This month I took some time to do some visiting in Pittsburgh. While there, we made a trip to the strip district for some shopping. I wandered into the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company unaware that inside was a treasure for the home pizza maker. As soon as I walked through the door I saw a large wall of canned tomatoes. Taking a closer look, I realized that many of the brands I’ve read about were all for sale there. I saw La Valla, Escalon 6-in-1, and Bella brands as well as some others from the San Marzano region. In addition to tomato products, they also sell two famous brands of pizza flour – Caputo 00 Pizzeria and All Trumps bromated flour. The flour could be purchased in 5 lb or 50 lb bags at a very reasonable price. The cost of shipping these products is what had kept me from experimenting with them in the past. As such, I was extremely excited to load up my car with flour and tomato cans.

Shop at Pennsylvania Macaroni Company

As soon as I got home I tore into both flour bags and made large dough batches from both brands. From my research, I knew that the Caputo 00 flour was designed for very high temperature ovens. Since I was making this pizza at home, the best I could do was plan to turn it up to 550 degrees and hope for the best (more on this in a future post). I made the Caputo flour blanks into classic Napoletana magherita pizzas using the La Valla tomatoes and some fresh cheese and basil. The results were good, but I clearly need more heat in order to get this dough to perform.

The real surprise was the All Trumps flour. I used the All Trumps to bake a New York Style pizza in all of it’s glory. Since All Trumps is formulated for lower oven temperatures, it is perfectly suited for the home oven. The dough recipe I used was a modified Lehman recipe which had 65% water. Below is the dough recipe I used:

Flour (100%): 337.4 g | 11.9 oz | 0.74 lbs
Water (65%): 219.31 g | 7.74 oz | 0.48 lbs
IDY (1.36%): 4.59 g | 0.16 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.52 tsp | 0.51 tbsp
Salt (1.69%): 5.7 g | 0.2 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.19 tsp | 0.4 tbsp
Total (168.05%): 567 g | 20 oz | 1.25 lbs

I mixed the IDY into a small amount of the water (water should be around 100 degrees) and let it dissolve for about 10 minutes. Then I mixed that yeast water into the rest of the water in the mixer bowl along with the salt. Next, I added the flour slowly with the mixer on low speed for around 5 minutes until it looked well mixed. Then, I mixed for 5 minutes on second speed. When the dough looked smooth, I removed it and formed 20 oz balls ready for the refrigerator. The dough smelled, looked and felt wonderful after a 48 hour cold rise.

I stretched it onto a pizza screen and topped it with my Traditional Sauce with Escalon 6-in-1 tomatoes for the base. I then layered whole milk mozzerella cheese and chopped pepperoni and baked it for 8 mnutes at 485 degrees.

The pizza had great oven spring, a wonderful chewy crumb and a well darkened crust rim complete with the tiny blisters that are the hallmark of high hydration dough. The flavor and texture of this dough easily matched and probably exceeded that of the pizzas I had made with KASL several months ago. Best of all, I could purchase All Trumps for the same price that I pay for flour at my local grocer. In fact, I think I will change to this flour for all of my traditional style pizza making from now on – it’s that good.

Here are some shots of the various pizzas we made from the dough – Enjoy!