so schools have to follow the Smart Snack by USDA next year anyone have any suggestions
I need to work on Wheat dough does anyone make this already and how much different is it than regular High Gluten Flour
Thanks Dennis
Here are the guidelines if anyone is wondering about the new requirements: http://www.smartsnacksinschool.com/smart-snacks-in-school-standards/
We’ve been making a whole-grain qualified dough for our contract this past school year. The important thing to remember is that your only need 51% of the flour weight to be whole grain and then it is “qualified.” I encourage you to use whole white wheat flour as opposed to a regular red wheat flour as the flavor is much milder. I also strongly suggest not using one of the “school mixes” offered by the flour companies as blending the dry flours together and then adding water results in less-than-great final product (wheat gets under-hydrated and regular flour sponges up too much - blech).
My experiment/results are in this thread: http://thinktank.pmq.com/threads/whole-white-wheat-flour.12463/#post-86896 Note that my sodium numbers are wildly off as I had a brain-fart and used the total weight of the salt and not just the sodium portion of the sodium chloride - duh!
Basically:
- Use your regular dough recipe and make at least 51% of the flour be whole white wheat by weight.
- Mix only the whole white wheat flour with only its portion of water (which the hydration will be at a rate at least 5% higher than used in your regular dough). To that we add 1/2 the yeast (I think it improves the flavor/performance of the whole white wheat dough), mix just until it balls up, and set aside in the cooler for at least 1 hour to hydrate.
- In the bowl add the regular flour’s portion of water (at your regular hydration %), salt, sugar, regular flour & remaining yeast. Don’t mix yet. Chop up the whole wheat soaker into manageable pieces and place into bowl. Now mix until it all just comes together into a ball. Add oil. Finish mixing.
- Best used next day. Still usable but not as great 2nd play. Trash when 3 days old.
Note:
- We started out adding all the water to the white wheat flour and making sort of a poolish, but it refused to blend in the regular flour as well.
- Mixing the regular flour portion into ball and then adding the wheat soaker didn’t blend as well either.
- Chunks of soaker added to the unmixed regular flour/remaining ingredients balled up and blended really well.
- You’ll need to use a part-skim mozzarella to meet the requirements. Even part skim is too high in saturated fat, but there is an exemption for part skim mozz.
- Sodium is going to be a real challenge. You can probably make a “thin crust” or keep the sodium at the minimum (as per Tom) of 1% of flour weight.
Good luck!
We blend our flour together in 1 batch and have had good results. We do have a monster size mixer that I purchased just for this reason. We mix 50 lbs white and 52 lbs of wheat. I too did a lot of tinkering to get a decent looking and tasting crust out this.
David
Thanks guys will be working on this soon
I would like to add one other thing here. If you have a challange of getting the sodium content low enough there is now a very good salt substitute available with about a 50% reduction in sodium content. If anyone is interested in this product feel free to contact Tom McCurry at t.mccurry@cainfood.com . I had a chance to participate in a blind sensory panel using this product and even I got it wrong (picked the wrong one).
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
will this effect what price you sell to the schools? What is a good bid? I am starting now on getting ready for next year.
The whole white wheat flour we get is basically the same price as the regular high gluten (and the h2o % is higher), so no real effect on our cost. When we bid 3 years ago with regular dough, I believe all the national chain’s bids were between $5 - 6 for a 14" pizza. No idea what they will bid with their whole-grain qualified dough these days… and the cheese block settling in at ~$2.00.
If your school system accepted bids last year or in previous years, you should be able to request a copy of the bids as it’s public record - at the least the winning bid will be in the school board minutes. Be prepared to run your food cost pretty high to get into this game.
Also, our bid is done early this month - you might want to touch base with the Food Service Director a.s.a.p. so you don’t miss out!
We run our school district pizza at around 55% food cost. The labor % is low 15% , so that puts the prime cost at 70%. Even after other expenses we make 20% margin on it. When the cheese market went to $2.42lb we made 10%. We have to bid on this order every 2 years and according to food service director we haven’t been the lowest bid. We are fortunate enough to have a school district that puts a high priority on the quality of there food. You don’t have to have the lowest price, just best value.
Ours used to be that way. They would bring in students to have a blind taste test and award it without much concern for price. They only cared if you could execute (i.e. - multiple locations and/or enough oven capacity).
One year they split the contract between us and a national chain charging $1 less per pie. When they sold the same # of slices no matter whose day it was, they unsurprisingly started awarding the contract mainly on the basis of price. Now we make a product just for the schools that is portioned like a national chain pie… but with heaps of added love.
I have my foot in the door, looks like its me vs Pizza Hut…One thing I did when I had a shop in San Diego was we did take and bake for the schools, IT drastically cut down on there waste. That was 15 years ago though. What do you think the chances are today?
How many pies are typically done in a school order for you guys? I would think it is a little difficult to get 100 pies piping hot to a cafeteria that will want at least 30 minutes lead time before the students eat them.
I doubt they want to cook the pizzas, the outside vendor delivery is supposed to ease the burden on their prep time.
Our High Schools do them in 2 or 3 waves, one for each lunch period. 30 pies per wave, per school is about what we do at the start of the year and it winds down to 20ish by the end. I’d be surprised if they want or have the storage capacity to receive all the pizzas at once.
Brad can I ask what you bid yours out at, or anyone that has won a successful bid? If I can price it right they will choose us, (their exact words) It is just us and Pizza Hut, Unfortunately its only going in the senior academy so unsure of the amount, I know it will be once a week every Friday. I think we will start at 50 pizzas
Just found out that we won the bid again, so we should have it for another 3 years (1-year contract w/2 renewal options) if we don’t screw it up.
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