by A.J. Coltrane

I thought I’d try Batali’s pizza dough recipe from “Italian Grill”. As it turns out, I’ve already blogged about his Food Network recipe here, and here. I compared it to other recipes I was familiar with here.

First off, the two recipes — “IG” is from his book “Italian Grill”.  “FN” is from the Food Network website.

There’s one striking difference. Doing the math — the “IG” formula comes out to ~18 grams of salt, somewhere in the range of 4-5% of the weight of the flour. That *has* to be a typo, as the finished product would be borderline inedible.

Next — Converting the “IG” formula to weights and comparing it to the pizza pictured below:

The table above assumes 4-1/2 ounces of flour per cup measurement. (The King Arthur Flour website was used for that conversion.)

This is one instance that I’m super glad I used a scale for measuring the salt, rather than following the recipe.

As a matter of fact, unless I’ve completely screwed up the conversions, the Batali “IG” formula is effectively a 75% hydration dough. (236+59)/390 = 75.6%. It’s possible to get a dough that wet on to a grill without mishap, but I’ve tried it. It’s really tricky. I used a 60% hydration at least in part to avoid a circus.

The Verdict:  Batali’s Food Network recipe is a winner. The “Italian Grill” recipe needs… help. Plus the editors not to screw it up.

—

I feel like I’m dissing the X-Man. (Unfortunately I couldn’t find that “Singles” scene on YouTube.)

by A.J. Coltrane

Cedar’s on Brooklyn has an awesome Pesto Naan. Really, everything there is tasty and very reasonably priced. Try anything from the tandoori oven, but don’t go when it’s dinnertime. To quote Yogi Berra: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

I thought I’d try to replicate their Pesto Naan, only without the tandoori oven. I selected the Joy of Cooking recipe as a jumping off point and came up with this:

The Joy recipe calls for adding 1-2 tablespoons of water as necessary to make the dough come together. I added 2-3 tablespoons.

I kneaded the dough on low speed for 8 minutes, then set it aside to rest for 1-1/2 hours. While the dough was resting I made a simple pesto. So far so good. Time to preheat the oven to 450F.

I divided the dough into two pieces and rolled each piece out thinly. I then spread the pesto over one round, topped it with the other round and sealed the package.

It sealed ok, but then I decided *that* wasn’t good enough. I tried rolling out the package at little more and managed to irreparably split the seam. Bad idea #1.

At that point I said “Ok screw it. Let’s put it in the oven and see what happens.”

Unfortunately I selected the perforated pizza pan that I like so much. Unfortunately as the pesto heated up it exuded a bunch of oil. Unfortunately that oil leaked out the sides of the naan and caught fire on the bottom of the oven.

“That’s a lot of smoke.”

“Where’s the fire extinguisher?!”

It wasn’t a *big* fire, but it was big enough to be a concern. I grabbed the nearest towel and yanked the mostly cooked dough out of the oven. No sense feeding more fuel into the fire. Plus, I’d put some energy into the naan! I was torn between dosing the fire extinguisher into the oven or just riding it out. I couldn’t figure out how to work the fire extinguisher, which was just as well. The fire burned itself out in 3 or 4 minutes.

“Well heck, the fire is out. I’ll leave the oven turned off and put the naan back into the oven to finish cooking — on a sheet tray this time.”

The bottom was a little too dark, but overall it was a winner.

As an added bonus I’d managed to throw a piece of orange plastic into the oven as part of the rush to yank out the naan during the fire. Chiseling melted plastic out of the oven is so much fun!

Note to self:  No perforated pans next time.

by A.J. Coltrane

Iron Chef Leftovers gave me ten kilos of “00” flour over the holidays. I’ve gradually been working through it. I initially tried some high-hydration pizzas with a small amount of oil, just like I’ve been doing with AP and bread flour. The results were waayy too extensible (stretchy) — extensible to the point of nearly disintegrating in my hands while shaping the dough. Last night’s pizza had a very modest 61% hydration and no oil at all. Even with that adjustment the dough was still very, very extensible.

A little poking around the internet gives this comparison of different flours at SeriousEats.

The fact is, the label Tipo “00” has nothing to do with protein content. Rather, it refers to the fineness of the milling. Tipo “00” is the finest grade of flour milled in Italy, and it has a consistency similar to baby powder. It’s available with several different levels of protein intended for different baking projects, just like American flours (which we’ll get to in a moment). The ones you’ll most commonly see in pizzerias are the redRinforzato bag, which features pictures of pizzas and bread, the bluePizzeria bag, which pictures a single pizza, and — the most common in the U.S. — the red The Chef’s Flour bags, which, in fact, contain the exact same flour as the Rinforzato. All three bags of flour have the exact same protein content: 12.5%

Because of the fineness of their milling, they don’t need quite as much water as an equivalent American flour (try making a 65% hydrated dough with “00” and American bread flour side-by-side and you’ll find that the “00” is much runnier).

To quote the Mythbusters guys:  “Well there’s your problem!”

One nice thing about using the grill when experimenting is that it forces me to create a dough that is *not* a total, sloppy mess. “How can I get this onto the grill” can become a real issue. In this case, using the grill pushed me to use a lower hydration dough than I might normally have tried, and it led to a small breakthrough.

A note about oil:  Normally, the addition of oil promotes browning and flavor at the expense of “lift”. I *like* browning and flavor, so the next “no oil” attempt will have something along the lines of 58-60% hydration, minimal kneading, and an 8 hour+ rise. In theory the longer rise (and short kneading) should give back some of the browning and flavor that would be lost by the absence of oil. It may be that adding a small amount of salt would help too — it should improve the structure and tie up some of the water, making the dough more manageable.

In theory anyway. It’s a process.

For the record – I was informed that this was the better of the two Crab Rangoon pizzas. Last night’s topping was cream cheese, crab, lime juice, honey, Sriracha, and cilantro.  I liked both of them about equally.

by A.J. Coltrane

At least I think it was chevre. I didn’t look that closely at the package.

Basil, chevre, salt, and olive oil got buzzed in the food processor while the Glacier tomatoes roasted.

and

The basil and tomatoes were taken from the Earthboxes. The dough was the standard “pizza dough” recipe. I didn’t milk the goat or anything, but it’s about as close as I can get to totally homemade.

Continue reading “Grilled Flatbread with Basil, Tomato, and Chevre” →