What is equivalent to Italian 00 flour in Ireland for making pizza dough?

armabelle

Rew wrote: »

For pizza I do a few things.

The Dough:
Make the dough with 20% semolina 80% 00 flour
I make the dough about a week in advance and keep it in the fridge to ferment and add some flavour
Never managed to get fresh yeast but going to work on a sourdough pizza dough soon

Cooking:
I use a stone and an oven that is pre heated as hot as possible for at least 45 mins to an hour
Even better heat the stone under a grill for 20 or more mins then transfer to the oven (carefully), it will be hotter then even your oven can get (I use this trick when baking bread also).
Transfer pizza to stone using pizza peel or a floured edgeless baking tray, this minimises the amout of time your oven is open and losting heat.
Pizza should be cooked in about 6-8 mins (or less) doing the above

The frying pan method is a similar idea to a baking stone and should work fine, even better if you use cast iron pan as it will hold more heat then an light aluminium or stainless steel pan. Your trying to store up heat in something then transfer that heat to the pizza, stones and cast iron are very good at absorbing massive amounts of heat. Where people hit issues with baking stones is not preheating them enough, they heat up much slower then your oven.

I also keep my dough in the fridge but only for around 24 hours. In fact, I let it rise first in a warm place after I mixed the ingredients and then after around 40mins I take out the air from the dough and form the balls. Then, for the second "rise" I put the balls in the fridge over night. Do you mix the ingredients and then right away let it ferment in the fridge? Do you only let it rise once?

I don't really care much about stone vs real oven because when the dough is right, it tastes great regardless of the method of cooking IMO.

meeeeh

It's not the taste. I like thick crust pizza and for that I find big baking tray in the oven perfectly acceptable. When I am doing thin crust I need the stone because otherwise the top can be burned and bottom soggy.

I must admit though that I haven't notice any difference between overnight dough or dough you make the same day. But then my taste palette probably isn't the best.

Rew

I would start with cold water not warm, mix and kneed then cover and into the fridge and leave it alone. If you don't retard it enough you can end up with a mess in the fridge though

Leave it there 5 or 6 days, when ready to go pull it out kneed form a ball let it have its 2nd rise for ~2h then make pizza and bake.

Stone versus other methods, not sure how much it would effect taste as much as texture I never had much luck with baking trays, always had soggy underwhelming bases. The stone produces really evenly cooked pizza and with 2 well preheated stones I can rapidly produce 10 or so large pizzas for party as the baking time is so short for each. Stone has been invaluable since I got into baking sourdough bread and the method of heating it under the grill has made them much more useful as I don't have to preheat the oven for an hour.

armabelle

Rew wrote: »

I would start with cold water not warm, mix and kneed then cover and into the fridge and leave it alone. If you don't retard it enough you can end up with a mess in the fridge though

Leave it there 5 or 6 days, when ready to go pull it out kneed form a ball let it have its 2nd rise for ~2h then make pizza and bake.

oh ok so you do yours the other way round. I will try your way but am loving the taste of mine so far. I use fresh yeast and it needs water around body temperature. Not sure how fickle live yeast is though. I don't use a thermometer and my water temp varies but it ha not affected my doughs rising

Rew

armabelle wrote: »

oh ok so you do yours the other way round. I will try your way but am loving the taste of mine so far. I use fresh yeast and it needs water around body temperature. Not sure how fickle live yeast is though. I don't use a thermometer and my water temp varies but it ha not affected my doughs rising

You want the cold water to slow down the yeast so fresh or dried it's the same.

armabelle

Rew wrote: »

You want the cold water to slow down the yeast so fresh or dried it's the same.

fresh yeast for me is not the same as dried which is why many people use fresh yeast despite it being less reliable and harder to come by.

Rew

armabelle wrote: »

fresh yeast for me is not the same as dried which is why many people use fresh yeast despite it being less reliable and harder to come by.

All the same as in the use of cold water in my method

Dial Hard

lordstilton wrote: »

Try this method and you'll never use the oven again...

Trust me it delivers a perfect pizza

Just wanted to come back and say thank you so much for this method. Finally got around to trying it on Monday with my leftover dough from a BBQ session and I wasn't arsed lighting the bbq for one pizza.

Worked a charm. I'm never bothering with my pizza stone again, it's the barbie or this. Two big thumbs up!

stimpson

Dial Hard wrote: »

Just wanted to come back and say thank you so much for this method. Finally got around to trying it on Monday with my leftover dough from a BBQ session and I wasn't arsed lighting the bbq for one pizza.

Worked a charm. I'm never bothering with my pizza stone again, it's the barbie or this. Two big thumbs up!

What dough did you use for this? I tried one this evening with my Neopolitan dough and a heavy cast iron pan. It came out a bit doughy (had to pull it out as the cheese was beginning to burn). I think my yeast may be a bit old, so a lack of spring may be part of it.

I took another dough ball out of the fridge so I'll try it again with a hotter pan and cooler grill.

Dial Hard

stimpson wrote:

What dough did you use for this? I tried one this evening with my Neopolitan dough and a heavy cast iron pan. It came out a bit doughy (had to pull it out as the cheese was beginning to burn). I think my yeast may be a bit old, so a lack of spring may be part of it.

I used the dough from the Death by Cheese pizza recipe in the Cooking Club (on mobile so can't link, sorry), made with Tipo 00. I've lost count of the number of dough recipes I've tried in search of the perfect pizza (there are no words for how much I love pizza) and this one is an absolute pleasure to work with. It's not authentic Neapolitan dough by any stretch of the imagination but it's a very dependable, easy dough that can be made quickly, handles like a dream and tastes great.

Also, I learned recently that yeast doesn't like metal bowls. That might be rolling-eye obvious to everyone here but I'm not a baker so wasn't aware of this. Switched from a stainless steel to a plastic bowl and the difference in my dough is remarkable. Knocking it back is an audible pleasure now!

As an aside, I see Aldi have charcoal-fired pizza ovens for €140 next week. I would have been seriously tempted had I not discovered this method in the interim.

stimpson

That's not a million miles away from a NY style dough. Baking powder is a weird one though. Smacks a bit of cheating, but I won't tell anyone.

I bought some new yeast this morning and just finished banging out 4 pizzas from the cast iron pan. I was right that I needed a hotter pan and cooler grill. They came out really well. Restaurant quality. I have to admit it's ingenious to start it on the hob to get it hot enough for a crispy crust. Now I just need to track down a pair of large cast iron pans for future use.

lordstilton

I just use a normal non stick pan.. Doesn't have to be cast iron

stimpson

lordstilton wrote: »

I just use a normal non stick pan.. Doesn't have to be cast iron

I don't do non stick. Last time I left a non stick pan on the hob you could still smell it 2 weeks later. All cookware is now stainless steel or heavy cast iron. In any case it has better heat retention.

manmachine

I wouldn't be fussy about most things but agree the 00 flour makes a huge difference.
Semolina and strong flour mix works quite well but nearly as hard to get semolina flour as 00!
Local Tesco used to do 00, and Superquinn had it until they expired but Little Italy and Fallon & Byrne are the only places I've consistently gotten it. Be great to hear of any other places.

UnknownSpecies

Dial Hard wrote: »

Also, I learned recently that yeast doesn't like metal bowls. That might be rolling-eye obvious to everyone here but I'm not a baker so wasn't aware of this. Switched from a stainless steel to a plastic bowl and the difference in my dough is remarkable. Knocking it back is an audible pleasure now!

Never knew this. My dough always sits in a metal bowl. I'll have to change that.

armabelle

UnknownSpecies wrote: »

Never knew this. My dough always sits in a metal bowl. I'll have to change that.

Oh no, all the high-end stand mixers by almost all manufacturers will now have to be replaced as they are steel

kylith

Just a query on how you'd recommend freezing the dough. Would you freeze a lump of dough before rolling it out, thaw in the fridge overnight? Or would you roll it out before freezing?

Tree

I cut in to the size balls I want and freeze. Let thaw o/n in the fridge or for a few hours on the counter, then shape and off with you