[Sca-cooks] OOP Pizza Dough

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Feb 4, 2008, at 4:11 PM, Terry Decker wrote:

> As an experiment, I made some pizza dough last night using semolina  
> flour,
> which the bag touts as being good for pasta, pizza and bread.   
> Right.  Pasta
> and semolina bread maybe.
>
> I used about a 2:1 mix of semolina to AP flour and had to increase the
> liquid in the dough by about a half cup to get the dough to mix  
> properly
>
> Semolina (0 fine), while very high in protein, is too grainy to  
> produce a
> nice texture to the dough and the flavor doesn't mesh well with the  
> olive
> oil in the dough.  I might be able to alter the texture by using 00  
> fine or
> by using a 1:4 mix of semolina 0 to AP flour.  The taste is another  
> matter.
> I'm wondering if butter or egg yolk might prove to be a better choice.
>
> I'll revisit this experiment again, but for now, I think I'll stick to
> regular flour for my pizza dough.

I'm not sure if this helps, but my experience with using semolina for  
pasta is that it really can't develop much in the way of gluten until  
it's had a good long time to absorb as much moisture as possible.  
Essentially, you knead or roll the bejeebus out of it, let it rest,  
then do it all again.

Which, I suspect, is not typical treatment for pizza dough. Honestly,  
I haven't seen semolina being used for pizza, but high-gluten bread  
flour works well and is, I gather, a more-or-less industrial standard  
in American pizzerias, at least (although in some cases there are  
probably evil chemicals added to compensate for dubious dough-throwing  
skills).

I've also had excellent results with the very fine, light, whole-wheat  
durum flour designed for chapattis...

Adamantius