Mellow Mushroom Pizza Dough

While looking through a Reddit page for my home town I came across a thread about pizza where someone posted a link to a copycat recipe for Mellow Mushroom pizza dough.  It's been a long time since I lived in Lexington and I can't remember if Mellow Mushroom was around at that time or if I ever ate there, but everyone seemed to rave about the crust on the thread so I decided to give it a try.

The recipe can be found here.  I looked up ingredient weights on the internet to convert the recipe  into bakers percentages and came up with this...

1 1/2 cups hot water     338 grams     74%
2 1/2 Tb molasses         54 grams       12%
1 TB Olive oil               14 grams       3%
2 packets IDY               16 grams       3.5%
3 1/2 cups bread flour  455 grams     100%
2 ts salt (table)              12 grams       2.6%

I based the weight of the flour on a site that gave weights of flour using various methods, the greatest weight given used the dip and sweep method.  When I actually made the recipe the actual weight 3.5 cups flour measured with that method was 487 grams.  The only other changes I made were to cut the yeast amount in half as I planned to cold ferment the dough, I used cold water instead of hot since I feared the 15 minute knead time would overheat the dough in the mixer and kill the yeast and I cut down the molasses to 45 grams since what I had was old and somewhat dehydrated.  After making this recipe I looked online and found a significant range of weights given for the same measure of several of the ingredients, but this is my starting point.

First I mixed the water, molasses and olive oil and mixed them together before adding the yeast.  I'd probably let the yeast hydrate in the water/molasses next time before adding the oil.  I them measured out the flour and salt, added them to the work bowl of the stand mixer, attached the hook and started the machine.  After everything was mixed together it was clear that the dough was too slack, I had to add a few spoonfuls of extra flour to the bowl in order to get a workable dough.  I let the dough knead on low to medium speed for the 15 minutes indicated in the recipe, at the end I had a very smooth ball of dough with a finished temp of 77°f.  The dough ball was rounded, put in an oiled bowl and placed int he refrigerator to cold ferment.  The next day I rounded the dough again to allow carbon dioxide to escape and redistribute the yeast and put it back in the refrigerator for another day.

Two days later it was time to make pizza!  I divided the dough in half, rounded both dough balls and put one out on the counter to rest for 2 hours so it could come up to room temperature.  Trying to use dough from the refrigerator before it's had a chance to warm up will result in large bubbles forming during baking.  The dough was very easy to work with, I was able to easily stretch it out without any tears and minimal shrink back after it was formed.  I placed the skin of a piece of parchment on which I had sprinkled corn meal, sprayed the top with olive oil and sprinkled on some romano cheese.  The recipe calls for parmesan crumbs, but I didn't have any.  I then dressed simply with pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese and pepperoni with a final dusting of romano cheese on the top.  The pizza was baked on a baking steel in an oven that had been preheated for about 30 minutes.

After removing from the oven the crust rim was sprayed with olive oil, the recipe calls for brushing it with garlic butter but I didn't have any on hand.

I was pretty happy with the recipe, but plan on making some changes for the next iteration.  Even with the lowered amount of molasses the flavor was pronounced, that may just be because what I had in the pantry was old and concentrated.  Next time I plan on using a new bottle and cutting down the amount to 5% of the flour weight.  I also plan on cutting down the total hydration (water + molasses + oil) to about 70% and then figure out where to go from there.

EDIT 4/27/17

I've been playing around with the dough formula a bit, the current one I'm using is

Bread Flour  100.00% 500
Water           62.20% 311
Molasses      5.00% 25
Yeast (IDY)  1.60% 8
EVOO          2.80% 14
Salt               2.40% 12

This formula is for same day use (2 hour warm ferment), I find that letting the dough cold ferment in the refrigerator for a couple of days yields a final product that's easier to stretch, has better texture and flavor. When I go this route I cut the yeast down to 5-6 grams (1-1.2% flour weight). I try to keep total hydration (water + molasses + EVOO) to 70%.

Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen Biscuits

A few years ago I had the TV on in the background while I was working on the computer, as I often do.  The program on at the time was "Food Paradise", a show on the travel channel that does short clips about various restaurants based around a particular theme.  An episode titled "Drive Thru Paradise" was on which highlighted places around the country that have outstanding drive-thru offerings.  One of the featured restaurants was Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen in Chapel Hill, NC.  I've never had the opportunity to try their biscuits myself, but as a southern transplant to a northern state anything biscuit related piques my interest.  As I was working on the computer I heard them go over their biscuit recipe, but I was unprepared and by the time I could grab a pen and paper it was over.  I searched on-line but the only version of the clip I could find omitted the recipe part, there seem to be several versions of Food Paradise's Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen clips but I never could find the one that included the recipe description.  Fast forward a few years and again I'm working on the computer with the TV on in the background.  Travel Channel is playing back-to-back-to-back episodes of Food Paradise and when the episode I saw a fews years back comes on I stop what I'm doing and get ready, just in case it's the version with the recipe.  And it was!

The recipe they gave is for a commercial size batch, it's also very short on details with only the list of ingredients and oven temperature.  The ingredients they listed are:

10 pounds flour
24 ounces margarine
1/2 gallon buttermilk
16 ounces water

I had to make a few assumptions about the ingredients.  Since no leaveners were listed I assumed the flour they used was self-rising, and since they are in the south I assumed they were using a soft wheat flour like White Lily (which was convenient since I had some White Lily self rising flour in the pantry!).  They didn't specify the margarine brand so I basically chose the one that was on sale that week (Blue Bonnet).  It has a pretty soft consistency which matched what was shown on Food Paradise.

The next step was to reduce the amounts to something more manageable.  First I converted the recipe to baker's percentages which came out like this:

100% Self rising flour
15% Margarine
43% Buttermilk
10% Water

For the first batch I went with two cups of flour, which is 226 grams, and calculated the rest of the ingredients based on the flour weight.  This resulted in a recipe consisting of:

226 grams Self-rising flour
34 grams Margarine
104 grams Buttermilk
22 grams water

The oven was pre-heated to 450°f.  Flour and margarine were weighed into a bowl, I rubbed the fat into the flour with my hands (they used a mixer for this in the clip) until it looked like cornmeal but with a few larger pieces still remaining.  The buttermilk and water were weighed, added to the fat/flour mix and everything was quickly mixed together with a spoon.  Once all the loose flour had been incorporated into the dough it was turned out onto a lightly floured surface, flattened and folded.  This was done three more times before the dough was flattened to about 1" thickness and biscuits cut out.  The biscuits were put on a parchment lined tray so they were just touching, the tops were brushed with a little buttermilk and put in the oven for about 15-18 minutes until the tops were browned.

The end result was a pretty damn good biscuit.  The repeated flattening/folding procedure produced some flakiness but the biscuit was sturdy enough to use for breakfast sandwiches or to douse with gravy.  I would probably add a little salt next time and I didn't get as much lift as I would have liked, probably due to the self-rising flour being a little old (about 10 months).  The oven temp could probably go up a little as well, next time I'll try 475°-500°f.  I'll have to try it with the locally available self-rising flour to see how that affects the final product.

I haven't had the opportunity to make another chocolate pie, but I still want to post the recipe.  May have to do so sans any pictures.  I've also just received a shipping confirmation for my Paragon Induction Cooktop, haven't decided for sure what I'm going to do with it first but I recently found a recipe for Nashville Hot Chicken so I'm thinking I may sous vide a chicken breast with the spice blend, bread it in seasoned flour and fry using the Paragon cooker.