3 Ideas: 2 For Your Pizza Flours, 1 For Your Pizza Dough

Pizza Friends, hello. And happy Friday.

Sometimes things don’t go as planned: You make a batch of pizza dough only to realize you have no time to tend to it, no time to make pizza for days. You enthusiastically buy a 27-lb. bag of flour, ideal for your outdoor oven pizzas, but then winter arrives, and you have no interest in making pizza in the snow. And every day as you pass that enormous bag of flour wherever it may be stored you wonder if you’ll ever make a dent in it.

Friends: you will!

I first wrote about Petra flours, specifically the 0102 and 5063, last August. As the fall progressed, I shared the results of my experiences using the flours in both my outdoor oven (see here and here) and indoor oven. When the holidays arrived, I included the flours in my gift guide because I love them so: the flavor, the texture, and the color of the pizzas they produce.

Should any of you have purchased these flours and/or should any of the above scenarios resonate, I have a few ideas:

1. With Your Pizza Dough, Make a Loaf of Toasting Bread: The photo above is simply the entire batch of the Neapolitanish pizza dough recipe from Pizza Night baked in a loaf pan. Find a how-to guide below.

2. With Your Petra 0102, Make Jim Laheys No-Knead Bread: As a reminder, the Petra 0102 flour is made from sprouted wheat flour and supports up to 80% hydration, which is the rough hydration of Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread. I made his famous bread recently using the Petra 0102 flour and was so pleased with the flavor and texture of the bread. See photos below.

3. With Your Petra 5063, Blend it with Bread Flour, Use it in Your Home Oven: As a reminder, the Petra 5063 is Petra’s special pizza flour and it supports up to 70% hydration. It is my preferred flour for my outdoor oven pizza dough (which I make at 68% hydration). In the late fall, when I tried to mix up a batch of the Neapolitanish dough for my home oven, which is 77% hydration, it was a soupy mess. You may have experienced this while using other similar flours, like any brand of Tipo 00, which typically create a much wetter dough. The solution? Make a dough using 50% Tipo 00 flour or the Petra 5063 and 50% bread flour. I did that this week, and it worked beautifully. Find more details below.

Friends, as noted last week, I am turning on paid subscriptions, and all of the subscription dollars will go to an organization supporting the fire relief effort in California. I’m having difficulties connecting to Stripe so that I can actually receive $$ to make a donation, but I am currently getting tech support…stay tuned! I will provide an update regarding donations next week. Have a great weekend 🍕🍕🍞🍞

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Easy Toasting Loaf (with your Neapolitanish pizza dough)

Last Thursday (the 16th), I mixed up a batch of the Neapolitanish pizza dough recipe from Pizza Night for the purpose of a video I was making. Knowing the following morning I would be leaving for three days, I immediately stuck the bowl in the fridge, where it stayed until the following Wednesday.

When I pulled the dough out of the fridge on Wednesday morning, its surface was bubbly, and its color a little grey, but it smelled fine, so I pushed on: I turned it out onto a lightly floured surface, rolled it into a coil, then stuck it into a buttered 9x5-inch loaf pan. I slicked the surface with olive oil, then let it rise until the dough nearly crowned the rim, at which point I placed it in a 375ºF for 45 minutes.

It baked beautifully, emerging with an evenly golden, slightly blistered crust. Of course, it was delicious warm with butter, which was how most of disappeared within hours of setting it on the kitchen table. I think it’s a little dense to be used as a sandwich bread, but it made great toast. Get the recipe below.

All that remained after one day:

Great toast:

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Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread (with Petra 0102 Flour)

It has been frigid here in Upstate New York (as it has in much of the country), and all I want to eat is soup and bread. As noted above, I recently made a loaf of Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread using the Petra 0102 (a sprouted wheat flour) and was so pleased with the result. As with the toasting loaf above, Jim Lahey’s bread makes great toast:

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Home Oven Neapolitanish Dough (with Petra 5063 and Bread Flour)

If you’ve ever mixed up a batch of pizza dough using Tipo 00 flour and found yourself with a soupy mess, it’s likely because the flour can’t support the hydration of the recipe. As noted above, the Petra 5063 flour, the brand’s special pizza flour, supports up to 70% hydration and works beautifully in an outdoor oven. To get it to work with my home-oven Neapolitanish pizza dough recipe (which is 77% hydration), I blend it 50/50 with bread flour. It works beautifully: the Petra 5063 lends that lovely extensibility characteristic of doughs made with Tipo 00 flours, and the bread flour provides the strength and structure to support the higher hydration. If you’ve had trouble using your Tipo 00 flour in your home oven, try the 50/50 blend.

I’ve added notes to this Brussels Sprouts Pizza recipe about using 275 grams each bread flour and Petra 5063 or your favorite Tipo 00 flour.

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Love pizza and salad? Find recipes, tips, and tricks in Pizza Night 🍕🍕🥗🥗

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