So last week I went to Sam's club and got a 25 pound bag of bread flour and a big jawn of dry yeast.
I've made pizza and bagels (first time) and had some great success.
I assumed bagels would be more complicated but they're super easy to make and I never found them to be so satisfying and delicious until I had one fresh from the oven (with some smoked salmon pate of course).
So now I'm looking for more things to do with my excess supply of flour and yeast.
What do you guys do with your doughs?
I dug them
Throw away your bread flour and just do a blend of hard wheat and soft white wheat for your dough. It'll be a bit of trial and error, but I find being able to control the protein content of the flour helps me control gluten development better.
Bread flour develops too fast for me and really hampers my long fermenting doughs
do you use a 1:1 ratio of wheat and white flour?
what are you baking specifically with your long fermenting doughs?
I'm a complete rookie when it comes to baking and I want to make some nice bread next but I'm not sure where to start.
Pita bread
It all depends, but usually I only do about 8% hard red wheat, maybe 3-4% of other glutinous grains (spelt mainly), and the rest all purpose whole white wheat
As for what I'm baking, they are just sourdough loaves
I usually use a slightly harder flour for a starter (type 70 or type 85). Just gotta mix it with some water and let it sit for a week and wala you have a yeast culture
Download a copy of tartine bread my man. It'll teach you a whole lot about bread and how different variables like ambient temperature and humidity affect how the yeast and dough act.
Alright someone hit me with a quick and chewy pizza dough recipe. It's 1 pm for me right now and I want to have it for dinner. I've gotten bread, whole wheat, and AP flour on me.
2 cups AP
3/4 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbs EVOO
1 tsp yeast
Mix salt and flour. Proof yeast, add EVOO and add to flour. Mix until comes together. Knead 8 minutes. Shape dough into a tight ball. Lightly grease bowl, place dough in bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise 1-1.5 hours. Meanwhile preheat oven with stone at 550F. Sprinkle cornmeal or semolina on peel or back of cookie sheet and spread dough into a thin circle, place on peel and top. Slide into oven.
>AP
bread flour is infinitely superior for pizza dough recipes
Fine. Use fucking bread flour and enjoy your godamn foccacia. I thought he asked for a pizza recipe. Myself, I use "00" flour with a sourdough starter and a 24 hour rise (pic related). But he wanted a quick decent pizza, not a fucking thick bread with toppings, you nog.
>bread flour for pizza dough
As opposed to?
any flour softer than that
The user above me actually uses the type of flour I prefer: 00, but I like to put in a bit of AP just for a bit of extra strength
I can't imagine using a flour pushing 13-14% gluten. I tried a whole AP flour crust once and it was really hard to eat from how chewy it was. If I tried to sell it my customers would probably riot
Wow. I use bread flour all the time and my pizzas come out amazing. I'll try ap next time. 00 is not an amount of protein, its a fine grind setting. And its generally not available in the US... Fuck spending gazillions of dollars on specialty flours.
since when did higher gluten content = thicker pizza?? you can make it as thin or thick as you want with bread flour. the texture when you eat it is the biggest difference. the chewy texture is what most people in the US come to expect and enjoy from pizza.
bump
Bread flour makes dope pan pizza.
>00 not generally available
Wat? I live in bumfuck backwater where the only groceries are a mom and pop and walmart in the county seat unless I drive 40 miles to a major city, and that walmart carries "00," ffs.
Nice looking bread loaf with toppings.
Alright, I'm back with results. I followed the recipe but I couldn't help mix in bread flour for the last 1/4 cup. Since I got done with the dough before 2pm, I put it in the fridge and just took it out halfway to dinnertime.
The dough ended up enough for two pizzas. Next time I'll split it before letting it rise. I also used a cast iron and heated it up on the stove top for 10 minutes before broiling in the oven. Cook time was a few minutes.
(1/2)
Sorry for the blurry picture, I didn't realize it was blurry on my phone. Here's a sideview of the air pocket development. It wasn't very chewy, tasted fresh but bland to be honest, even though I basted the crust with garlic bread spread I had in the fridge.
Once I've stopped using bread flour I realized how much of a meme it is
>it's not pizza unless it's margherita pizza toppings on a wafer
pan pizza or deep dish pizza is still pizza, and they taste great when made right. it's a perfectly good alternative to traditionally thin crust pizza.
and having a thicker crust does not magically make it bread. a pan pizza crust without toppings wouldn't even pass for bread.
Yeah, not bad looking for a quick dough. If you let it rise in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours it will have more depth of flavor and character. It's one of the reasons I switched to using a sourdough starter. Also, it's fairly low hydration so if you increase the water by 1/4 cup you'll get larger air pockets but it gets stickier to work with.
>pale dough
>burnt shredded cheese
>uneven too big chunks of tomatoes
>gargantuan chunks of onion
1/10 wouldn't sell to anybody
If that's a dope pan pizza then I don't want to make pizzas anymore