Pizza dough with beer

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MrRook

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This is going into a batch of pizza dough.
IMG_20200301_155402.jpg
 
Let us know how that goes brother. I do like to make my own pizzas.
 
I've often made bread with home brew (beer and grain mustard is nice), not tried it in pizza dough though. Made some homemade pizzas at the weekend too.
 
I know there is a bread thread already but I plan to dry out some spent malt from my next brew, sling it in the nutribullet then fire it into a loaf.
 
Not convinced, but always worth a try. I do put homebrew in bread (excellent, especially the chewy dark beers), even use sediment to raise bread (mixed results, beer yeast doesn't expect to be chucked in a load of flour).

But at the other end of the brewing cycle: I do add milled diastatic barley malt (teaspoon or so in 300g flour), but this is a widely established trick. I think its to get some starch conversion to sugars so as to get nice browned blisters in the base; maybe it does, but I do notice a pleasant "chewiness" to the base.

Pizzas compete with beer brewing as something to waste loads of time on, but more importantly homemade pizza and homebrew compliment each other fantastically.
 
Yeah british bread flours are unmalted. A lot of american bread flours are malted (contain a portion of barley malt) so if you are following a recipe for a NY style pizza then it's a good idea to add some active malt or your pizza will likely be too pale.

I've yet to try beer in pizza though
 
Yeah british bread flours are unmalted. A lot of american bread flours are malted (contain a portion of barley malt) so if you are following a recipe for a NY style pizza then it's a good idea to add some active malt or your pizza will likely be too pale.
Well, I never knew that!

But a while ago I'd always be using Italian flour. Same (un-malted) I suppose. Not now, British "OO" flour is just as good (when I learnt "OO" only relates to how fine it is milled).

British flour was always considered to be too "soft" and only good for biscuits. We used to import loads of bread flour from Canada. But our UK growers figured out how to produce "hard" wheat a while back. Pizza dough has to be from "hard" flour apparently, even though the Continentals had figured out how to make good bread from "soft" flours (in the UK we just stuck to biscuits; perhaps called it bread when needed?).
 
In case anyone doesn't know the bobbly bits on the outside of takeaway pizza is semolina. It makes it really easy to slide it about and stop it sticking.
 
I know there is a bread thread already but I plan to dry out some spent malt from my next brew, sling it in the nutribullet then fire it into a loaf.
I've done this. I spread some spent malt on a couple of baking trays and put them in the oven on the lowest setting with the door propped open a bit for a couple of hours. I then set my grain mill to the narrowest gap I could get and milled the spent grain. I think I then used about 200 grams of spent grain to 400 of plain bread flour.
It made a good loaf with more texture and flavour than wholemeal.
If you don't dry the grain and remill it you need to vastly reduce the amount of water in your dough or you end up with a very stodgy loaf
 
I've done this. I spread some spent malt on a couple of baking trays and put them in the oven on the lowest setting with the door propped open a bit for a couple of hours. I then set my grain mill to the narrowest gap I could get and milled the spent grain. I think I then used about 200 grams of spent grain to 400 of plain bread flour.
It made a good loaf with more texture and flavour than wholemeal.
If you don't dry the grain and remill it you need to vastly reduce the amount of water in your dough or you end up with a very stodgy loaf

Spot on. I will dry it, the milling will be however good the bullet or food processor can supply
 
I've done this. I spread some spent malt on a couple of baking trays and put them in the oven on the lowest setting with the door propped open a bit for a couple of hours. I then set my grain mill to the narrowest gap I could get and milled the spent grain. I think I then used about 200 grams of spent grain to 400 of plain bread flour.
It made a good loaf with more texture and flavour than wholemeal.
If you don't dry the grain and remill it you need to vastly reduce the amount of water in your dough or you end up with a very stodgy loaf
Quite so. I leave my spent grain to drain overnight in a colander. You still have to reduce the liquid by about a third.
 
Well, I never knew that!

But a while ago I'd always be using Italian flour. Same (un-malted) I suppose. Not now, British "OO" flour is just as good (when I learnt "OO" only relates to how fine it is milled).

British flour was always considered to be too "soft" and only good for biscuits. We used to import loads of bread flour from Canada. But our UK growers figured out how to produce "hard" wheat a while back. Pizza dough has to be from "hard" flour apparently, even though the Continentals had figured out how to make good bread from "soft" flours (in the UK we just stuck to biscuits; perhaps called it bread when needed?).

We still import loads of canadian wheat i think. Even though we've managed to get stronger wheats, even the strongest british wheat is no match for north american hard red wheat when it comes to gluten strength. You can get extra strong canadian wheat from waitrose and sainsburys and it retains great strength even if it is fermented with sourdough over a number of days. It's also well suited to NY pizzas that are fermented in a fridge for manu days.

However the flour is just one part of a great pizza and if you want to make a quick dough then our bread flour would probably be better and it's fine for next day dough too

While our climate isn't well suited to making protein rich wheat, it does lend itself well to low protein barley which as we know on this forum is rather useful for high quality beer acheers.
 
… You can get extra strong canadian wheat from waitrose and sainsburys and it retains great strength even if it is fermented with sourdough over a number of days. …
And Tesco's! Though I did find it annoying when the "extra strong" dough retracted back into a ball again after spending the time stretching it to shape.

Never really thought I was expecting too much from the strength of British wheat. I'll mature my dough for a minimum of two days and had noticed a tendency for the dough to collapse after that time (without thinking why). Thanks for that. But the "collapsing" is only a minor hiccup compared to the flavour of matured dough. Which reminds me, if I want a pizza tomorrow it wont have two days maturing. Better get on with it.

Blending the flours perhaps? And adding beer to the dough ;)
 
The last couple of pizza doughs I've made I needed within a day and so I used a portion of spelt to weaken the dough - while spelt has a lot of protein, the quality of the gluten is not good so it breaks down a bit if you mix it/ferment it too much. I've not quite mastered this though and it's not exactly crucial :) If you find the dough too elastic when forming the pizza, you probably needed to leave it rest in balls for longer at room temperature.

I can thoroughly recommend this site to plan doughs if you really want to get into it - It's a bit like getting into water treatment/fermentation control/yeast pitching rates etc for beer. Speaking of which, dough likes moderate hardness, so if you have soft water it helps to add some calcium sulfate to the dough, about 0.2% weight of flour. definitely firms it up a bit
https://calbal.altervista.org/

One of the the things it suggests is the strength of flour to use which depends on the length/time/type of fermented dough you make, although it's in the form of W which is how italians list the strength of flours. Typically bread flour is about 280w, extra strong canadian is about 400w and cake flour 120w (I think british plain flour counts as cake flour) .

Here's a marinara I made a few months ago. My pizzas aren't usually as round, they usually are more "rustic"

IMG_20190928_182009709.jpg
 
36 hours wasn't log enough for the dough, pretty average flavourwise. Next day - 50 hours [EDIT: 60 hours, I can't add up now] - much better …
20200305_213226_WEB.jpg

I don't have a snazzy wood fired pizza oven, but the recent addition of a pizza "steel" (all five kilos of it) was a great step forward. And I got to learn a bit about my own oven. Like most electric ovens it can be turned up to 270C, but it also has an American "broiler" oven feature; the grill element in the oven can be switched on along with fan assist so I've recorded over 300C from this oven. The pictured Margaretta (or is it a Neapolitan?) cooked in 2 minutes.

No beer in the dough, I'll have to work on that.
 
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… Here's a marinara I made a few months ago. My pizzas aren't usually as round, they usually are more "rustic" …
I'm looking at "mainara" constructions. I can't "stockpile" mozzarella against that corona-virus thingy, so a no-cheese recipe looks ideal (I'm always stockpiled for the rest of the ingredients!).
 
When I make pizza I tend to make six or so extra that I freeze, and I've started to just make marinaras so when I reheat them I can add whatever fresh toppings, if any I want. preserved vegetables in oil are good doomsday cupboard fillers for pizza toppings and cured meats last ages :) Both are nice added post bake too

300c is a good temperature for Tonda Romana - roman round thin pizza. 180g of dough for a 12 inch pizza and rolled out flat

For 6 pizzas
680g flour (medium strength flour like strong white bread flour for fridge fermenting, mix of plain and bread flour for quick dough)
375g water
15g salt
15g oil
0.75g instant yeast (fridge temp) 1.5g yeast for room temp same day dough

Mix all ingredients together, knead until dough has smooth appearance and bulk ferment for 24 hours in fridge. (can extend this if you want) OR 3 hours at room temperature.
Divide dough into 180g balls and keep dough balls at room temperature for about 3-4 hours.
Roll out dough very thin with rolling pin and bake for 3.5 - 4 minutes on a preheated stone at 280-300°C.
 
never used beer before only tepid water; ar ethe quantities the same?

Also how much does it influence the dough in taste?
 

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