll use it, but I've been using Diamond Kosher Salt for the last few batches, and I have to say I can't notice much if any difference. I'm sure if I put two pizzas side by side with different salts and really tried hard I could find some difference, but really, I'm not going to spend $10 on salt every time my friends come over for pizza. Pizza should be simple food.

Two new pizza recipes to share, both of which I think are excellent.

Roasted Crimini Mushrooms with Gruyere and Truffle Oil

Remember how I said pizza should be simple food? Okay forget that for a minute.

For 3 ~255 gram dough balls

20 oz. crimini mushrooms, sliced (that's two containers worth from Trader Joe's)
2 tablespoons fresh sage, chopped fine
Gruyere cheese, sliced
olive oil, salt
white truffle oil

Roast the mushrooms and sage with some olive oil and salt in the oven. This is a nice thing to do while your oven is heating (if you have a covered pan so coals/ash doesn't get in) or while you wait for guests to show up. Get them really cooked down with the lid on, and then remove the lid for the last 5-10 minutes to get some nice color. Check for salt at the end and adjust if needed. Put 1/3 of the mushrooms, 6-8 thin slices of the Gruyere cheese, a swizzle of olive oil a sprinkle of salt on your dough. Bake until done and then drizzle with some truffle oil.

Caramelized Onions with Blue Cheese
From the Mugnaini Website
For 3 ~255 gram dough balls

3 cups yellow onions, sliced
1-1/2 teaspoons fresh thyme, chopped.
Crumbled blue cheese - I used Point Reyes
Salt, olive oil

Caramelize the onions on low heat for 45 minutes to an hour in a saute pan with some olive oil. When done, take off the heat and then stir in the thyme. Salt to taste. Put the onions, blue cheese, a swizzle of olive oil and pinch of salt on your formed dough ball and bake until done. Remember that the blue cheese easily overpowers the onions, so it's better to go long on the onions and short on the blue cheese. Between one to two tablespoons is enough for each pizza. When I make this again I'm going to make more onions - maybe start with 4 cups instead of 3. It's a delicate balance, but very tasty.