Butter, like margarine, is comprised of approximately 20 percent water and 80 percent fat, whereas shortening and oils are 100 percent fat. This means that you will need to use slightly more butter than you did oil in your dough formula (remember, part of the butter is water). The way to figure the amount of butter to use is to divide the weight of oil or shortening that you are presently using by 0.80 and this will give you the amount of butter or margarine to use to replace the oil or shortening. As an example, lets say you are using 12-ounces of oil in your dough and you want to replace it with butter. Divide 12-ounces by 0.80 and you find that 15-ounces of butter are needed to replace the 12-ounces of oil in your dough formula. This difference between 12-ounces and 15-ounces is in the form of 3-ounces of water. To be perfectly correct, this amount of water should be reduced from the amount of water that you normally add to the dough formulation.

Question:

We want to add milk to our dough formula for the flavor that it adds to the finished crust. Is there any special handling that is needed to use milk in our dough formula?

Answer:

The addition of plain, liquid milk to your dough formula can result in a dough softening effect, somewhat similar to that obtained with the addition of a reducing agent such as L-cysteine (PZ-44). To prevent this from happening, the milk should be scalded before it is added to the dough formula. To scald the milk all you need to do is to put it into a suitably sized container and heat it to a full boil. It can then be cooled and added to the dough in the same manner as water is added. Since it is the butter fat content of the milk that contributes to the flavor characteristic with the use of milk, either whole milk or buttermilk should be used. A better approach from both food safety and overall convenience is to use dried milk solids rather than liquid milk. Dried milk solids don't need to be refrigerated or scalded before use. You just weigh out the appropriate amount, add it to the flour, dry blend it into the flour with a few jogs of the mixer agitator, and you're ready to begin mixing the dough. To use dry milk solids, all you need to do is to figure 12 percent of the weight of the liquid milk and add this as your amount of dry milk solids. For example: If your dough formula called for 1-gallon of liquid whole milk (roughly 8-pounds) you would replace it with 0.96 pound (15.36 ounces) of dry milk. Heck! Just call it 1-pound, we ain't making rocket fuel here. So, how did I come up with that number? Just use your handy calculator, enter the weight of the liquid milk that you are using or want to use, then press "X" and enter 12 and press the "%" key. Read the answer in the display window.

The only thing you will need to do is to make sure the dry milk solids that you purchase are specified as "high heat" or "super heat". Where do you get dry milk solids? Any bakery ingredient supplier will have it available in 50-pound bags. If you want to start out with dry milk solids and are wondering how much to use, try 10 to 15 percent of the flour weight as a good starting point. Then be sure to add some additional water to the dough formula to compensate for the drying effect of the milk powder. The amount of extra water to add is 1-pound of extra water for each pound of added dry milk powder. to replace the 12-ounces of oil in your dough formula. This difference between 12-ounces and 15-ounces is in the form of 3-ounces of water. To be perfectly correct, this amount of water should be reduced from the amount of water that you normally add to the dough formulation.}

Question:

We are considering using a different type of sugar in our dough. What are our options, and how much should we use?

Answer:

The main reason for using different types of sugars in a dough formulation is to impart the flavor of the sweetener to the finished product. In this regard, your basic options are honey, molasses, and malt syrup. Think of these syrups as having two basic components, solids (sugar) and water. For the most part, we can consider the solids portion to be 80 percent of the syrup weight and the water to be 20 percent. For example: 16-ounces of any one of these syrups will contain roughly 12.8-ounces of sugar and 3.2-ounces of water.

To keep things simple it is perfectly OK to round these off to 13-ounces of solids and 3-ounces of water. The flavor and color of these sweeteners is an ideal compliment to the growing interest in the use of whole grains in pizza crusts. Honey is graded by color, with the lighter colors being the more expensive but also having the most delicate flavors. The darker colored honeys have a more robust flavor and sell for a lower cost, so these are the honeys that are most commonly used in dough to provide a unique flavor to the finished crust. A good starting level for a darker colored honey is 3 to 4 percent of the flour weight. When using malt syrup, keep in mind that there are two types of malt syrups, diastatic (enzyme active) and non-diastatic (non-enzyme active). Unless you want your finished crusts to be extremely soft and gummy, be sure to specify a non-diastatic malt syrup. Typical use levels for malt syrup are 3 to 5 percent of the flour weight. The flavor imparted by malt syrup is probably best described as "nutty" at the lower use levels, and "malted milk" like at the higher levels. Molasses contributes both a very pronounced flavor and also a very dark color to the finished pizza crust. Due to this, the use level is generally at only 2 or 3 percent of the flour weight. More can be used if the color and flavor are acceptable.

Remember those solids and water content that were mentioned earlier? Here is where those numbers come into play. Lets say your dough is presently made with 2 percent sugar (sucrose/table sugar) and you want to replace it with honey. Using your calculator, enter the weight of sugar that you are presently using in your dough (2), now press "X" and enter 80 and press the "%" key. You can read the amount of honey (or any of the other sugar syrups) you will need to add to correctly replace the "sugar" in your dough formula (2X 80 press "%" and read the answer 2.5). The difference in weight (0.5-pound) will be water, which should be subtracted from the amount of water that you add to your dough formula, failure to do so may result in an excessively soft or sticky/tacky dough characteristic.

– PMQ –