Detroit has proved to be one of the most popular pizza styles across the U.S. The tender, yet chewy crumb and racing-stripe sauce add to its appeal, but there’s no denying that the real magic is in the crispy cheese crown that towers above the edges of the pizza. It seems only a matter of time before the Frico transcends Detroit pizza altogether and pops up on other styles.

These blackened, lacy edges can be traced back to Buddy’s Pizza, the iconic pizzeria credited with creating what we now call Detroit-style pizza. In 1946, the owners – Gus Guerra and his wife, Anna – were looking for something new to add to their menu. They came up with a variation on Sicilian pizza with a show-stopping cheese crown. The lore behind this style is that Buddy’s used a blue steel pan originally meant to hold small auto manufacturing parts. With an abundance of such trays in Motor City, it was probably a simple matter of convenience and supply. It’s this very pan – deep with thick steel sides – that help create the beautiful cheese crown. Ironically, those blue steel pans so key to the style’s creation are now nearly impossible to find. Luckily, other pans exist to help mimic the originals.

Frico For Non-Detroit Styles

As a person who doesn’t adhere to the exact constructs of specific pizza styles, I love seeing the Frico edge pop up outside of Detroit pizza. I’ve never made Detroit pizza at my shop, but I do put a crispy cheese crust on our Grandma pies. The pizza I make is a variation of the pan pizza my mom used to make. It’s her version of a pan pie, coated with a sesame-seed bottom. When I was workshopping this pizza to make at my restaurant, cheese that pooled over the edge and caramelized in the oven was a natural addition. The sesame seeds turn crunchy and buttery in the oven, and the crispy cheese edge makes the pizza almost decadent. Looking around, I see this feature elsewhere, too – especially on round pan pies. At Chicago-based Milly’s Pizza in the Pan, you can find a cheesy layer lurking along the round crust of what the owner, Robert Maleski, calls a Chicago pan pizza.

It might look easy, but getting the perfect frico crust takes more than just sprinkling some extra cheese on the edge of your pan pie. Like anything extraordinary, it’s all in the details. Creating a consistently great cheese crown really comes down to the cheese, the fat, the pan and the tools.

Cheese Frico

Traditionally, Wisconsin brick cheese was used to create the caramelized edges. This high-fat cheese has a buttery, salty flavor with a good amount of tang. Mozzarella has become a more common addition to the cheese blend. The amount of cheese you use is extremely important. Nicole Bean of Pizaro’s Pizza Napoletana in Houston agrees that finding the right balance of cheeses is essential. She says, “Low-moisture mozzarella is helpful building a frico. There’s debate on which brand – and even if pre-shred makes a difference on it. I think it truly depends on what you’re looking for in your frico.”

The shape of the cheese can impact your final product as well. Shredded cheese is a great option, but also consider using sliced cheese that you layer along the sides – or cut and cubed cheese. This is how Maleski creates his crispy crust at Milly’s. “I use part-skim, low-moisture mozzarella. I think the whole milk releases just a little too much grease and have found that skim works better. I buy them in block form, and we slice them ourselves. We do one-ounce slices. The trick is to layer the slices so they run up the side of the pan.”

While you want a crispy crown, Maleski points out that it’s important not to overcook the pizza, since it can cause the frico to taste bitter and burned.

Pan Pizza

The cheese works in tandem with the pan. The traditional blue steel pans with black surfaces are similar to a cast iron, with the black being better at conducting heat and essentially frying the cheese edge as the pizza cooks. The slightly sloped edges help to create the shelf of caramelized, lacy cheese. While these pans are very hard to come by nowadays, there are some good alternatives.

Once you find the right pan for your frico, don’t forget the fat. A good amount of fat should be used along the bottom and sides of the pan – not only to help with the release of the frico but to help fry it and give it shape and flavor. I’m a big fan of olive oil, but depending on what you’re going for, butter, Crisco or even good old-fashioned grease works really well – or try a combination of a few coatings. Maleski first rubs the entire pan with Crisco and then sprays Pam along the edge of the pan where the frico will touch. He says, “When I first started, it was incredibly challenging to free the pizzas from the pan. Since I discovered the combo of Crisco and Pam, I have never had any issues with the pizza sticking; it comes out like butter.”

Releasing Pizza From the Pan

Once you determine which pan to use and the grease you prefer, the next thing to consider is how to go get it out of the pan. “Choose the right tools to remove your Detroits to preserve the frico as much as possible,” Bean says. “I’ve seen a variety of things: metal dough scrapers or even putty scrapers, beveled spatulas, plastic or metal spatulas, flexi scrapers.”

There’s something about a caramelized cheese frico that is irresistible – both to eat and photograph. While Detroit-style pizza is as popular as ever, the Frico edge itself has taken on a life of its own. Using the right tools, cheese, pans and process, there’s really no limit to putting a frico on your own version of pan pizza.

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

The post Pizza’s Crowning Achievement | Knead to Know appeared first on Pizza Today.

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.

hat’s the worst thing that could happen in a pizzeria? We’ve got insurance for everything you can think of when it comes to the people, the physical building, our equipment, etc. But do you have a plan for when things go wrong with your dough? Do you know how to recognize the signs before sh** really hits the fan? When opening a pizzeria, we make test batch after test batch and it’s really only after a full year do we think we know what we’re doing, but rarely do we plan for the worst while
attempting to plan for the best. Knowing how to prevent problems with dough is the first step. But knowing what to do when we encounter problems will serve you so much more.

Procedures are key to maintaining consistency and making sure everyone knows what to do is even more crucial.

During a busy night we stage our dough so it is always coming to room temperature before we need it and we’re never cooking cold dough. But the flow of service is rarely constant from the moment the doors open to the moment they close. There are slow times and there are peak times, and it can come in waves or it can come in a nice curve. The end of the night always comes and there’s normally a dropping off point after the main dinner rush where you can feel things are slowing down. It is at this point where the focus needs to shift from pushing through to wrapping up. Dough should be put back in the fridge if too much is sitting out so that you’re not wasting dough that could be used the next day. But how do you know it can be saved?

If dough has been sitting out for an extended period of time the dough will tell you if it can be saved. Towards the end of a dough’s lifetime you will notice instead of a nice even raised dough ball you will see a point along the top where it looks like a bubble has formed and it wants to pop. This is a beginning indicator that the gluten net is weakening and instead of the dough inflating evenly and trapping the gas, that net is now unable to hold onto the gas and will soon rupture. Think about a balloon. When it’s brand new a balloon will be stretchy, and the skin will be taut and smooth when blown up. When the balloon deflates the skin does not go back to its original state but will be loose and saggy with stretch marks. Dough is the same. When at its peak, dough will inflate with the buildup of gas and stretch the skin. But as soon as the gluten net begins to weaken, the bubble will deflate and you will be able to tell on the top where the imprint of the bubble once was. It is easiest to see this when there is more than one dough ball on a tray as it will look a little like craters on the surface. This is what we call blown dough.

Not all hope is lost with blown dough. If the dough is young enough for the type of flour you are using, dough can be re balled and then risen again. This takes a little bit of foresight as dough that has been re balled will need ample time to relax and rise just as it did when you first made it. I have had to do this on occasion when my dough has come out too warm out of the mixer and I did not let it rest enough before closing up the dough boxes in the fridge. This has also happened if too much dough has been left out because of an event we were doing or because we were thinking the night was going to be busier than it was. Re balling dough doesn’t always work. If the dough is already towards the latter half of its life span there’s a chance that it may not rise as much as it normally would or it may not rise at all. Yeast naturally reproduces through gemmation, but it’s not an infinite process. Once all the sugar is gone and there’s nothing left for the yeast to eat, no more gas production will occur and the gluten net will begin to weaken. This is also why your dough may not be browning correctly if it’s old.

Now what do you do if you come in and all your dough is shot?

Once in a blue moon accidents happen. The power goes out and the fridge goes down, the yeast dies because it’s been stored improperly, and people make mistakes. Having an emergency dough recipe is helpful in these situations. 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.

The thing I always tell myself in an emergency dough situation is that if a great loaf of bread can be made in a few hours, so can pizza dough. There’s always a way to manipulate the dough according to your needs. You just need to know the basics of fermentation and the limits of your flour.

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 A Dough Emergency | Knead to Know appeared first on Pizza Today.

Of all my years in cooking I have never met a more passionate person than a pizzaiolo/a. At times that passion may look like an argument with loud and fast talking and hand gestures galore all over what seems like a miniscule detail. Most pizzaioli open restaurants or businesses with the grand and ambitious idea that they are going to be there all the time and they are going to have a part in every pizza that goes out. Let’s be honest, that idea goes out the window within the first week. Any smart operator knows that passion for the product and the business is what gets the doors open and butts in the seats, but good systems are what keep things consistent and people coming back.

Having a tight system in place for dough management is crucial for any pizzeria. Systems not only create consistency in your product but also make your life easier when it comes to training new employees. Keeping a happy staff is paramount to a well-run restaurant no matter the size and well thought out systems make it easier for your staff to make decisions when things happen. There’s no guessing, just immediate action that results in a solution. Dough is the basis of what we do and since it is a living thing it can be hard to regulate.

First things first, where is your mixer and where is your flour?

Flour needs to be kept dry and cool and off the floor. It should be close to the mixer since each bag is 50 pounds and is going to be hard to move around repeatedly. The mixer itself should be in a temperate area close to where you plan on keeping your dough. Where is your recipe? I know we can be quite possessive over our recipes but I’m not saying you should teach every single person in your restaurant how to make dough, but a recipe book of some sort is going to be needed for ease of prep.

Nowadays mixers are advanced enough that you can plug your recipe into it, inclusive of multiple speeds, and the mixer will automatically adjust time and speed, leaving all the person making the dough to do is add the ingredients. If you are looking to streamline consistency in your dough and you aren’t already using a thermometer and scale to weigh ingredients, start immediately. It may feel like a pain in the beginning, but you will notice the payoff in the long run.

What are you putting your dough in? Boxes or trays wrapped in something or in tins and where are these being cleaned and stored? If dough is being refrigerated, utilizing space and using the right equipment can either save the day or make your life really stressful. All dough should be labeled in some fashion whether it’s with a sharpie on plastic wrap or masking tape or a color-coded system. Any person should be able to tell what day the dough was made and time ­— if you’re getting down to the nitty gritty details — and the size of the dough ball. FIFO, or first in first out, should apply to dough as much as anything else. Before you open, testing should have been done as to your recipe and equipment but do not be surprised if it takes you the first full year to really get your systems down. I live in the Bay Area of California where the climate is usually temperate but is changing drastically and it’s only having experienced every season in an old building with no air conditioning or heating have I learned how my dough reacts and changes.

Now that the weather is cooling what I did a month ago has completely flipped.

My dough and storage area are one floor down in the basement where you would think it would always be cooler but is actually more humid due to the dish machine being close by. In turn I have taught my crew how to stage dough. In the pizza area near the oven, it is quite warm and tight in space, so dough heats up very quickly. Depending on the time of day we don’t need all dough sitting out, so we stage our dough in steps. We load up the pizza area in anticipation of the busy time periods but pull more dough out of the fridge and leave it in a cooler spot so when it comes time to rotate the trays up into the pizza area they are not directly out of the fridge and have been tempering for some time. It ensures that all pizzas will be cooked through and no gum lines. This simple system of staging dough ensures some effort towards quality control. There should be a rotation schedule based off pars that is visible and known by all. The death of systems comes when only one person knows what’s going on.

If not using refrigeration for dough, knowing your times and temperatures coupled with your yeast or sourdough percentage is paramount for well fermented dough. This may mean your dough travels finding warm or cool spots whether it’s closer to your oven to capture residual heat during prep or near the windows or in the dining room where it is cooler to slow down fermentation. Controlling time and temps can be one of the hardest things but always ensures consistency.

I know this can be tricky but having the same one or two people make dough ensures each batch is as close to the same as possible.

Recipes and systems are extremely important but knowing how your dough should feel by touch at the end of the mix during every seasonal change ensures the same dough every time. If you are feeling like implementing systems is tough when you’ve already been in business, it is, but don’t let that get you down. Focus on one thing at a time and ensure the information is written somewhere and people know how to access it. Making dough and managing it is the fun part after all.

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 Pizza Dough Systems Check | 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.

Have you ever worked a busy night, and your job is to stretch everything, but it seems like you’re in for the worst upper body workout of your life as opposed to making pizza?

One of the worst feelings is going through a busy service and your dough just doesn’t seem to want to cooperate like it normally does. Dough — that you’ve meticulously worked on that’s meant to be soft and easy to stretch — has now become your worst enemy. 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.

With today’s diet culture bleeding into the larger food culture, we’ve been taught additives are the enemy even though we do not quite understand them fully. 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. When I first began, the main dough conditioner I ever heard about was called PZ-44. Over the years, I have learned that dough conditioners take many forms, and they can be as natural as fruit or as complex as man-made lab invented ingredients.

First things first, what is PZ-44 and other conditioners like it?

PZ-44, and similar conditioners are meant to soften and relax dough, reducing snapback as well as reducing mixing times. These are known as PZ-44 and Reddi Sponge.  PZ-44 is made from whey proteins and L-Cysteine, and Reddi Sponge is made from whey proteins, corn, potassium bromate, L-Cysteine, ascorbic acid and monocalcium phosphate (depending on the type of Reddi Sponge).

Some of these names should sound familiar if you pay attention to flour and what’s really in your ingredients. It’s not as simple as listing wheat on a bag of flour anymore because of the process it undergoes to manufacture it as well as storage and transportation. Some ingredients are added in to help with preservation over the course of long travel periods or help slow down the aging process and some ingredients are added in for nutritional value. During the grinding process of flour, some nutrition is lost by the extraction of bran for more refined flours, so companies will add back in certain nutrients like Niacin and Ascorbic acid, a.k.a. Vitamin C, which are found naturally and can help with gluten structure.

Potassium Bromate is an ingredient that gets a bad wrap and is soon to be outlawed in California. You’ve mostly heard about this one when it comes to New York style pizza. Numerous pizzerias still use bromated flour because it strengthens dough and helps with spring. This ingredient is banned in Europe and other countries, such as Canada, because it has been potentially linked to cancer. L-Cysteine is an amino acid that is normally used to help with extensibility. It helps shorten gluten strands, so dough is more easily manipulated and stretched. This ingredient can be derived from plants like oats and lentils but also from animal-based products. Like gelatin, a lot of vegans and vegetarians will steer clear of this ingredient because it can be found in animal hooves and feathers making it cheaper to produce.

Deactivated Yeast, a.k.a. Nutritional Yeast, is a great replacement for L-Cysteine as it contains glutathione — which also cuts down gluten strands, breaking down proteins in dough. The only drawback to this ingredient is it is quicker to change the flavor of dough with the more you use.

The more natural approach to conditioning or improving dough would be to go the fruit route.

Fruits like kiwi, pineapple and papaya, whose juices contain enzymes that help cut gluten strands down, make dough easier to stretch and handle. The tricky part about using fruit is that the concentration within will vary drastically from season to season and it is harder to maintain consistency from batch to batch.

Something that you are probably already using that helps condition and relax dough is fat. A lot of pizza makers use olive oil or animal fat like butter or lard. Fats coat gluten strands which makes them stretchier, but also reduces the length of these strands as fats and most things do not mix well and instead create barriers. A less common ingredient these days that functions very similarly is eggs.

One thing that I found surprising as a dough conditioner was meat tenderizer. Modernist Cuisine mentions trying meat tenderizers in a powdered form that work quite well at softening dough. Since meat tenderizers are derived from natural ingredients like those found in fruit juices — but have been purified and processed— they are more consistent and in a measurable form that helps making dough simpler and more reliable.

Dough conditioners were invented at a time when flour was of poor quality.

During times of war and climate change wheat is increasingly hard to grow, especially with supply and demand ever evolving. Dough conditioners and improvers were created to make it easier on the baker — be them professional or at home to make quality products. Nowadays it is easier than ever to gain access to great quality flour, which may not need a conditioner or improver to create dough that is easy to work with and consistent. Knowing how to read an ingredient label and understand the purpose of each item just adds to your repertoire and ability to make great dough in times of surplus and in times of instability.

There are many ways to make dough that is manageable and easy to work with and conditioners and improvers are nothing to scoff at. Just understand restraint is key and to start small when trying them out.

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 Relaxing Tough Pizza Dough: Using Dough Conditioners and Improvers appeared first on Pizza Today.

I received a question recently asking about how to correct dough that is too soft. My first question is: is it too soft on the table in its raw state, or too soft out of the oven? Two very different things and lots of factors to consider.

Pizza Dough that is too soft

For dough that is too soft I would first ask, what is your hydration and flour and what is your process from start to finish, including temps, if you know them? Any time I encounter a problem with my dough, my first reaction is not to blame the ingredients first, but to analyze the process and any circumstances that may stand out.

If my recipe has been tested and I have made it many times before, then I know there’s an error somewhere in the process as opposed to the ingredients. When I opened my restaurant, I started with a planetary mixer and developed my recipe considering this. After a bit, I invested in a spiral mixer and had to completely change my mixing process to accommodate the new piece of equipment. The way I was incorporating the water had to be changed, which greatly affects how the flour absorbs (which changes the final texture and gluten structure). Where my mixer sits in the prep area also played a large factor.

My prep area does not have the greatest ventilation, and the large dish machine is nearby. Knowing the humidity from the dish machine was going to play a factor, I decided to lower the temperature of the water going into the recipe by a few degrees. This small change helped keep the consistency of the dough in place. Bench resting the batch after the mix was another element I added to ensure full absorption and to be certain the temperature was right before cutting and balling.

Addressing Most Common Contributors to Soft Dough

The two most common reasons for too soft of a dough I’ve encountered are rushing the mixing process and not letting the flour hydrate and absorb completely and not mixing thoroughly enough. Not all flour is the same. The types and combinations of wheat going into a bag of flour are going to change from season to season and year to year. Although millers are aiming for the same recipe every time, flours change. I’ve also seen a bag of flour off by close to a pound which can drastically change the final product since all ingredients are based off total flour weight. Considering transportation and handling, this isn’t always one person or one company’s fault. Mistakes happen, and sometimes delivery drivers are just a little too tough on our products.

During the mix, how you add your water is important. For higher hydrations or for a flour that I’ve noticed isn’t absorbing well I would recommend an autolyse. After adding the majority of your water, pause for 20-30 minutes and let the flour fully absorb. Then go back and add the rest of your water and ingredients. You’d be surprised how different your dough will feel after an autolyse. I’ve had to catch myself at the restaurant and also in competition because I was trying to rush the process (whether it’s because I’m pressed for time, or I’m just nervous) — and usually an autolyse fixes that issue.

If my dough was consistently too soft and not absorbing well, I would consider blending a different type of flour. Most pizzerias are using strictly 00 but 00 flour has had as much of the bran and germ removed as possible. The bran not only contains a lot of nutrients, but also absorbs more water. Adding in 5-10 percent of a type 0 or type 1 would be a nice change without feeling like your dough and flavor has changed too drastically. If looking for a bigger changeup I recommend a small percentage of Rye flour.

Rushing the process and not mixing the dough enough can result in the dough being too soft. My mixers have multiple speeds, and if I’m toggling up and down between them I sometimes go too fast. Hence, the gluten hasn’t developed enough before pulling it out of the mixer. If I notice this before scaling out the dough, then a bench rest or bulk ferment will help the gluten develop and ensure the dough remains soft but elastic. If I’ve already balled my dough and when I come back to it hours later or the next day it’s flat instead of raised and airy, then I would re-ball the dough and let it rest again for a few hours before attempting to use it. I’ve had this happen on numerous occasions and it always seems to be when I need the dough the most. Re-balling is one of your best tools that a lot of people forget about. Most dough is not a lost cause, but time is not always on your side.

Lastly, when it comes to the mixing process, how are you measuring your ingredients? If you are not using the same unit of measurement for everything, I can assure you there will be inconsistencies in your final dough. Volume measurements are notoriously inconsistent and switching to weights is the best practice.

If the Finished Pizza Crust is Too Soft

If you find that your dough is too soft coming out of the oven, there are a few things you can do. Lower the temperature of your deck and slow down the cooking process. If using an electric oven, you’ll want to play around with the top and bottom settings as well. The higher the hydration the slower you’ll need to cook it if you are looking for a crunchy base. If your oven has internal vents, check that they are at least halfway open. Some people don’t realize their vents are closed and trapping all the moisture inside.

When taking your pizzas out of the oven, some don’t cut them right away but place them on cooling racks first to let some of the steam dissipate. Using trays with dimples also elevates the pizza so it is not sitting in its juices after it has been cut. Each of these measures can help ensure your dough is not too soft.

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 How to Correct a Pizza Dough that is Too Soft to Work With appeared first on Pizza Today.