JeffB - exactly! I've got a sauce recipe for Aurelio's or something that is ALMOST Aurelio's. I'm looking for something crustwise similar to that. And something that doesn't involve going thru a press as that I can't replicate! I will have a look at the the other places posted and see if anything looks good, but if anyone has anything that stays flat and doesn't puff up I would love to have it. Also, I have a stone for my oven. Thank you in advance!

Janet

Well, from what we see on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (at about 1:00 minute in), the ingredients for V&N's pizza dough, at least, is Ceresota flour, milk, yeast, and water.

I think those are 20 pound bags of flour, and she uses 1 1/2 bags (30 lbs) , a half gallon of milk, an undisclosed amount of salt (I'm going to guess about 8-10 oz for that amount), instant dry yeast (maybe 5 ounces?) , and enough water so it no longer sticks in the mixer.

I'm sure some of our more experienced pizza dough makers could hazard a guess as to the hydration level of this dough and perhaps make better guesses at the amounts (I'm working at 1.5-2% salt, 1% IDY, but have no idea looking at the thickness of that dough what the hydration should be. Maybe around 50%? If so, that'd be about 1 3/8 gallon of water in addition to the 1/2 gallon of milk for a 30 pound dough.)

So, in baker's percentages, that would work out to:
100% Ceresota unbleached flour
2% salt
1% IDY
13% milk (I'm guessing 2% fat milk, based on the blue label and cap)
37% water (actually, now that I watch the video again, that dough looks a bit softer than a 50% dough to me, so maybe as high as 47% on the water??? Or just split the difference at 42% and adjust from there.)

She says in the video that the dough sits around until the next day, and is punched down every 20-30 minutes once it starts rising.

Anybody have any further speculation or would like to make some corrections before I go off and try this? Of course, this is assuming we see all the ingredients that go in the dough in that video clip.

So I gave the recipe above a shot. It actually turned out all right--very crispy crust. I overshot the salt by a bit though. I don't know if I didn't weigh it properly or if 2% is just too much. I might try for 1% next time. 50% hydration was indeed too stiff a dough, so I kept adding water until it felt about right. I think I ended up at around 60% hydration when all was said and done. Kept in a fridge overnight, taken out to room temperature in the morning, and then punched down three times after the dough doubled.




As you can tell, I went off the script and added cornmeal on the bottom of the pizza. I don't usually do cornmeal with pizza crusts, but I was in the mood for it today. Does it taste like a V&N crust? Kinda sorta but not quite. It's a good bit more cracker-like and crispy than V&N's. Would I make it again? Yep. Would be even better if I had a sheeter to really get it thin.

Did you use a stone to cook it Binko? I am curious to see how your next one turns out. Thanks!

I actually cooked it on a cast iron pizza pan @ 500F.

OK. I apologize because I had a friend over and didn't end up taking pictures. I followed the same recipe as above, with the following adjustments: salt was at 1.5%. Hydration was at 65-70%. Instead of letting it rise in the fridge, I let it rise at room temperature (74F here) for 28 hours, punching down when I felt like it (trying to follow the Vito & Nick's protocol in the link above). When I rolled it out for the pizza, it had a very yeasty, fermented scent to it. Smelled like bad hooch. Unlike the last dough, it rolled out very easily and very thinly without any problem. When cooked, it was exactly the sort of dough I was looking for from a thin crust Chicago-style pizza: crispy, but not stiff, dry, and hard. The very outer layer was crispy, but the inside had a nice chew to it. The crust was foldable, as opposed to the last version, which would have snapped cleanly in two. I'm not sure if it was the room temperature rise that made the difference, but this is the recipe I'm going to follow as a blueprint for Chicago-style thin crust from now on.

I just got this in my inbox today. I'm thinking of trying it.

http://www.sciplus.com/p/crispy-oven-co ... 9qfq8luitk

Pie Lady wrote:I just got this in my inbox today. I'm thinking of trying it.

http://www.sciplus.com/p/crispy-oven-co ... 9qfq8luitk

coated with PTFE (polytetrafluorethylene),

I think ill stick to a pizza stone or a round cast iron pan...