Recipe with Semolina

[Mitchamus]

Hey rossco,
what brand of semolina did you use?

and just to confirm, you used the fine semolina right?

(going to try this tonight)

cheers
mitch

[heliman]

Hi Mitch,

I used semolina (durham) flour - a very fine grind but still has a slight granule texture if rubbed between fingers. I got it from a place called "All about bread" locally - very overpriced but they are nearby and I was experimenting so just bough 2 kg of it.

Not sure who makes it but I know that there is an Allied Mills brand which I will probably buy a bag of soon as this stuff makes the best pizzas I have tasted.

Good luck with the bakeoff - pics please!!!

[Mitchamus]

OK so the first issue -

I couldn't get fine semolina - so i used coarse. Not ideal I know - but hey I thought I would give it a shot anyway.
As soon as I can get my hands on some fine semolina - I'll try again.

I mixed this with a commercial pizza flour made by Manildra group,
and I used dark brown sugar, which gives a great smell to the dough.

I added the sugar, yeast & oil to the water and left it to activate while I weighed out the flour & salt.

I mixed the flours & salt together & set aside 1 cup of this mixture.
Then I mixed in all of the water/yeast & oil and leaving it for a 20 minute autolyse. (next time I will add the salt after the autolyse, as I usually do)

I then added in the reserved flour, and turned it out on the bench for a rigorous 10 minute knead.

I returned this to the bowl for a 1.5 hour prove, in which time the dough didn't really double - but I was pressed for time. Normally, this amount of time would have had a 1kg batch of regular dough filling that particular bowl.

I attribute this to the coarse Semolina - I should also add that I added 1.5tsp of IDY to try and speed things up, and I also kneaded for 3 minutes longer than normal to try and develop more gluten - again to try and speed things up a bit.

I knocked the dough down and divided the dough into 3 to make 3 quite large (& thick) pizzas.

There are no pics of the pizzas, as I cooked them in a conventional oven!
BLASPHEMY!!!

So how did they taste?

ok I guess - I did notice that the crust was a fair bit crunchier than the normal VPN - which I attribute to the sugar & Semolina. But I'm firmly sitting on the fence until I can try again with fine semolina! -I want to do it justice!

My non VPN recipe is very similar to this one (although without semolina) but uses 2 tbsp of dark brown sugar to 5 cups of flour (825g) - which is quite a bit more than the recipe here, and also 4tbsp of oil.

I would also like to try again with a full 2 hour prove!
(with a knock down at 1hr)

If you look closely at the proved dough - you can see the 'grainey-ness' of the coarse Semolina (it's not my shitty kneading - honest!

so - sorry for the crappy review... I'll do a proper one next time.. with the proper ingredients and time!

cheers,
mitch.

[heliman]

Good experiment!!! I too used a rather coarse semolina on the first round - but even that turned out quite nicely. Did you go according to the recipe I posted i.e. 60/40 Baker's flour/semolina?

I bought some fine semolina (flour) yesterday and had a close look at its texture. It is certainly grainy, but seems to absorb nicely into the flour - which does take on an overall rough texture in the finished product.

I will be experimenting with WFO baked versions of this dough this weekend as I have only baked in the inside oven up until now. Results have been really good overall and I am definitely convinced that breaking the rather restrictive mould of "traditionalism" has witnessed a new beginning in my ability to produce tasty, well textured pizza dough...

Definitely give it a go with the fine semolina - I'm sure that you will see a difference there.

[Mitchamus]

yep - 60/40

Everything (except the yeast) was as per the recipe...

[heliman]

Just found this reference to the use of coarse semolina in a baking book:

"Coarser semolina granules can be substituted for the finer flour, but a much longer autolyse of 30–45 minutes would be advisable".

So, it looks like it will do the job!

[Mitchamus]

Hmmmm....
I'd still like to try with the fine stuff!

[heliman]

Yes, the fine ones the best for this - but even that needs a good autolyse of 20 mins to get it hydrated.

Good luck - keen to see pics and get your comments.

[glen]

I used this recipe last time and it made the best bases I have done so far. I am trying it again tonight with the Woolies tip00 flour rather than the Coles Colavita one. Many thanks Rossco.

Glen

[david s]

I always put semolina in my dough, but not as much as your recipe. I use about 7% it gives the crust more crunchiness.