April 13, 2014 - 6:43pm
Stone Ground Whole Wheat Margherita Pizza
Since last summer when I first tried making pizza on my outdoor grill using unglazed quarry tiles, I have been itching to try again. This time I decided to do a simple Margherita pizza so the crust would be the star of the show. Homemade tomato sauce, bocconcini, basil. Crust had organic stone ground whole wheat with a touch of rye. The two medium sized pizza's turned out nicely, with a nice sweet tone in the crust due to the whole wheat flour. I tend to like thin crust pizzas, with a larger cornicione (outer edge crust).
Enjoyed for dinner with a glass of wine spritzer.
John
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Looks delicious! What proportions of flour did you use?
Thanks cerevisiae...I posted the formula down below. Hope you enjoy if you try it out.
John
That is some good lookin pizza. What a stellar crumb. That's the real deal right there. I second the question on the flour mixture and hydration too.
Josh
Hey Josh. I appreciate the compliments. The formula is posted below. The one variable is hydration. I started off with a cup and half of water, but then added more till the dough felt nice and hydrated enough. I like to have my pizza dough very high hydration. Depending on the stone ground ww, you may or may not have to use more water.
Good luck!
John
but did you really use just whole wheat and rye?
I've done whole wheat pizza a couple of times, and I have to say I don't like it without at least half of white flour mixed in.
Thank you. No, I wish it was that good with no bread flour. I posted the formula below...as you can see, bread flour was used.
Take care.
John
Nicely made.
Thank you David. You should be interested in trying this dough out. You make great Tartine Country loaves, which are very high in hydration. This formula should be right up your alley.
Happy baking.
John
I will bookmark and gibe this a shot one of these days when I have the VWG in the cupboard.
Even though I love my tartine pizzas, a less elaborate procedure would be handy. And even a more elaborate procedure would be welcome if the results are improved!
Well done John, bang on crust!
Cheers
Wingnut
Thanks Nutty. Sorry, no beer in this one. A bit of wine though...so that should count for something!
John
Well done all the way around. Now that it is getting ti be summer, pizza will done on the grill for the next 5 months adn they seem to do better out there with a 650 F temperature:-) Yours is a beauty.
Happy baking.
Thank you dabrowny. Your pizza made me strive for some good results. I was very happy with this one. I think the high hydration is key, as is retarding the dough in fridge. Another trick I used was to drop some oil on the grill from time to time to keep the temp and flames up to give that nice char. One who has a very powerful grill would not need to do that. I make my pizzas out in my back yard to avoid messing up the kitchen. I actually tried doing the 'ol paizano stretch-in-air-while-constantly-turning-on-back-of-hands method. Must have looked like a jack ass to the neighbours, but the dough was so stretchy/droopy that it needed that method.
Happy pizza baking this summer (all year 'round for you!) man.
John
Here is the formula for the dough:
Ingredients:
2 cups bread flour
1/2 cup stone ground whole wheat flour (with 1 tbsp rye flour to make total 1/2 cup)
1 Tbsp vital wheat gluten
1/2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp instant yeast
1 tsp olive oil
1 1/2 cup water (more if required)
1 tbsp white wine (optional)
Instructions:
Mix all together in a bowl until well combined. Let sit for 5 minutes. Stretch and fold a few times. Let sit for another 5 minutes. Stretch and fold a few times. Rest for 5 minutes then retard in fridge for up to 14 hours. Divide into two equal portions, oil well, and let rise at room temperature for 2 hours in well oiled bread tin.
If you recall? This pizza is inspiring me to go buy a mill. I know, why buy a mill when flour is so cheap?
Because I don't want to take up space in my freezer for whole wheat flour and want to be able to use WW Flour whenever I like without having to go to the store when the spirit moves me. :)
This one was actually only retarded in fridge for about 5 hours. I typically would like to have it in fridge for no less than 8 hours, but this day I started making the dough a bit late in the day.
Well, I didn't mean for this pizza to make things more complicated for you! Home milling is quite a challenge, but good on you to go where I don't think I will ever go! Easy for me to say when I have an Organic flour mill about 20 mins from my place.
Happy baking and good luck! Let me know how it turns out for you.
John
That pizza looks really, really good, John. My sourdough starter discard jar is almost full. It's time for either pancakes or pizza. Wait! There's enough for both!
I just got my basil and San Marzano tomatoes planted over the weekend, though. Can Central California's Spring weather be behind B.C.'s? Not with the snow photos I've been seeing on Floyd's FB page! Well, maybe the wheat is local, eh?
Anyway, the pizza looks really delicious.
David
Thank you David! I am thoroughly jealous that you are growing San Marzanos in your yard...egads.
As for snow...Floyd must have posted from either a mountain, or elsewhere. We haven't had snow in at least 7 weeks. We are enjoying 64 degrees here. My basil will have to wait for another 2 months to grow...but my San Marzanos will have to wait till i retire in Cali, AZ, or Tuscany...;)
Looking forward to your pizza posts this summer. Happy baking.
John
Lovely crust John, home made pizzas is a must at least once a week, my fav too. Coincidently, I had pizzas made out my leftover tartine dough last nite with but baked in the normal oven at 300deg, sadly I do not have your outdoor toys, must be fantastic to have one :)
And thanks for sharing the recipe. Must try this though recipe.
Regs Nora
Thank you Nora...I actually wanted to try pizza dough from the Tartine formula. I didn't get around to it. This formula is quite high in hydration as the Tartine dough is...so it will give similar results I am sure. If your oven gets hotter than 300, I would pump it up as hot as it goes. The extra high heat really makes the charred blisters more pronounced.
Happy baking!
John
Awesome Pizza John. Looks like you have perfected your baking technique as your crust looks amazing. I like the idea of adding some WW to the mix. Why did you decide to add the VWG? I would think you wouldn't really need that for pizza but it obviously worked like a charm for you.
Regards,
ian
Thank you Ian. To be honest, I added that to the formula when I lacked in knowledge about VWG. I don't really use it for my breads anymore, but I decided to keep it in my pizza dough. I am happy with the results...now I am afraid to try it without.
Happy baking.
John
And terrif pics! A photography question, pls. Am I right in assuming you took the pics at night? If so, how do you get such rich natural colour? I've given up photographing my pizzas because the kitchen lights cause a greenish hue in the pics. I've tried adjusting white balance, and messing around in Photoshop with colour correction etc, but I can't seem to overcome this. The only way I can get pics to the standard of yours is to re-heat leftover pizzas during the day - and there usually ain't any!
Appreciative of any tips.
Cheers
Ross
Hey Ross, thank you. Good to hear from you.
The photos were actually taken in our kitchen during the day. Even with quite a bit of natural light coming in through the window, I had to adjust the hue slightly in Photoshop because they did come out a bit greenish/blue as you describe. It is very easy to do in Photoshop without messing around with white balance or colour correction. Simply try the following steps:
1. Click Control + U. This will bring up the Hue/Saturation adjustment tool.
2. Move Hue slider to the left between approx. -5 to -10. Play around.
That's it. This should bring the colour to more of a rich warm than a cool unnatural tone. Most of my bread photos during day need this simple hue adjustment to correct the colour tint.
Hope this helps!
John
To add, these photos were actually taken by my wife with her iPhone, not by my Nikon. They still turned out quite good, just a bit noisy and contrasty. Even when I use my Nikon, I still have to make the slight hue adjustment to correct colour.
John
Will try your Photoshop tip, for sure! If it works for me as it does for you, as I have no doubt it will, the rest will be down to my photography. Hmmm, that's a worry...
Again, terrif pizza!
Cheers
Ross
I am mostly into landscape photography, but love playing around with the camera for my bakes as well. While I will not claim to be a photography pro, I will offer you Photoshop tips if you need any. Take care.
John
Have you tried saving your files in the Raw mode? When you do this and you open them in PS you have a lot more control over the white balance and actual lighting effects. It give you the choice to correct the photo based on the type of lighting you used. This is how I do all of my photos and the Raw files also give you the greatest number of pixels out of your camera so you will have the best resolution to start.
Hi Ian. Actually I only shoot in RAW now. As you said, it is the best format to correct in.
John
I know RAW is the best format for post-shoot correction, but most of the time I'm too lazy and prefer to try to get good-lookin' JPGs instead. Problematic under artificial lighting, though. Which points to RAW and your recommendations!
Cheers
Ross
Regardless of RAW or JPEG, use my suggestion of hue adjustment and you should be getting better photo tones. The photos above were from my wife's camera phone so they were JPEGs.
Good luck.
John
Here is the original JPEG:
This is the photo with only a slight hue adjustment how I explained above. Hue slider moved to the left to -7:
I think this is probably the colour adjustment you were concerned with?
John