I’m back to pizza dough. My last attempt was a spelt crust that turned out OK. What I really want though is a flour more in line with an Italian Tipo 00 that makes a classic pizza dough, with real bite and a little (but not too much) chewiness. Red fife is still my favorite flour at the moment, so I thought I would see how it holds up as pizza.

Pictured below: red fife berries, whole grain flour, 76% extraction “straight” flour, and finally, the superfine red, a 30% extraction. My #120 mesh sieve actually results in a little lower % extraction for the red fife, but I added back a little of the class b clear flour to get the even 30%. Not pictured is the middlings and clear flour. The milling started with 560g of red fife berries, resulting in (rounded):

• 140g of bran
• 175g middlings
• 75g clear (what I would call class b)
• 170g superfine red

 

The superfine red has the look and texture of a pure powder. It also has a great clumpy properties. It is a lot of work to get through the sieve, but I am becoming more efficient with a couple different brushing and shaking techniques. Keeping the sieve clean and the mesh openings free of particles is also essential. 

Contrast this with the middlings, which is more like a fine meal.

For the dough, I started with an overnight pre-ferment (using King Arthur All-Purpose).

• 200g pre-ferment (100g flour/100g water/sprinkling of yeast)
• 170g superfine red
• 75g water (total hydration 65%, counting pre-ferment)
• 5g sea salt
• a gram or so of yeast

Cooking a pizza is still a major shortcoming of my kitchen (same with breads in general), so I stuck with a pan-style pizza. The dough was very elastic and workable. An incredible even and smooth texture. I think the hydration was too high though. I should have lowered my water ratio to account for the fineness of the flour. It just needs less water.

The final product: Pepperoni (here salami instead, to keep it fancy) and mushroom will forever be my favorite kind of pizza. My wife likes a simple medley of onions, zucchinis, and bell peppers. The sauce is just strained tomato sauce with garlic sauteed in olive oil, dried oregano, and red chili flakes. The pizza was broiled on high, after pre-heating to 400 degrees (it should have been hotter).

I will admit that I messed up the execution a little. You can’t see it, but the crust was not crusty on the bottom and I had to carefully transfer it to a mesh rack for a little extra baking time, which wasn’t ideal. The over hydration of the dough is probably partially to blame. In the end, the crust was very good though. The best part about the superfine red is that it really retains a lot of the depth of whole wheat flavor, without the heavy rustic taste and texture of whole or high-extraction flour. This is a just a really great flour that I plan to keep working on to get a little more fined tuned for different applications. 

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