April 28, 2014 - 9:54pm
Pizza flour (00) - too old?
Was excited to find 00 pizza flour (and barley malt) at a food shop in the city today - until getting home and realizing the pizza flour was produced July 2013 and has an EXPIRY (not even best before) date of May 5, 2014. It's ~ 2lb of flour, more than I will use in the very near future for sure, although I could make extra pizza dough to freeze. What quality is likely to be lacking given it's age? Should I just return it, or use it beyond it's expiry date?
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Flour for less than 2$ is hardly worth a trip returning it. And it doesn't go bad from one day to another. I'd just use it.
And 2lb is about 910g - or just 6 pizzas.
I woudn't freeze the pizza dough. I don't think it will last longer that way. Also the lactobacilli and the sourdough yeasts recover at a different speed. It doesn't give good results.
Pizza flour sometimes is malted. The enzyme activity is likely to go down first. But I bake perfectly fine pizza with 24-hour fermentation and just a little bit of sourdough-starter without any malt in my dough. This is just something restaurants need if they don't know when they will be using the dough (ball fermentation will vary between 1 to several days in the cold room).
Don't know where your 2$ came from - it was over $8 (insane enough - something I'd try once out of curiosity but not do often!). It's 2.2 lb/1000g of imported Italian 00 flour. I know it's not going to suddenly go bad one day, just wondering what change in dough quality I might notice, if anyone more experienced than me might know. It's as much wasting my time as my money I'm concerned about, if I'd be better off using fresh AP than old 00 flour.
With regard to freezing the dough, I don't currently use a starter, so it would be instant yeast anyway.
The flour is not malted, and the purchased malt was not for pizza dough. Just something else I happened to find at the same shop and will use for bagels and pretzels, probably.
Thanks for your input!
8$ for a 1kg bag of flour. This is about 4 times what the overpriced caputo flour costs over here.
For 8$ I actually would complain and hope they'll take it back. Just search for what Jeff Varasano said about flours for pizzas. He is well known for his pizzas and knows the american brands. A much cheaper flour would work just fine or even better if your oven doesn't reach at least 750F or 400C.
Adrian
Like I said, not something I'd do on a regular or volume basis, but a treat experiment for curiosity. I'm in a small Canadian market and you would not find a specialty imported flour here for any less. I'm amazed I found it at all. Not that it's necessary. I'd pay as much for one bad restaurant pizza around here.
My oven maxes out at 500F but my BBQ with a stone can do better :-)
Will check out Jeff V - thanks.
Do you have a system for top heat?
I know that missing top heat might already be an issue with wood fired ovens. How do you do this with a BBQ. (I have to admit, my BBQ was less that 10€ about 10 years ago - not the best system ;))
but the closed lid and stone below would probably do. My BBQ (just standard propane with lava rocks) has a main grill rack and a top elevated grill rack under the cover - I may be able put unglazed quarry tiles on both racks to have one above and one below - haven't tried it yet. The top stone would overhang the top rack some and complicate loading, so may just stick with one on the bottom rack and the reflected heat from the lid closed. Friends have had good success with this.
This weekend I tried a pizza stone above and below in my propane outdoor grill making pizza. It worked wonderfully. Previously I had problems with just a stone below with heat loss when opening the cover and undercooking the pizza top. Perfect bake in 2.5 minutes. Need to preheat longer because of the mass.
Thanks! Did you use a peel to load the pizza between the stones?
I use an aluminum peel with the dough on a pizza screen. I make a very wet dough that does not slide easily on a floured peel.
Since it's (I assume) white flour, the flavor should probably still be fine, since it doesn't get rancid like whole wheat. The main thing I'd worry about is starch degradation - your dough could be gummy if there's been a lot of amylase activity.
Was the flour just sitting on a shelf when you bought it or being kept in a fridge? When I found 00 being sold near me, they had the good sense to keep it in a freezer. If it was being stored well, you shouldn't have really anything to worry about.
I suspect that since it has not yet passed the expiry date, it's probably still fine. You may want to store it in the freezer, though, to preserve it for now.
Yes, it is white, so no rancidity concern and was stored at room temp on the shelf. I'll probably do a test pizza and if it goes well have a pizza night with friends to use it up in the near future. Thanks!
Sounds like you are nearby. I buy near to date italian flours all the time, also expired, from my local grocery and it is excellent. Everything depends on how the flour has been stored. I was actually sad when they finally ran out and I had to purchase fresher flour.
Bake with it and see what happens. I talked to my grocer right in the store and asked about it. He guaranteed the quality to me. At home, the flour will keep longer kept dry and cool. Taste the flour and wait for any aftertastes before using it, a simple test.
I think I've gathered that you live in a much more exotic locale than I do Mini. I'm in Atlantic Canada. The flour is made by Molino Soncini Cesare. It was stored at (not excessive) room temp and the store is very high-end and quality focussed, I'm satisfied the humidity has been appropriately controlled. No funky smells, but I will taste a little too. Thanks!