As pizza makers and bakers, we are trained to choose our flour based on what we want our end product to look, feel and taste like. We analyze a bag of flour for the level of protein it contains, how coarsely it is milled, the elasticity it will provide and if it is bleached, unbleached or enriched. Another important question should be what wheat is used. Just as baking has been returning to its artisanal roots, pizza makers are exploring beyond standard “white flour” as whole grains and ancient grains enter the conversation.

Like all plants, wheat will taste different depending on the varietal as well as the region and soil it is grown in. All these factors influence the complexity and flavor of the grain once it is milled. The quality and type of grains have a huge impact on the flavor, texture, color, crumb and nutritional value of the pizza, breads and pastries that we create from them.

Using Whole Grains and Local Mills for my Restaurant

One of my favorite parts of owning a pizzeria is making and experimenting with dough. When I started adding in whole-grain flours, I realized how much I had been missing out. I knew the basics about wheat and flour, but once I started diving deeper, I couldn’t stop. I wanted to know about all the different wheat varietals, why freshly milled flour is so different from mainstream commercial flour, how whole grains can kickstart the fermentation process and the multitudes of flavor and texture they add to pizza dough. Naturally, I started milling flour to add to our dough in my shop with a small mill I bought. This was clearly not sustainable since we don’t have a big enough mill – nor the space for it – to accommodate the amount of dough we make daily. Luckily for me, there are a few fantastic local mills in my area.

Not only was I able to access great grains to mill (and eventually just buy flour from them), I had the opportunity to learn about the different ones available, what would work best in our dough and the different flavor qualities each one contributed. A lot of states also have created grain alliances, which can be a fantastic resource if you don’t happen to have a mill near you. Here in Colorado, the Colorado Grain Chain was started a handful of years ago, and it offers educational classes and resources to members.

Before I settled on a dough I really loved, I tried out some that were almost entirely composed of whole-grain flours and others with varying percentages of whole grains. Some were great and others not so much. There’s a fine line between adding flavor and texture and turning it into a whole-wheat dough. For my shop, we try to make two different doughs, max. This helps with a multitude of things, including labor and space. In order to add freshly milled, local whole grains to our dough and not have it be a completely separate item, I had to scale way back on both the whole-grain flour and my expectations. I found that the sweet spot is closer to five percent whole grains, but you can always push it a little further if you want a heartier dough.

Wheat and Milling Types

You might be asking, “Where do I even begin to choose what whole-grain flour to use?”

In the U.S., there are six classes of wheat:

• Hard Winter Red

• Hard Red Spring

• Soft Red Winter

• Soft White

• Hard White

• Durum

The protein content of the wheat primarily determines how the wheat will be used. The greater the protein content, the greater the elasticity of the dough. Most of the flour produced domestically is made of hard or soft red wheat. As you can see, all flour begins as whole grains. However, to be classified as “whole wheat” or “whole grain,” the flour must contain all three parts of the grain kernel – the bran, endosperm and germ. The way most commercial flour is milled and processed almost always takes out the wheat’s nutrients by separating the endosperm from the bran and germ.

The most common way to mill grains these days is roller-milling. Most commercial flour companies use this method because it is quick, efficient and produces lots of flour in a short amount of time. The process involves feeding grain through a series of rollers to separate the endosperm – or the part of the grain made up of mostly carbohydrates – from the rest of the kernel. This produces a very fine, white flour. The bran and the germ, which contain most of the grain’s nutrients, are removed in this process, leaving behind an extremely palatable flour with fewer nutrients. Stone-milled flour involves slowly grinding grain between two large stones. This ancient method preserves more of the grain and the nutrients. Flour can then be sifted to achieve varying degrees of coarseness.

While not everyone lives in an area where it is easy to access local, freshly milled wheat, plenty of great flours can be sourced from smaller mills across the country – and even from larger companies. Most are more than willing to answer any questions you have and even send samples for you to experiment with. Some boutique flour companies only carry single-origin flours, whereas others have whole-grain flour blends created for specific baked goods. There are tons of ancient and heirloom grains. If you’re considering them for your pizza dough, I like to look for grains that have pretty high protein content, contribute a unique (but not overpowering) flavor and can be sourced year-round.

Wheat Varieties to Consider for Pizza Dough

Here are a few varietals to get you going:

Clarks Cream Wheat

This Hard White Winter wheat is a great one to dip your toes in. With its subtle color, it’ll blend right in with the rest of your flour while still adding a great texture – and, you guessed it, creamy taste.

Turkey Red 

A personal favorite of mine and many bread bakers, this wheat has high protein content. This is great for higher gluten pizzas, such as New York style, and adds great flavor.

Red Fife

This heirloom varietal adds a rich, nutty flavor and deeper caramel color to your dough.

Yecora Rojo

This wheat has high protein content, is more complex than a lot of other grains and adds a chewy texture to your pizza or bread.

Another great way to incorporate whole grains into your dough is by adding them to your sourdough starter, biga or poolish. Since whole grains naturally have higher sugar content, they will kickstart the fermentation process. Keep in mind that your hydration also will change, since whole-grain flours absorb a lot more liquid.

As you can see, you don’t need to completely overhaul your dough to benefit from the complexity whole-grain flours add to taste, texture and fermentation. Just remember that a little can go a long way. To me, it’s worth the extra effort. After all, you can make your toppings as fancy as you want but, in the end, a pizza is only as good as the crust.

AUDREY KELLY owns Audrey Jane’s Pizza Garage in Boulder, Colorado.

Read the July 2025 Issue of Pizza Today Magazine

Who are this year’s Rising Stars in the Pizza Industry? We profile six up-and-comers who are making their mark on pizza. Discover why the Grandma style pizza is spreading across the country. See why your pizza could benefit from whole-grain flour. Brush up on inventory management best practices. Learn how to take your products to the retail market. Go to the July Issue.

The post Your pizza dough might benefit from adding whole-grain flour | Knead to Know appeared first on Pizza Today.

Breaking and Entering

For centuries, artisan bakers have been adding flavors to their dough to give customers a delightful, textural crunch and flavor excitement. From salty olives that the ancient Etruscans mixed into their wet dough to the spicy sweetness of brushing green chili jam on a hot crust today, experimenting with new ingredients pushes the boundaries of taste.

These items can meld with different flours, dough hydrations and pizza toppings to define your personal approach. Even though bakers have been infusing breads for centuries, pizza crusts have remained relatively untouched – probably because our dough has a lower height and thinner profile, and pizzas already are topped with a variety of flavors. What if this coin was flipped, and the flavor profile of each pizza was a combination of base and toppings?

X-Men

Integrating solid items into pizza dough may be a giant leap for most pizza makers, but if you start by dipping your sesame-coated toe into this vat of creativity, you may get hooked. If you are delving into solid-flavored crusts for the first time, you should ask yourself: Are all my taste sensations activated so I want to go back for a second bite or a second slice?

The flavor factor depends on taste, touch (mouthfeel), aroma and what some call the “X” factor. This last factor is an amalgamation of all the above, creating a sense of place and time. Flavor depends on what is perceived by the mouth, nose and eyes. Sweetness, saltiness, sourness, bitterness and umami are all mouth activations. Texture, piquancy (hotness) and astringency (the “pucker effect”) are residual mouth sensations. Because we are working with cooked and crispy wheat products, texture is usually the No. 1 sensory factor when creating pizza crusts.

Planting Evidence

Mixing flavors into dough can be a complicated affair if these items are too large, sharp, flaccid or leach components that inhibit yeast growth. Any sharp item can puncture the waxy alveoli in the dough’s cell structure as it rises. Items too long and flaccid will inhibit the formation, balling and cutting of the dough ball, and items that are too fatty can burn on the oven bricks.

Here are some items that can be fun to integrate into your pizza dough:

• Herbs.

This is a sure-fire way to integrate flavor into dough. Rosemary, cilantro, parsley, basil, tarragon, chervil and arugula integrate well with fatty meat toppings and cheeses. Be sure to chop items such as rosemary, which can be too strong. Herbs are great partners to onions and garlic. Fatty cheeses also complement the strong herbaceous notes.

• Pork Products.

Bacon, soppressata, salami and other fatty charcuterie can be cooked and chopped into small slices before it is kneaded into the dough. Just be sure to partially bake bacon and soak up the fat with paper towels before incorporating pieces into the dough. A thin chiffonade cut with Prosciutto di Parma shank and end cuts of salami will save you money and add major flavor to pizza crust.

• Spices.

Wow. That’s usually the reaction when a person bites into a Za’atar covered crust or a green peppercorn-infused crust. We’ve come a long way from pepper-flake-added pizza dough. Now, many inventive pizza makers are experimenting with ghost pepper, fennel pollen, spicebush berries, Szechuan peppercorns, cardamom, caraway, coriander and even Chinese seven-spice dough.

• Seeds and Nuts.

Both offer a wonderful expansion of textural enjoyment in pizza dough. The rule that “smaller is better” comes to the fore here. Walnuts, pine nuts, pecans, hazelnuts and pistachio round out the nut category, with sunflower, sesame, nigella, black sesame, poppy, flax and pumpkin coming in a close second. Don’t forget sprouting seeds, which increase nutritional value and create a whole new flavor profile.

• Dried Fruit.

Cherries, prunes, apricots, cranberries, figs, apples and pears are all a great juxtaposition to nuts, sour cheeses, bacon and charcuterie. They offer a sweet and intense respite from redundant savory flavors on a pizza. Some of these can be rehydrated before mixing or made into chutneys, sauces and gastriques (a de-glazed sweet fruit with vinegar).

• Allium.

Believe it or not, this category is one of my favorites for dough infusions. Onions, leeks, scallions, garlic, ramps, chives and black garlic are the best partners with cheese, meats, vegetables and spices. I make a pizza with roasted leek, grated Parmigiano and artichoke that’s a real showstopper with pureed roasted garlic and salami. In the spring, I harvest ramps and infuse them in the dough for a Gruyere and bacon pizza. The key dynamics of alliums is pairing them with spices. Curry spreads so much better in a dough than curry powder, while garlic with anchovy makes for a memorable pizza dough.

JOHN GUTEKANST owns Avalanche Pizza in Athens, Ohio.

Did you miss Part 1?

Knead to Know: Liquid Courage

Infusing pizza dough with flavor and finesse (Part One) We pizza makers immerse ourselves into the science, craft and business of perfecting pizzas every day.

The post What to Know When Adding Herbs, Spices and Other Elements to Your Pizza Dough | Knead to Know appeared first on Pizza Today.

So, you’re thinking of competing in a pizza contest? Welcome to a whole new world of pizza, where friends willing to help you are as necessary as remembering to bring the flour to make your dough. Competitors and the quality of pizza seen at competitions these days are getting more and more fierce. Knowing how to make your dough in potentially the weirdest of conditions could be the difference between first place and last place.

The more often you compete, the more little odds and ends you learn to be successful competing in any country. But if you’ve never done it, here’s what you need to know.

For those who have no help whatsoever, I recommend choosing a competition in your home country first.

This will give you a leg up when it comes to sourcing ingredients and being able to successfully shmooze your way into a hotel kitchen, if needed, because you already know the language and small cultural norms that foreigners always miss.

When it comes to making your dough for the first time, you want to check if the competition is supplying anything for you or if you are liable to bring everything. Competitions in the U.S. tend to have more prep items such as mixers, space in a fridge overnight and even small wares such as bowls and scales. Competitions outside of the U.S. normally will provide you with a prep area outfitted with tables, a communal sink and, occasionally, access to flour.

Depending how far you need to travel for a competition, this will determine when you need to make your dough. If the time works out correctly and you know you can keep your items cold, making your dough at home – in your known kitchen – and then transporting it in a cooler could be your best bet.

I’ve done a whole host of weird things for competitions and pissed off my fair share of hotel cleaning staff. For my first competition abroad, I arrived with flour, a can of tomatoes, the pan I needed and a prayer. I was in Italy on a Sunday – when most stores are closed – and needed to make dough. But what do you make it in? Well, this was at a time when I knew how to make dough by hand, but I hadn’t needed to do so very often. I found the smallest container possible for my starter, ruining the curtains and carpet, and ended up making my dough in the hotel trash can. Don’t worry, I washed the trash can many, many times.

Timing was crucial at this stage, and figuring out how to keep my dough cold until the competition was a main priority. Keeping dough and ingredients cold can be the hardest part. Portable coolers, ice packs and fermentation techniques will see you through. If you arrive and you do not have a mini fridge, lowering your yeast percentage or bulk fermenting can help. Don’t keep your room too hot if your dough needs to sit out, and asking for ice is always a strategy. I have shmoozed and smiled my way into many hotel kitchens. Sometimes, sharing a glass of wine with the staff could mean extra ice or even being able to store items in their fridge.

Knowing how to make dough by hand is a critical skill in competions. You never know when you will be able to make dough and where. If the desk in your hotel room is the place it needs to be made, then you sure better know how to do it.

When it comes to judging, there isn’t one golden recipe that will get you to the podium.

A winning dough is a combination of your recipe and proper execution. The first things judges look for is how well cooked the crust is. Is the coloring uneven? Has the bottom browned well? How soft or crispy is the dough, and is there a noticeable gum line? Most judges will poke and prod the pizza, first looking for any visible flaws before proceeding to the tasting portion.

The category will determine the type of bake, but in the U.S., floppy slices are a no-go these days. For some categories, such as Neapolitan, flop is not an indicator of a poor bake, so this is not always a hard and fast rule. If a contestant is trying to present a tavern style or a New York slice, crispy is the name of the game.

Waiting in line for judging can be the limiting factor that changes your pizza from crispy to floppy, and it is completely out of your control. Organizers know how troubling waiting is for hot food – and they try their best to be prompt and timely – but anticipating this with the use of a screen or checking in before you start is helpful. Once you begin, the timer starts, so checking in before you touch anything is best.

The inside crumb is a clear indicator of well stretched and well-cooked dough. The dreaded gum line is a dead giveaway for poor stretching techniques, cold dough or improper temperatures coming from ingredients or a too-hot oven. An open crumb should look like a spiderweb. Charring and bubbles aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but anything considered excessive will work against you.

One of the mistakes I see made over and over by new competitors is nerves getting the best of them. While cooking, it can be easy to let the anxiety of the situation win out. Usually, this happens in the form of pulling your pizza out of the oven too quickly when those last 30 seconds could have made the difference. There are going to be people rushing you, but remember: Your cook time is your cook time. Do not pull that pizza out until you are 100 percent sure it is done.

For tasting, judges want to see not just a well-made pizza, they want to taste and smell well-made dough.

There’s a distinct smell that comes with well-fermented dough. Young dough has a very prominent raw flour aroma, whereas a well-fermented dough has some acidity and sweetness to it. Well-rounded and cohesive flavors are preferred.

All in all, competition dough comes down to execution and a recipe. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and no competition is out of reach.

Laura Meyer is the owner of Pizzeria da Laura in Berkeley, CA.

>> Explore answers to more common pizza dough questions in Troubleshooting your Pizza Dough: What’s wrong with my pizza dough? <<

The post What You Need to Know About Competition Pizza Dough | Knead to Know appeared first on Pizza Today.

Pizza has come a long way in my short years as a pizzaiola. One of the things I love about our industry right now is how hungry people are for information. Pizza makers now want every last detail about how to make the perfect pizza and that information is relatively easy to track down with the internet and cell phones.

Everyone is obsessed with learning how to perfect their fermentation to maximize flavor. And with the improvements behind electric ovens, there is now a great oven for everyone depending on your needs.

If looking at Instagram or any other social media platform there are a few shots that everyone has on their feed.

The side crumb shot, the top/side shot of the whole pizza, and the infamous booty shot. Showing off the perfectly cooked bottom is a badge of honor just as much as the interior crumb. Not only does this shot show off any char or beautiful coloring but it also will show how sturdy the pizza is. Being able to pick up your pizza without it sagging in the middle shows how great of a bake you have all the way through. It proves your pizza is structurally sound and has the perfect crisp. So, how do you obtain the perfect bottom bake? Let’s analyze.

From articles past we now know that water contributes a lot to crispier doughs when we look at styles like Roman. Thin-crust pizzas, on the other hand, tend to be on the lower end of the spectrum. Yes. Water plays a crucial role in a crispy bottom, but a lot has to do with the oven and factors contributing to the pizza before it ever goes into the oven.

Before I put a pizza in the oven, I’m looking at the make line.

Where is the dough being stored? Is enough dough pulled out, sitting at room temperature to facilitate the speed of service on that given day? Is dough being left to come to temperature in stages so that by the time it gets to the oven it’s up to room temperature or is dough being forgotten about in the heat of service and being stretched cold?

Cold dough is one the easiest problems to counteract and is one of the most common mistakes I see in pizzerias. Cold dough cooks too quickly on the outside and is hardest to cook thoroughly on the inside. Using room temp dough will ensure that it cooks all the way through achieving the perfect crisp from top to bottom.

The oven itself and understanding the cooking process contributes to the bottom bake. There are many different ovens to choose from and picking the right one for your pizzeria is the first step. Understanding how to properly cook in that chosen oven is paramount, and not just learning how to cook when it is slow, but also how to adjust your cooking when it’s chaotic and your oven is being challenged. Electric ovens are getting a lot of hype and for good reasons. They can reach higher temps than gas ovens and there are ways to manipulate the top and bottom elements to ensure even cooking. But the process is the same, regardless of the type of oven you have.

There are three different types of heat that contribute to the baking of a pizza. Conduction, which is the transfer of heat from the stones surface. Convection, the transfer of heat through the air or a fluid, and Radiant heat which is the expelling of heat outwards into the dome and then bouncing back. When you’re thinking about how to load your oven on a busy night you need to think about maximizing the space but also how to manage the depletion of heat and the recovery time. Some pizzerias use conveyor ovens, which can be great for pan pizzas and extremely easy to use and train employees on but are notorious for underbaked bottoms. Most conveyor ovens don’t have stones which removes conduction from the baking equation. To bake a pizza, the dough would need to be placed onto a screen and then it would go through but it is always easy to tell who is using a conveyor because the bottoms will not brown as well as the top and there will be the telltale imprint left on the bottom from the screen. Some conveyors have learned and have changed their designs to using stone-like slats to combat this problem.

During the cooking process the pizza absorbs the heat from the stone underneath to cook the dough.

For the first few pizzas of the day, each will cook to near completion in that same spot it was placed in because the oven was preheated, and the chamber is 100-percent hot everywhere. Over the course of a busy dinner these spots become cold. Most crews are trained to look for the spot where the previous pizza was cooked and to place the next one in or near that same exact place. This works to a point. Midway through a busy night you will notice the bottoms are no longer cooking at the same rate as the top and your cook times are becoming longer and longer.

For electric ovens, this is when you learn to manipulate the top and bottom settings to counteract the drop in temperature within your stones and to help speed up the recovery time of your stones to get them back to 100 percent and performing at peak volume.

For wood, gas and coal ovens, that luxury does not exist. The oven person can feed their fire increasing the temp within the chamber but without giving the stones time without a pizza cooking on top, those stones will not come back to 100 percent quick enough. This is when a hot spot comes into play. When I was learning how to run an oven, regardless of the kind, I was always told to leave one or two spots open as the “hot spots”. These spots were reserved for finishing pizzas. As the stones cool down through a busy service you need a spot that is at 100 percent to finish off the bottom and prevent the dreaded white soggy bottom.

Cooking a pizza with a perfect bottom bake comes down to finding the right temperature for the chamber and the type of dough you have, keeping hydration in consideration, and learning how to properly manage your slow and peak times.

Dough is a living thing. Just as we experience different changes in temperature throughout a day and will throw on a sweater or take a jacket off to regulate our body heat, elements will have to constantly change to ensure your pizza and bottoms are consistently coming out the same and as crispy as you want them to be.

Laura Meyer is the owner of Pizzeria da Laura in Berkeley, CA.

>> Explore answers to more common pizza dough questions in Troubleshooting your Pizza Dough: What’s wrong with my pizza dough? <<

The post Knead to Know: A Perfect Bottom Bake Pizza appeared first on Pizza Today.

Sourdough? Pre-Ferments, Biga, Poolish? Confused yet? Okay, you watched a few videos, heard some chatter, saw the trends, followed some influencers, etc. and now you want to do “sourdough” pizza. News flash: you don’t need any of these fancy techniques to make great dough. There is a simple method called a straight dough mix or direct mix.

For those new to the industry, this means you throw everything in the mixing bowl and just mix for 20 to 25 minutes until very smooth. I do a blend of local whole wheat, bread flour and 00 flour. You can just use one flour straight out of the bag. Let sit for 15 minutes after the mixing is done and then roll up into balls. After the mixing, let the dough balls sit for about 3 to 6 hours then into the fridge for overnight or longer or leave out at room temp for 12 hours then use. The amount of yeast will vary but typically I’ll do a 1/2 teaspoon of instant yeast per 25 pounds of flour. In an emergency you can make dough in the morning for same day use but double the yeast, leave the dough out and use in the evening.

Popularity of these “bread” techniques bleeding into the pizza world started with artisan bread makers realizing they can make pizza on a Friday night and make some good money. Don’t get me wrong when done right these ‘fancy’ techniques can make outstanding pizza and they do. Key word here though, is done “right”.

Without question bread makers have elevated the pizza game. Then during COVID, millions took to making bread and pizza. Oven technology along with so much open-source information available created an environment where the masses could make great pizza. The secret is out, pizza has high margins and sells. Well, it just happens to be the most popular food in the world.

With so much information and misinformation out there, it can get very foggy. There’s a general misconception about what makes good dough. Group thought would have you believe that the only way to do pizza right is “sourdough” or that the longer you ferment your dough or the higher your hydration the pizza is somehow better. I beg to differ.

Let me spell out the advantages of doing a direct mix.

1. Time. To put it together takes minimal time and it is not an involved process.
2. Labor. A not-so-small amount of labor is saved by the direct mix method and training is much easier.
3. Consistency. With this method there are less mistakes, and you are going to get more consistent results.
4. Margins are better based on less product used, labor savings and the avoidance of costly mistakes.

Ultimately, it’s your choice how you want to make your dough. Whatever method you use when executed properly will produce outstanding pizza. The 10,000-foot view is this: it’s the care and attention given to the craft which are more important than any one particular thing when producing an outstanding pizza. However, sometimes simple is just better.

Scott Sandler owns Pizza Via in St. Louis, Missouri.

The post Knead to Know: The Merits of Direct Mix Pizza Dough appeared first on Pizza Today.

Crusts Made for Your Business

Introducing premade and parbaked pizza crusts into your business offers several benefits. First and foremost is time savings. These crusts significantly reduce the prep time required to make a pizza, often involving minimal proofing or thawing. This efficiency allows smaller operations to produce larger quantities, easing employee workload.

Premade pizza crusts also help save money in various ways. Bulk purchasing options lower ingredient costs, and the longer shelf life of these crusts reduces purchasing frequency. Additionally, the minimal preparation and easy management translate to lower wage costs in areas like training, expertise, and hours.

Beyond operational advantages, premade crusts are available in several varieties. One of the industries most popular crusts at the moment is the tavern crust because of it’s versatility in recipes and it’s texture and flavor. While crispy crusts like tavern crusts are in right now, self-rising, raised edge, flatbread, and thick crusts are still popular options with customers and businesses.

While some may doubt the quality of premade pizza crusts, they are crafted with high-quality ingredients to ensure excellent results for restaurants.

Dough for Any Product

Premade dough balls offer many of the same benefits as premade crusts but with greater versatility. They provide significant time savings and lower production costs for a restaurant while also allowing for a wider range of menu items beyond just pizza.

Areas of a menu that can be enhanced with dough balls include:

• Appetizers
• Sides
• Main courses
• Desserts

Although premade dough balls require slightly more prep time than premade pizza crusts, they still save considerable time compared to making dough from scratch. Additionally, premade dough producers supply optimal instructions to help you create the best products for your customers.

Bread Made Easy

Restaurants can utilize various styles of premade bread, with sandwich bread being one of the primary options. Premade sandwich bread, though simple in concept, offers versatility in preparation. Typically available in sheets or flats, these bread pieces can be baked to achieve either a crispy and flaky texture or a softer, pita-like consistency. This flexibility allows restaurants to create unique sandwiches tailored to their specific style. Additionally, the bread can be cut into different sizes, which is suitable for sub-like sandwiches or small slider sandwiches.

One of the main benefits of using premade sandwich flats is their convenience. They come in large quantities and take up minimal space in a kitchen, making them ideal for smaller establishments with limited storage capacity. For larger kitchens, having a substantial stock of sandwich flats on hand reduces the need for frequent orders, saving on costs.

Another popular form of premade bread is breadsticks. These are a crowd favorite and a perfect addition to any restaurant menu. However, they are often underutilized in terms of creativity. Premade breadsticks come in sheets of precut dough, allowing restaurants to add a variety of toppings beyond just cheese. This flexibility enables the creation of unique and appealing breadstick options, much like creating different flavor combinations for pizzas.

All Around Savings

Introducing one or all of these types of premade products can significantly improve the efficiency of a kitchen and enhance a business’s offerings. These products can speed up the preparation time for menu items, reducing stress on employees and lowering operational costs. With premade items, you benefit from a longer shelf life, allowing restaurants to order less frequently and take advantage of bulk purchasing options. Beyond the operational advantages, these products also foster creativity, enabling restaurants to focus on what truly matters: the food.

Find Your Next Pizza Crust Partner

Discover the tradition of excellence that defines Baker’s Quality®. Quality has been baked into our name since 1997, and our dedication to superior customer experience starts with providing small-batch, custom pizza crusts supported by outstanding customer service. We only use the finest, freshest ingredients in our products, ensuring superior taste and quality with every bite. Join us in creating food to be proud of.

The post Pizza Dough and Crusts Made for Business Success appeared first on Pizza Today.

This extensive guide for troubleshooting your pizza dough and pizza crust answers common pizza dough problems to help you make a better pizza. Whether you are a professional pizza maker and pizzaiolo or an at home pizza maker and pizza chef, answers to common dough questions can help you perfect your pizza. Pizza Today has spent four decades providing solutions to pizza dough issues that pizzerias face. Through Dough Doctor, Knead to Know and Kitchen features, we have helped pizzerias learn more about pizza dough productions, management and fixing pizza dough problems. We have a section of pizzatoday.com dedicated to Dough Production & Development. Bookmark that link and browse through recent articles.

Here, we are addressing common dough problems and how to fix them. Before you dive into specific pizza dough questions, go ahead and bookmark this page. We will continue to add more dough questions and solutions.

What’s wrong with my pizza dough?

There are many things that could be wrong with your dough. Maybe your pizza is sticking to the peel. Maybe your dough is too soggy or your dough is undercooked. Maybe your pizza dough is overproofed. Maybe your pizza dough is too touch or stick or dough won’t stretch… this guide has answers to all of these common concerns and more

Explore the following common pizza dough questions with many resources to help solve each issue:

How do I get rid of the gum line on pizza crust?

Why is my pizza crust soggy?

Why does my pizza dough keep snapping back when I try to stretch it? Why does my dough not stay stretched?

How to prevent my pizza crust from bubbling in the oven?

How do I stop getting my pizza stuck on the pizza peel?

What do I do if I ruin my batch of pizza dough?

How do I keep the ingredients from sliding off my pizza crust?

Why is my pizza dough weak and tears when I stretch it?

Why is my pizza crust undercooked?

Why is my pizza crust too tough or chewy?

Why is my pizza dough too soft?

Why is my pizza dough so sticky?

How do I fix overproofed pizza dough?

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How do I get rid of the gum line on pizza crust?

What do you do when your pizza has a dreaded gum line? First, what is a gum line? The gum line is the doughy section of the crust, basically undercooked dough of the crust under its sauce, toppings and cheese.

4 causes of the gum line on finished pizza crust

The late Dough Doctor Tom Lehmann identified four common factors that contribute to the development of the gum line. They are:

1. Excessive thinning of the sauce. A thin watery sauce that exhibits a tendency to separate upon standing will develop a wet soggy area just below the sauce, leading to the development of a gum line.
2. Pre-saucing of the pizza skins ahead of time for in-store use or in making take and bake pizzas. Pre-saucing of the skins should be avoided whenever possible, but when it must be done, either to help keep up with orders during busy periods, or when making take and bake pizzas, the pizza skins should be given a very light application of oil prior to saucing.
3. Too much sauce used on the pizza. When too much sauce is used on the pizza, it becomes more difficult to bake out thoroughly.
4. Insufficient yeast level. This can result from a number of things. Incorrect dough formulation (not enough yeast), but more commonly it is the result of action taken to address blowing of the dough.

A few other solutions to reducing a gum line is to cross stack dough balls when they goes into the cooler. Keep adequate temperature control over your dough-making process to make sure the dough has cooled properly before cooling.

Read all about the dreaded gum line — What causes it and what to do about it.

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Why is my pizza crust soggy?

A myriad of factors can contribute to a soggy pizza crust. Here are a few common causes to start your trouble shooting:

The main culprit could be your pizza sauce. Audrey Kelly says, “It is also important to tailor your sauce to fit the style of pizza you are making. You don’t want a super heavy sauce on a delicate Neapolitan pie just as you want something more substantial on a Sicilian crust.”

It could also be your toppings, especially fresh vegetables. The late Dough Doctor Tom Lehmann provided an interesting solution. “I solved that problem by using a Japanese breadcrumb. I find it best to sauce the dough first, then sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of the coarse, plain, white crumb on top of the sauce. Then add the cheese and the vegetable toppings. The crumbs will absorb the moisture from the veggies, and the texture blends right in with the cheese. It really does work and prevents soggy bottom pizza!” Another option to roast vegetables slightly to expel excess water content.

Check that your oven temperature is correct. Thoroughly inspect your oven temperature. The late Dough Doctor Tom Lehmann goes into what to look for in troubleshooting oven temperature issues.

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Why does my pizza dough keep snapping back when I try to stretch it? Why does my dough not stay stretched?

Also called dough memory, pizza dough snapback occurs when a stretched pizza will not stay stretched – snaps back – no matter how much you stretch or how much pressure applied to the stretch.

Dough Expert Laura Meyer addresses pizza dough snapback or dough memory in a Knead to Know column. She says, “To better understand why dough snaps back we need to have a basic understanding of gluten development. Mixing time and the type of mixer used is extremely important when it comes to gluten development. If not done properly this can lead to your dough snapping back. Over mixing is a thing. When it comes time to mix your dough, having a game plan and all your ingredients weighed out and ready to go is important. I have seen many operations weigh as they go, which translates to dough mixing for too long in the mixer and the gluten becoming too tight.

“Cold dough is another factor here,” she continues. “Cold dough will not only cook poorly but will not stretch well and will continue to snap back. If you were to try and run a marathon without warming up you’ll most likely pull a muscle within the first few miles. Dough is no different, warming up your dough means the dough will stretch nicely and be less likely to tear.”

4 ways you can address pizza dough snapback

The late Dough Doctor Tom Lehmann identifies four ways you can address dough snapback:

1. By changing to a lower-protein content flour, we can generally reduce the amount of snap-back (though, in severe cases, this will not totally eliminate it).
2. Dough fermentation. One cause of snap-back is insufficient dough conditioning through fermentation, so anything which will increase the amount of fermentation the dough receives prior to opening into a skin will help to reduce or eliminate the problem. This might include any of the following: increasing the yeast level; increasing the finished (mixed) dough temperature or increasing the total fermentation time. Any of these actions will result in an increase in dough fermentation that will weaken the wheat flour proteins and result in a softer, more extensible (less elastic) dough that exhibits less of a tendency to snap-back.
3. Dough absorption. In some cases where only a slight amount of snap-back needs to be addressed, a slight increase of two to five percent in dough absorption might be sufficient to address the problem without any other changes being necessary.
4. Reducing agents. Reducing agents are ingredients that act on the flour proteins by breaking them down or weakening them. Some will even destroy/denature the proteins entirely. Reducing agents are what one might call the “silver bullet” or “magic ingredient” when it comes to excessive dough snap-back or memory. These are ingredients that you just add to the dough formulation and — poof! — no more snap back.

Read on in a Q&A with the Dough Doctor.

An easy fix may be using PZ-44 Dough Conditioner. In a Dough Doctor story, the late Tom Lehmann says, “This ingredient is what we call a “reducing agent.” When used in a dough, it will cause the dough to become softer and more extensible (less elastic). What this means is that it will not exhibit the snap-back characteristics during hand, or machine forming. When adding any type of reducing agent to your dough, care must be taken to prevent using it in an excessive amount.” Read more.

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How to prevent my pizza crust from bubbling in the oven?

Fermentation is one of the keys to reducing bubbling in our pizza doughs. The Late Dough Doctor Tom Lehmann looks at solutions to preventing bubbling crust.

With normal yeast levels (0.375 percent instant dry yeast, 0.5 percent active dry yeast, or 1.25 percent compressed/fresh yeast), and a finished (mixed) dough temperature in the 80 to 85F range, the bubbles are minimized after 2.5 hours of fermentation time at ambient temperature (approximately 70F).

If you take the proper storage steps, you can pretty much eliminate bubbles. Start by taking the dough balls immediately after scaling and balling and place them in dough boxes, cross-stacked for two hours. Be sure to wipe them with salad oil to prevent them from drying out in the cooler. After two hours, downstack them and allow them to ferment overnight. Allow them to sit at room temperature for two hours before you use them and you’re ready to go.

The second main cause of bubbling crusts, and possibly the most common today, has to do with both temperature and tempering of the dough balls after removal from the cooler. If the dough is at cooler temperature when taken to the oven for baking, an open invitation has been extended for bubble development.

Some prefer to allow dough balls to warm 5F above the cooler temperature. “We have found that by allowing the dough to temper at room temperature for 2 hours prior to opening the dough balls up into skins.”

Dough dockers are designed to help control bubbling. But they don’t do anything to prevent it, or address the problem at its root cause. If you do happen to have one of those doughs that just seems to have a penchant for bubbling, the dough docker might prove to be your salvation.

The Late Dough Doctor Tom Lehmann explores Bubbling Pizza Crust further.

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How do I stop getting my pizza stuck on the pizza peel?

Pizza sticking to a peel as you put the pizza in the oven is common pizza dough problem While some may think maker error, the real answer may lie in dough science. The late Dough Doctor Tom Lehmann addressed the cause of this dough issue in Pizza Today. “If you are using malt in your dough, make doubly sure that it is non-diastatic (non-enzyme active) malt. If the malt is diastatic malt (enzyme active), it will convert starch in the flour to sugars, making the dough sticky or tacky to the point where it will stick to almost any surface it comes into contact with, including a prep peel,” he said.

“If the dough is over absorbed (contains too much water) it may feel clammy or even exhibit a slight tackiness when touched,” he added. “Over absorbed dough tends to be difficult to work with as the dough is just too extensible and is easily over stretched during the forming operation. While some of the traditional doughs are fairly high in absorption and difficult to handle during forming, they can still be peeled into the oven without much of a problem if they are well floured for ease of handling, and either fine cornmeal, or semolina flour is used as the peel dust to aid in sliding the prepared dough skin off of the peel. Be sure to use a wood or wood laminate peel for your prep peel.”

He continued to offer this simple solution: “just make sure once the dough is placed on the peel it is dressed and peeled into the oven without interruption. Of course, a good peel dust doesn’t hurt either.”

From the Pizza Today Test Kitchen, we learned that if you give the peel a little shake after you top the pizza, it’s a good check before you attempt to slide a pizza off the peel onto a hot oven deck.

Go even more in depth into dough sticking on pizza peels.

Understand why certain flours are good peel release agents in Prep Peel and Dough.

Learn everything you ever want to know about pizza peels. Read Tools of the Trade Part One, Part Two and Part Three from Tony Gemignani:

Tools of the Trade

Peel Off on Different Types of Pizza Peels

Pizza Peels, Part III

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What do I do if I ruin my batch of pizza dough? 

Blowing a batch of dough happens. What’s important is that you have a plan in place to replace the pizza dough that has blown and maintain pizza service with the best pizza dough. That is where emergency dough comes in.

Dough Expert Laura Meyer recently addressed the subject. She says, “Having a low protein flour on hand will always work in a pinch. Certain flours work best at certain cooking temperatures. But with a low cook temp around 500 F, a 13-percent protein will do the trick. In an emergency situation, you’ll want to increase the temperature of the dough coming out of the mixer by 5-10 degrees, stopping at 80 F-85 F and adding a touch more yeast. This will get things moving quickly. If you’re accustomed to cold fermenting, you’ll want to switch to room temperature fermenting and leave the dough out of the fridge and in a warm area. Be careful if it’s in front of an oven as you’ll need to keep your eyes on the dough and rotate the trays so one side is not getting all of the heat. A poolish preferment will help add flavor as well as push the fermentation along, making sure your emergency dough doesn’t just cook well but also has all the flavor you need.” Read her article: Knead to Know: A Dough Emergency.

The late Dough Doctor Tom Lehmann provided a blue print for you to create an emergency dough fast. “Every shop should have an emergency dough formula and procedure tucked away for these not-so-special moments,” Lehmann said. “I like to make my emergency dough from my regular dough formula because I’m already familiar with it. Still, we need to make a few changes to our dough formula to allow it to be made quickly and be ready for making pizza skins in not much more than two hours.”

He continued, “I have found that increasing the yeast content to double the normal level helps to speed things up a bit. Increasing the finished dough temperature to something in the 90 to 95 F range really helps to get the dough on line within the two-hour time limit as well. The quickest way to do this is to just increase the temperature of the water that you are adding to the dough by 15 F (assuming you are presently targeting a finished dough temperature of 80 to 85 F). If you are not targeting your finished dough temperature in that range, give it your best estimation for water temperature to get your dough to come from the mixer within 90 to 95 F.

I also like to have a bag of reducing agent, such as PZ-44, on hand for these occasions. By including a reducing agent in the emergency dough formulation you will have a greater assurance that the dough will handle well without excessive snap-back during the forming procedure.”

Go deeper into creating an emergency dough.

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How do I keep the ingredients from sliding off my pizza crust?

There are several causes of ingredients sliding off your pizza crust. The first component you need to examine is if your pizza crust is strong enough to support the weight of the toppings that you are putting on the pizza. Pizza Master John Gutekanst dives into types of pizza crusts and the toppings they can support. “Too much hydration, wet toppings, weighty meats and cheeses, and insufficient thought about how the heated foundation will support all these assets can lead to your downfall. To avoid this, let’s look at the styles of pizzas and the topping support they offer.

Pizza styles and the weight of toppings

• Thin and crispy pizza: Low tolerance for weighty toppings unless an extremely low-hydrated, high-gluten dough is baked at medium temperatures, creating a hard, crisp crust that will not “flop” or crack. Examples are the East Coast Hot Oil pizzas, the Roman Scrocciarella and the St. Louis thin. A lot of these styles are made with less sauce and cheese and cut in the Chicago “Tavern Style” squares to accommodate multiple toppings.
• Medium thick brick-oven crust: Mid-level tolerance for heavy toppings depends upon hydration. Below 70 percent and a lower temperature bake at 500 F will dry a dynamic high-gluten crust out enough for plenty of sauce and cheese. The more steam remaining in the crust will soften the dough, and higher heat will only crisp the outside of the cornicione (crust.) If you try drying out the gluten scaffolding in the center at this high temperature, it will only burn the outside.
• High Hydration Crusts: Believe it or not, high hydration crusts are the perfect platform for dressing with multiple toppings. Pizzas like the Pizza in Teglia are baked in pans because of that high moisture, but they create a crisp crust and large cell structure at temperatures in the mid 500 F range. These pizzas also have a lot of oil in the mix because the oil coats the gluten strands eliminating moisture saturation. This technique creates strong alveoli, or “lungs” when filled by carbon dioxide. Many high-hydration pizzas are par-baked much in the same pans that the smaller-celled Sicilian Pizzas are, like the wonderful Sfincione.

Read his article: Heavy Lift: Crusts to Support Loaded Pizzas

Secondly, the dreaded gum line can be the culprit of toppings sliding off your pizza. Whether the pizza is over-sauced, under cooked or insufficient yeast levels, you’ll want to address these problems right away. Take a look at how to fix gum line issues. 

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Why is my pizza dough weak and tears when I stretch it?

Laura Meyer addressed dough tearing. “If your dough tears easily or is unable to stretch, then it has not developed enough gluten and could use a little bit more time mixing,” she says… “If my dough is high in hydration and I am using a planetary mixer, it can be hard for the dough to reach full gluten development purely because of the style of mixer and the way it is constructed. This is not necessarily a flaw by any means. Planetary mixers are great work horses and for some operations the best choice because it can accommodate attachments for cutting and shredding. Knowing that this mixer is not as well suited for high hydrated doughs, bulk fermentation as well as incorporating a few folds before refrigerating the dough will ensure that the dough absorbs all the water and develops to full gluten development. A good rule of thumb when using bulk fermentation is the shorter the mix time the longer the bulk fermentation and vice versa.

Autolyse is another technique used by bakers and pizza makers to make sure flour is well hydrated and to ensure full gluten development. Autolyse is a rest period during the mixing process.

Read her article: Knead to Know: What Comes After the Mix for your Batch of Dough.

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Why is my pizza crust undercooked?

Laura Meyer knows the ins and outs of proper pizza cooking. To address an undercooked pizza crust, she says, “One of the most common errors I see in kitchens is not enough dough has been pulled out of the refrigerator before service. Just as you should never put a cold steak on a grill, you should never put cold dough in a hot oven. If you are cooking Neapolitan pizza, cold dough tends to blister more giving it that leopard spotting everyone loves but at the same time is that much harder to cook all the way through. No matter what style you are cooking, your oven is going to have a set point and a specific cook time. In every kitchen I have worked in there is always that one cook or new person that loves cold dough because it is easier to stretch and harder to tear. The downfall of this is an improperly trained cook. During the cooking process your dough is rising in temperature to cook the toppings, cheese and dough. If your dough is cold, it is harder for it to cook all the way through while your toppings cook and the dough browns. When the pizza enters the oven, the water in the dough begins to boil and evaporate. If the dough is cold, it will not cook all the way through leaving too much moisture in the dough resulting in a gum line.

“Another flaw I see repeatedly is improperly cooked bottoms. On busy nights it can be hard to keep up with dine-in as well as take-out and delivery. It can become overwhelming and adding on people constantly asking where their food is can be anxiety driven and frustrating. Most cooks try and compensate by putting as many pies as they physically can in the oven thinking they’re going to push food out faster that way. What really ends up happening is the oven cools down to a point where the stones cannot recover with each new rotation of pies. As pizzas cook, the heat from the stones is absorbed by the pizza. By putting pizzas in the same spot, those areas completely lose their heat meaning the bottoms never cook. To combat this, I recommend leaving at least one spot where nothing is cooking leaving it as a “hot spot”. By keeping a hot spot in the oven, you will always have an area to rotate your pizzas into towards the end of the bake to finish off the bottoms. If you are using screens, it is smart to remove the screen halfway through so the pizza can finish on the physical stone. The contact with the stone will ensure a well-done bottom as well as ensure you get the desired crispiness.”

Read her article: Knead to Know: Avoid an Undercooked Pizza and Unhappy Diners.

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Why is my pizza crust too tough or chewy?

Dough Expert and owner of Pizzeria da Laura in Berkeley, California, recently covered the topic of how to relax tough dough. She says, “Dough snaps back continuously and is super hard, making it that much more difficult to get good results. Enter the dough conditioners and improvers. I’ve always grown up in an environment that promotes less additives are best, but sometimes you just need to fix it.
” In my definition, dough conditioners are an additive that we add to our dough to help improve upon certain key characteristics like texture, stretchability and softness that go beyond the main ingredients of flour, water, salt and yeast.” She goes into great detail how PZ-44 and other dough conditioners are used. Read Relaxing Tough Pizza Dough: Using Dough Conditioners and Improvers.

There are many factors that cause a pizza crust to be too chewy or too tough. The Late Tom Lehmann dives into the topic and provides cause and ways to fix the issue. He said, “When we encounter an excessively tough and chewy thin-crust pizza, the problem might be due to improper dough management techniques (such as a finished dough temperature that is too low, which therefore results in insufficient dough fermentation). Another cause for a tough and chewy crust characteristic is trying to sheet the dough too thin, thinking that it will make for a crispier finished crust. Just the opposite is true. Our dough formula and dough management procedure can be “spot on,” but if we sheet/roll the dough too thin we end up degassing the dough, making it more dense. The heat then passes right on through the dough without ever getting it hot enough to fully bake it and we end up with a crust that might have some resemblance of crispiness when it comes out of the oven but soon progresses from crispy to tough and chewy. The answer here is to use a different method to open the dough into a pizza skin (hand formed or pressed) or to open the sheeting rolls slightly to give a thicker pizza skin better able to create a heat/thermal block.

Read Lehmann’s article: Dough Doctor: Tough Sell — Causes of too tough, chewy crust.

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How to prevent my pizza crust from burning?

The first thing to examine: Is your pizza crust burnt or is that part of the pizza style and pizza characteristics? Blistering, also known as leoparding, is common with many high-heat, wood-fired pizzas. Char is a common characteristic of pizza styles, like New Haven and many artisan style pizzas.

Laura Meyer says, “At times what appears to be burnt areas are thin spots on the crust that formed during the stretch but were never degassed before entering the oven.  A simple fix is to pop thin bubbles before cooking or using a bubble popper to deflate enlarged bubbles inside the oven before they firm up.”

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Why is my pizza dough too soft?

The Late Tom Lehmann answered this question based on a two-day cold fermentation. “Your dough formula likely contains too much oil. Keep in mind that both water and oil contribute to the soft and extensible handling properties of the dough. It’s most likely that this is where the problem is. To correct the problem, I would suggest reducing the oil content to a level where it does not exceed four percent of the flour weight and to where the combined water and oil do not exceed 56 to 60 percent of the flour weight.”

He continued. “Also, keep in mind that the flour needs to hydrate the water in order to form “gluten”. With the high level of oil that you’re using it is entirely possible that a good deal of the flour is absorbing oil rather than water if the oil is not added in a delayed manner. To do this, do not add the oil until the ingredients have had a chance to mix together at a low speed for a couple of minutes. When you cannot see any dry flour in the mixing bowl, the oil can be added and blended in by mixing for an additional minute at low speed. Then, the dough can be mixed in your normal manner. This should give you more consistent dough performance, especially after a couple of days in the cooler.” Read on in Knead to Know: Soft Sell.

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Why is my pizza dough so sticky?

The minute you pull your dough from the dough box, you know when you have a sticky situation. The late Dough Doctor Tom Lehmann said, “The number one reason for a wet, sticky dough is covering it when you put it into the cooler. After mixing, the dough is going to be at least at room temperature or above, making it quite a bit warmer than the inside of your cooler, which should be operating at 36 to 40F. When you lid the container of dough balls, the moisture that is being held in the warm air condenses onto the inside of the container (the top where there is head space above the dough) as it cools due to exposure to the cold air. Since the dough retains a lot of heat (latent heat) it continues to generate moist air within the box and the moisture continues to condense onto the inside of the container until the dough and box eventually equilibrate at the same temperature. By this time, though, the box is flooded with water that drips onto the dough surface. This water is slowly absorbed back into the dough, but under most conditions the dough is removed from the cooler for use before it is fully absorbed. What we experience is a wet, sticky dough. To add insult to injury, these doughs also tend to have a strong propensity to bubble during baking as the water in the outer portion of the dough is vaporized into steam.

He provided a few step-by-step solutions to solve the sticky dough problem in Knead to Know: Sticky Situation.

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How do I fix overproofed pizza dough?

First, how do you know if your pizza dough is overproofed? John Gutekanst, dough expert and owner of Avalanche Pizza in Athens Ohio shares how tests to see how his pizza dough is proofed. “There are certain ways you can tell how far along your proofing has gotten. One way is to use your finger. Note: these examples are for dough that is not cold. Refrigerated dough may act differently.

• If the dough ball bounces back right away when pressed with your finger, it is not ready for prime time and needs to proof longer.
• If the ball is poked and the dent answers back in a slow, even fashion, it is ready to bake.
• If the dough ball has puffed up tremendously and your finger dent stays in the dough with no bounce back, the dough is borderline over-proofed.
• If the dough looks completely deflated like a wrinkly beach ball and deflates when poked with your finger, it is over-proofed.

One solution that Gutekanst shares is this: “This is a secret that many great pizzaioli and bakers hold tight to their chests, ‘The Re-knead.’  It is used extensively in the airy, Roman style Pizza in Teglia, as well as high-hydration sourdough bakers. The re-knead is a dough resurrection that stretches already mixed and relaxed dough. This procedure strengthens the gluten matrix and introduces new feeding opportunities to the yeast. Most re-kneads are part of a calculated dough schedule which takes highly hydrated, cold fermented dough, brings it to room temperature for a short period of time, and re-forms a new, stronger dough ball. This technique can also be used for dough that has become over-proofed. It gives you a chance to use that secondary rise that a rehabbed gluten matrix and new yeast activity affords you.” He offers other tips to help correct an over proofed pizza dough.

Read his full article Overproofed Pizza Dough: Deflate Gate.

Check back as we will add more common pizza dough problems. Explore more pizza making how-to and advice articles from master pizza makers and dough experts in Dough Production & Development.

The post Troubleshooting Your Pizza Dough — A Guide to Making Pizza Better appeared first on Pizza Today.

We’re predict which pizza style will be the year’s trending pizza style. During our recent pizzeria operator survey, we asked which pizza styles pizzeria owners looked to add in the next year. We included those pizza style findings in our 2024 Pizza Industry Trends Report. You can see more of this year’s biggest trends in the report.

Let’s dive a little deeper into the five most popular trending pizza styles and get into the pizza dough formula and pizza dough recipes so you can test a new pizza style in your restaurant.

Top 5 Trending Pizza Styles Dough Recipes

Detroit Style Pizza is proving it has staying power as the hot pizza style to add. A mover and shaker is New York-style pizza making its debut in the Top 5 Pizza Styles to add. Pushed out of the Top 5 by a paper-thin margin is Roman style. Here are the Top 5 Pizza Style trending this year:

1. Detroit
2. Grandma
3. Sicilian
4. New York
5. Chicago Thin

Now let’s explore each dough style and find out how to make Detroit, New York, Grandma, Sicilian and Chicago Thin pizzas with tips and advices from the pizza industry’s top pizza masters and dough experts.

Pepperoni Detroit-style Pizza, Via 313, Austin, TX

Detroit Style Pizza Dough Recipe

Detroit-style pizza is the top pizza style on the rise two years in a row. Detroit pizza came on the national scene a decade ago and growing to mainstream status within the past few years. The square pizza is distinctively unique down to how its dough is proofed, the baking process down to ingredients used and how to apply toppings.

Detroit-style pizza features a medium-thick crust that’s light and airy on the inside, yet crispy on the outside, a signature of authenticity that’s achieved by a high moisture content (between a 68- and 72-percent hydration level) and the proofing process. Preparing your Detroit-style pizza dough takes care and attention to detail. Other identifying characteristics include: Pizzas is baked in square steel pans. Cheese is spread evenly across the entire pizza, edge to edge. Brick cheese is commonly used. Sauce goes on the top. Check out a complete Guide to Detroit Style Pizza.

Now to the Detroit Style Pizza Dough Recipe. We have three recipes for you to try from some of the biggest names in the pizza business. They are:

Smoke’s Detroit-Style Pizza Dough Recipe. Jeff Smokevitch is a World Pizza Champion who brought Detroit Style Pizza to Colorado — first to Telluride at Brown Dog Pizza, then to Denver and beyond with Blue Pan Pizza. Follow this Detroit pizza recipe. Jeff Smokevitch leads a demonstration at Pizza Expo to teach how to make a Detroit-style pizza. You can also watch him as he created a Detroit pizza in his home kitchen.

Detroit-Style Pizza Dough by John Arena. Co-owner of Metro Pizza in Las Vegas, John Arena is a go-to pizza dough expert. He shares his Detroit pizza recipe that includes a Poolish for Detroit-Style Pizza Dough. His recipe walks you through the dough process, dough fermentation and room temperature proof.

Tony’s Trending Recipe: Detroit Pizza. Tony Gemignani is a world-famous pizza master and restaurateur with over 30 restaurants, most notably Tony’s Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco. His recipe pays tribute to Shawn Randazzo.

Grandpa Pie, Tony’s Pizza Napoletana, San Franciso, California

Grandma Pizza Dough Recipe

Grandma Pizza (aka Grandma Pie) is New York’s famous other pizza style. In a 2015 Respecting the Craft Column, Tony Gemignani made this prediction about the grandma pie that has come to fruition: “this unique style will soon gain momentum in the Midwest and on the West Coast.” What made the style gain momentum? He went on to say, “They are cooked in a half-black reinforced sheet pan, are heavily oiled and feature sliced mozzarella (sometimes shredded or fresh mozz). These pizzas are topped with tomato sauce and cooked in a gas brick oven. You could finish it with Grana Padano, herbs, pecorino, olive oil, Parmigiano and chopped garlic. Sometimes the dry cheese can go on before. This pizza is typically shorter/thinner than your typical Sicilian. It’s great for delivery, dine in and by the slice. Typically, this pizza is slightly fried more than a Sicilian because of the excess oil and thinness.

“Some of these pizzas have a very simple tomato sauce comprised of puréed or hand crushed tomatoes. Others have a super-sweet sauce or are a bit over-spiced. For example, you could use sugar, onions, onion powder, oregano and other dry or fresh herbs in the sauce. I’ve seen it several ways. Italian families always remember their grandma or mother making pizzas at home. It was always pushed out in some well-oiled pan, and they would add ingredients like anchovies, olive, crushed tomato, onions or cheese. The name literally originated from our collective grandma. It was simple, memorable and fun.”

Now, let’s get into the Grandma Pie pizza dough recipe. Tony Gemignani shares a recipe can be made from your pizza dough. Try the Grandma Pizza Dough Recipe.

Sicilian Pizza by John Gutekanst, Avalanche Pizza, Athens, Ohio

Sicilian Pizza Dough Recipe

To get to know this pizza style, let’s turn to our dough expert Laura Meyer in her Knead to Know: Sicilian Style Pizza. “Nowadays when you see Sicilian-style pizza on a menu, it generally means a thick-crust pizza made in a rectangular pan cut into square slices. Besides that, the range of toppings and application of toppings varies just as much as any other style of pizza. In addition, like other styles the line between bread and Sicilian “pizza” has blurred tremendously with techniques associated with other styles blended into it. But Sicilian pizza traces its inception back to sfincione.”

The dough is where the differentiation shines for Audrey Kelly, owner of Audrey Jane’s Pizza Garage in Boulder, Colorado in an article exploring the difference between Grandma and Sicilian pizzas. “They are risen for hours and then par baked. The bottom should always be crispy, providing a nice crunch to contrast the pillowy, light middle. They are rectangular in shape as opposed to the traditional square shape of a grandma. All of our pizza is naturally leavened, AKA sourdough. The Sicilian is where you can truly taste the beauty of this method. The long rise and fermentation really accentuate the flavor and strengthens the texture. I think of Sicilians as a cloud that carries a light amount of toppings. Some people might think that since the Sicilian is thicker in structure it can hold up to more toppings.

Dough Expert Laura Meyer, owner of Pizzeria da Laura in Berkeley, California, expands further. “Sicilians land between focaccia and the Roman pan style in that focaccia is very closely related to the Sicilian in its original form. Roman techniques and flours have begun to creep into the Sicilian style turning it into a sort of hybrid. Roman can take upwards of three days and have a high hydration leading to a very thin, crispy crust with a very large and airy open crumb structure. Since a lot of toppings are put on after the cooking process in Roman pans, it makes sense to have a large, open crumb structure as it does. The Sicilian style is meant to carry a heavier, wetter ingredient load so having a spongier texture that can hold everything without deflating it is ideal. Using long and controlled fermentation times, like Chris and John do, give the Sicilian a lightness to the interior. Hydrations into the 70s and above are more common with Roman styles and breads although can be found with some Sicilians. When it comes to higher hydrations, cook temps and whether doughs are topped and baked from raw or par baked then topped and cooked lends to very different finished products. The debate over par bakes or cooked form raw extends into Sicilians. For those looking for a slight crisp and a very soft interior, cooking from raw will give you that texture albeit a longer cook time. Par baking is going to give you a soft interior but the double bake is going to cook out more of the moisture giving you a firmer outer crust.”

Check out a basic Sicilian Style Pizza Dough Recipe to test in your kitchen.

New York Style Pizza, Joe’s Pizza, West Village, New York City

New York Style Pizza Dough Recipe

New York Style Pizza is the No 1. most popular pizza in America. The first licensed pizzeria to open in the U.S. was Lombari’s, which opened in New York City in 1905. Dough uses flour, water, yeast, salt, olive oil. Typically, it requires a two- to three-day cold ferment. The crust is crispy, yet light and foldable. Crust should be about 1/8-inch thick through the middle with a raised edge. Slices should be cut into triangles. The signature way to eat a New York pizza slice is to fold it in half from crust edge to edge. Toppings are dispersed evenly and not too heavy to weigh down the pliable slice.

International Pizza Consultant Anthony Falco contributed a Knead to Know Column all about NY pizza. In the article, he says, “a NY-style pizza is big, it’s thin but not paper thin, crispy but still flexible enough to fold without cracking, and the toppings should be a cohesive amalgamation and applied with restraint and simplicity. It shouldn’t be too fancy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use quality ingredients. It should always be cooked directly on the stones of the oven floor, be that gas, wood, electric or coal.” Falco also provided his New York Pizza dough recipe. Try Anthony Falco’s New York Style Pizza recipe.

In John Arena’s Knead to Know column, he conducted a Q&A with 2017’s NY-style Caputo Cup winner Dr. Derek Sanchez, who owns MiaMarcos in San Antonio, Texas. Derek provided a New York Pizza Dough formula using Baker’s Percentage. Check out Derek Sanchez’s New York Style Pizza dough formula.

For a traditional, basic New York style recipe, try this New York Style pizza dough recipe.

Chicago Thin Crust Pizza, Eno’s Pizza Tavern, Dallas, Texas

Chicago Thin Style Pizza Dough Recipe

Notice all the super thin crust pizza that many are referring to as Tavern style lately? The original tavern style is from Chicago, a city also known for its Deep Dish. Chicago Thin Crust Style Pizza is far from its thick sibling. It has recently experienced an explosion in popularity. It’s something that the late Dough Doctor Tom Lehmann saw coming in the early 2010s. He said, when it comes to Chicago Thin, “any good, patent grade bread flour with 10.5- to 11.5-percent protein content should work well.” There are also a couple specifics he discusses. “A planetary type mixer will work best for mixing this dough. You will need to use a dough sheeter/roller to form the dough into skins. You could roll the dough by hand, but you will soon find this to be a lot of work. Hot and cold presses are just not suited to this production method.”
The Dough Doctor provided his dough formula for Chicago Thin with step-by-step instructions. Follow Tom Lehmann’s Chicago Thin Crust Pizza Dough recipe.

Dough expert Laura Meyer offers advice for those looking for a super crispy Chicago Thin Crust Pizza in her article Tavern Style Pizza is Sweeping the Nation. “Par baking the dough is another way to add crispiness to a thin-crust pie. As much as I love crispy thin-crust pizzas, they lose that crunch very quickly as the pizza cools down. Maintaining that crispiness is one of the hardest traits to keep. Utilizing cornmeal and a par bake or double bake method helps ensure your pizza stays crispy for a longer period of time. How would you do this?

Coat your dough ball in cornmeal and roll it out with a rolling pin or use a sheeter. Once you’ve reached your desired size or thickness, dock it, place it on a peel and slide it into the oven. Without any sauce, cheese or toppings, par bake it just for two minutes or just until it’s no longer raw and the bottom is just beginning to show some spots of color. Remove it from the oven and stack them until ready to use. When an order comes in, top it as you normally would and then finish the bake until it’s crispy and the toppings are cooked.”

Want to go even crispier, Tony Gemignani says in a Respecting the Craft column, “You can actually achieve a crispier crust by cooking in a well-seasoned pan. And doing so also is great for texture and flavor. Different types of oils can be used if you settle on this method. Play around with olive oil, cottonseed oil, canola or fats such as Crisco, butter or lard.”

Let’s not forget a Chicago Deep Dish Dough Recipe

Often thought of as the Windy City’s only pizza style. Deep Dish, joins Chicago Thin and Stuffed Pizzas as region’s pizza styles. Particularly popular in the Midwest, this style of pizza speaks for itself. It’s a close cousin to the Chicago-stuffed pie — the obvious difference being that all the toppings are placed on top and there is only one layer of dough. This unique pie stands out with a crisp, biscuit-like crust that comes up the sides of a three-inch pan. It’s thick with cheese and other ingredients, and then topped with a chunky tomato sauce and baked for 30 to 45 minutes.

Here’s a Chicago Deep Dish Pizza Dough Recipe.

This should get you started testing a new trending pizza style. Have fun and let us know what you learn in your test kitchen.

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You asked, and so you shall receive! Let’s talk about pH or acidity in dough. Now, I don’t want you readers to think I know every little thing about the molecular chemistry behind fermentation. The one thing I am most certain about is that the more I learn about dough and fermentation, the less I really know. That, to me, is the most fun part about learning: It never stops.

This is meant to be more of an introduction to pH. As with anything dough-related, there are a bunch of factors that go into the evolution of flavor and performance, and as soon as you change one thing, you change everything. At the end of this, you will find a few names and resources that I use when I find myself in a pickle. These are the people and places I go to when I am trying to figure out nuance – as more brains with more experience are always better than one.

In my restaurant, my dough uses instant or dry active yeast. So, pH and acidity is on my mind in relation to flavor, but I’m not as preoccupied with it is as when I am making sourdough. The techniques and manipulations I use to coax flavor out of my dough are the same, but they are even more necessary when it comes to controlling a sourdough and the final product.

What is pH, and how do I know what my dough is doing?

pH is the acronym used to measure acidity. The acidity, especially in sourdough, is where the sour comes from. There is a scale or range to determine how acidic something is (or the opposite, known as alkaline). You hear the word alkaline a lot nowadays in regards to bottled water. The pH scale runs from 0 (the most acidic) to 14, which is alkaline. Right smack in the middle at 7 is neutral. It might seem counterintuitive, but the lower the number, the more acidic something is. To test the pH of your dough or preferment, you easily can purchase a meter as compact as a kitchen thermometer. Just like your handy kitchen thermometer, pH meters need to be calibrated, but there are usually instructions on how to do this and how to care for your meter inside the box when you purchase one. To use a pH meter, you’ll want to insert the probe end into your solution, dough or preferment, wait a few seconds, and the meter will give you a reading. Usually, these readings contain decimals, as pH is not measured in solid absolutes but can be measured to a decimal point. I’ve found the sweet spot for sourdough to be around a level of 4 to 5.

Where does acidity come from?

The flavors and aromas we are trying to achieve are actually byproducts of fermentation between yeast and bacteria within dough or preferments. With a sourdough starter, this would just be from the flour, water and yeasts that naturally live in your environment. The main strain of yeast we care about most is called Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and the bacteria we are most concerned with are Lactobacillus (a.k.a. Lactic Acid) and Acetobacter (a.k.a. Acetic acid). These two acids are crucial when learning at what time has your preferment or dough gone past the point of no return, becoming too acidic or not acidic enough for maximum flavor and performance.

Now, the growth of a sourdough in a general sense is like the growth and expansion of a city over the course of decades. The original settlers – yeast and bacteria – move in and fight for dominance and survival. Over the course of time and generations (feedings), new flour and new bacteria move in. They either blend with the older generations, becoming something new and evolved, or they don’t survive. This happens over the course of multiple feedings with a sourdough, and what was created in the beginning is always a newer, slightly different version of itself after every feeding. Yeasts and lactic acid go hand in hand because they can survive each other’s defense mechanisms. Both eat simple sugars, but the byproduct they excrete are different. As lactobacillus eats, they give off acid. As yeast eats, it gives off ethanol. Lactobacillus has a high tolerance for alcohol, so they’re like two roomies cohabitating like peas in a pod. But, if you’ve ever made sourdough and forgotten about it, then you’ve probably come in contact with a product that is overly sour or not sour enough. There is a balance that is needed.

Role of time, temperature and hydration in dough production

Time, temperature and hydration play into finding the balance of how much sour or pH content you are looking for. When it comes to feeding a starter, there is such a thing as too much. Overfeeding a starter will result in overwhelming it, and it can either die or be diluted to a point where it doesn’t have much flavor. Overfeeding lowers acidity, but feeding less often will increase acidity.

Temperature plays into that as yeasts are more active in warm environments, so finding a warm but not too warm place is crucial. There are incubators available that can help regulate temperature that will fit on a counter or try and find that sweet spot in your kitchen. Too warm and you increase leavening because the yeasts are active, but acid production is low. The reverse is true when flipped. Colder temps slow down leavening but increase acid production.

What can you do if you’ve reached a point of too sour? Speed up the feeding schedule by a few hours over the course of 1-2 feedings and see if that does the trick. Too much alcohol production results in forgetting about a feeding time or maybe going on vacation and forgetting to leave your starter in good hands. When this happens, the other bacteria, Acetobacter, finds its time to shine. This bacterium moves in, feeding on the surplus of alcohol and giving off a different kind of acid, which is more astringent like vinegar. This is normally when people find their sourdoughs to be too sour.

Hydration will change which acid takes charge. With higher hydration, you tend to see lower quantities of lactic acid production, a more gentle sour flavor but an increase in leavening power. Lowering the hydration, on the other hand, increases acetic acid production, giving off a stronger, more vinegar-like sour flavor but decreases the leavening power.

Dough Resources

These are just a few of the resources I use, but don’t be afraid to ask or search where these expert go to learn, too!

Audrey Kelly – Audrey Jane’s Pizza Garage, Boulder Colorado. IG: audreyjanespizza

Will Grant- That’s a Some About Pizza, Sourdough Willy’s, Seattle and Bainbridge, Washington. IG: sourdoughwillyspizzeria

John Gutekanst- Avalanche Pizza, Athens, Ohio. IG:jgutekanst

Leo Spizziri – Chicago, Illinois. IG:askchefleo

Karl De Smedt: IG: sourdough_librarian

Books by Modernist Cuisine: Modernist Bread

Bread Science by Emily Buehler

The Bread Bakers Guild of America website: https://www.bbga.org/

Podcast: The sourdough podcast by Michael Hilburn

LAURA MEYER is the owner of Pizzeria da Laura in Berkeley, California.

The post Knead to Know: What Does pH Do to Pizza Dough? appeared first on Pizza Today.

The more you learn about fermentation the more you understand how little you actually know. Learning to make dough, especially sourdough, is just like raising a child. You create a mix, attempt to get it on a feeding schedule or dough production schedule, control a routine for consistency, and then everything changes and you’re stuck wondering why it’s not behaving the way it did yesterday or the week before. There are so many factors at play when it comes to not just dough making but dough handling and as soon as one element changes, everything changes. So, here are a few questions I always get asked that may be something you are overlooking.

Q: What are some of the common mistakes that are attributed to inconsistencies?

A: Cold dough in a hot oven is a recipe for inconsistency in both doneness and coloration. On busy nights it can be easy to get caught up in the rush and speed at which things are moving resulting in needing to use dough that was pulled directly out of the refrigerator. Everyone does it because when the rush is on it’s hard to stop and think about tiny details. I know space is a key factor here, but staging dough helps my pizzeria avoid the dreaded gum line that most often occurs with cold dough. My crew uses a speed rack that sits outside of the walk-in in our prep area. When we notice, we are starting to pick up speed the crew will pull out half a rack of dough or even an entire rack worth so that as the night wears on we are pulling dough from the rack outside of the fridge instead of dough directly from the fridge. Our prep area isn’t as hot as our pizza area but moving dough from the fridge to a warmer area and then to the warmest area makes sure that the dough comes to temp as we need it. Cold sauce is another contributing factor to gum lines. We make sure to use containers that are large enough so we do not run out of sauce every 10 minutes, but they are small enough that they aren’t sitting out for hours at a time.

Q: How do I get large pockets and big oven spring?

A: I have heard this question quite a bit over the last few years thanks to Instagram and social media. Everyone is looking for giant crumb structure because it gives you the ooh and awe factor, but it has also made a lot of people think that giant crumb structure equals good pizza. Big, open structure does show well cooked dough but it does not always mean great flavor. But how do you achieve it? There’s more than one factor that contributes to an open crumb. Using a preferment, specifically a biga, can help aid in large pockets. Fermentation time coupled with temperature is always going to shape your final product but proper use of your oven is key. All ovens have vents. Most pizza makers set their ovens and never touch them but depending on the style and whether you are using a par bake or not, opening and closing your vents will give you the oven spring you are looking for. As your dough cooks, the water in your dough is going to turn into steam and then want to escape. Closing the vents on your oven will trap the steam in your oven, aiding in oven spring as well as help develop a crispy crust. The key is when to open the vents. If you are par baking you really only need to keep the vents closed for 2-3 minutes and then open the vents to release the steam. Opening the vents is an important step because without this too much moisture is trapped in the oven and the dough does not have a chance to dry out and crisp. If you are making multiple styles of pizza or are just busy, I like to keep the vents halfway open. With the vents partially opened during service it slows down the escape of steam too quickly, ensuring a well baked pizza. One of the last elements that will change the spring of your dough is how you stretch and how much of an allowance you leave for your crust.

Q: Do I need a different dough if I want to make different styles?

A: The short but not simple answer is yes and no. If you are a traditionalist, yes, you need a different dough. If you want nuance and subtlety, yes, you need different doughs. If you are looking to streamline, are limited on space and equipment, or are just in a place that you want to offer variety but are not ready to make big changes, then no, you do not need a different dough. I recommend doing some research and finding the middle ground between styles when it comes to protein levels in flour,
hydration content within recipes, usage of fats and sugar. You’ll want to come up with a recipe that checks all the boxes but is right down the middle. How you manipulate them is the key. Extending fermentation times, using both warm and cold temperatures for fermentation, usage of preferments, proofing times, humidity control, thickness of doughs for pan pizzas, oven temps, and simply changing your hand techniques will all give you different outcomes. The beauty of pizza is in the small details that make it unique to you so the best thing you can do is not get complacent and continue to play and try new things. You never know what you’ll find when you start making mistakes.

Laura Meyer is the owner of Pizzeria da Laura in Berkeley, CA.

>> Explore answers to more common pizza dough questions in Troubleshooting your Pizza Dough: What’s wrong with my pizza dough? <<

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