16 hours ago, scott123 said:
Normally, you need a tax id to get an RD membership, but, right now, they're open to the public- no card necessary.
I am definitely not talking about Caputo flour- at least not in the context of a home oven. For those with Neapolitan capable ovens (like an Ooni or a Roccbox), Caputo works very well, but, it's lack of malt is extremely anti-browning in home ovens. When you delay browning, you extend the bake time, which ends up drying out the crust and producing a stale hard texture.
I'm talking about wholesale pizza flour. Your local RD will have 50 lb bags of Full Strength brand flour and All Trumps- and various All Trumps analogs. For pizza, these will all run circles around either all purpose or retail bread flour. Modern NY style pizza is traditionally made with high gluten (All Trumps), but high gluten has a strong tendency to make too chewy of a crust, so I prefer medium high gluten flours like Full Strength- and Spring King.
If you want to buy Flour Water Salt Yeast and use it to make bread, I have no doubt it will produce phenomenal results, but, Forkish is a baker, and pizza is not bread. Forkish is part of your flour issue. The flour is definitely to blame, but, had you not been using a recipe that incorporated such an extreme amount of water, you might have weathered the new flour's shortcomings a little better.
Extra water in pizza dough is not your friend- 70% water doesn't exist in the commercial pizza universe- at least, it doesn't for non pan pizza. In New Haven, there's outliers that can hit 68% hydration, but, that's oven related. Everywhere else, you're almost never going to find anything higher than about 65%, with medium high gluten flours playing well with about 62% water. With the weaker flours they use in Naples, these numbers drop even further (generally below 60%). If you find someone telling you to add 70% water to pizza dough, it means that they've never talked to a professional pizza maker- or in the case of Forkish, they've talked to pros, but didn't listen.
thanks for that info Scott. You have more knowledge and experience about this area.
I do want to try a higher quality flour but I got to taste it to believe it. It's been too long since I had high quality restaurant pizza.
The last time I had take out pizza was at a work party ordered from an NYC outfit nearby (I'm guessing cheap stuff). The bread lacked this richness of taste that comes from fermentation and time. The tomato sauce tasted too concentrated and similar to artificial flavor - made with added dried basil, garlic, and artificial flavorings maybe?
I just make pizza at home now and hesitate to buy it. It tastes different and better (based on my personal bad pizza take out experience). I don't think take out pizzas use real tomatoes and its some kind of concentrate sauce and the bread is not fermented and lacks flavor.
I think I'd have to do a lot of research to find the right place to buy proper restaurant pizza. Restaurant profit margins could be very low and its easy to go out of business in that industry. It's like the motive to use cheapest ingredients to give customers the lowest price is there (just for the restaurant to survive). Many consumers might not even really know the taste of high quality pizza and might be unwilling to pay for quality.
I read that Americans consumers are more like Germans (practical) and less like the French.
But thanks for the RD tip. I might go there for the next BBQ party - covid-19 fear permitting etc.
