We pizza makers immerse ourselves into the science, craft and business of perfecting pizzas every day. The basis for any great pizza is usually milled wheat of some type mixed with water and a fermentative vehicle that, with the help of time and temperature, produces gases. These gases produce carbon dioxide, whose carbonic acids taste slightly sour when they hit the receptors of the tongue. Other flavors depend on additive elements in the dough such as flavorful liquids. This is the cliff face I want to geek out on, without doing a Wile E. Coyote swan-dive into the desert floor. Let’s start with the rules of the past, then drive fast to the future.

“When it comes to the rules of cooking, the one that supersedes them all is what I call ‘The Flavor Rule.’ That is, flavor rules! And one way to infuse flavor in dough is through liquids that already carry flavor.” – Peter Reinhart Baker, Educator and James Beard Award-winning author of “Pizza Quest,” “Perfect Pan Pizza” and “American Pie”

Foreign Influence

Many great minds have created categorical definitions for bread and pizza dough that have formed over years of human history. These different doughs formed slowly in cultures depending upon location, weather, soil, history and resources. For instance, the traditional Tuscan bread named Pane Sciocco, meaning “simple bread,” does not contain any salt. This is because in the Middle Ages the city of Pisa controlled the salt trade and taxed salt. Here are some traditional bread dough categories:

Stiff, Standard and Rustic: These are made according to hydration, from very firm to tacky and sticky, accordingly.

Lean: Made with little or no fat or sugar – a very hard dough.

Enriched: Medium-soft dough made with less than 20 percent fat – can also include sugar, eggs and milk.

Rich: Over 20 percent fat, may also include eggs, sugar and milk.

Flat: This is baked thinly and is soft and crisp. It may or may not include yeast.

Mixed Blessing

Mixing doughs is just as important as every other step in your baking routine, and what liquids you use can make all aspects of any pizza or bread react differently. But first, a word on absorption.

Absorption is defined as the amount of liquid your flour can suck up and hold while being made into a simple dough. This is often expressed as a percentage of the weight of the flour itself, usually known as Bakers’ Percentage. So, if you add 40 pounds of water to 100 pounds of flour, your absorption ratio is 40 percent. Because starch is the largest volume of any flour, it absorbs most of the liquid, but only up to ¼ to ½ of its weight. Proteins absorb up to twice their weight in water, so variations in protein levels in your flour can make a big difference in absorption. As an example, a high-protein flour with 80-percent absorption will, under the proper circumstances, produce a dynamic oven-spring (the initial rise when the dough hits the hot oven stones) because of the steam in the dough. It also will produce a crisp, blistered crust and large, waxy alveoli in the cornicione, or crust, if aged properly.

Fluid Situation

There are many examples of infusing bread with flavorful liquids with or without water.

Beer

It is fermented with different yeasts – Saccharomyces cerevisiae, known as “Brewers Yeast,” is in ales, and Saccharomyces pastorianus in lagers. You may get a different outcome in your pizza dough for each of these. For instance, ale yeast ferments better in hotter temperatures and lager in colder temps. Hops, heat, alcohol and acidity in beer all can affect any dough that is risen from freshly brewed beer. This is why a lot of bakers boost beer doughs with sourdough starter, baking powder, pre-ferments and/or instant-rise flour. The magical quality that beer adds to a pizza dough is flavor. IPA beer will add a hoppy, bitter taste, while lagers will add a malty flavor, and porters, stouts and brown ales will add a rich chocolate or coffee flavor.

Malt

This addition to pizza dough has an enzyme named amylase that breaks starch into sugars that the yeasties love. This results in a deeper brown crust and a more vigorous rise. The two malts are diastatic and non-diastatic. Non-diastatic adds color and sweet, malty flavor, while diastatic malt helps when a fast bake time is looming; it bakes to a higher volume and a more tender cell structure.

Honey

More pizza makers are using honey in their pizza dough because it is a natural sweet vehicle for yeasts to feed upon. Honey also is a natural humectant that draws in moisture and will make for softer dough. It does help with the maillard* reaction in crust by having a lot of simple sugars that create a richer color and deeper flavor. (** A reaction when amino acids and sugars in food are heated to create browning.)

Porridge

It is ironic that historically the precursor to bread was porridge, and there are many instances of whole peoples being mocked as “porridge eaters.” The procedure of adding porridge to dough is now on the cutting edge of creativity in the artisan baking community. It is born of the popularity of whole and alternative grains, which are practically devoid of gluten, in breads and pizzas without producing a brick-like texture. By cooking or soaking whole grains with water before mixing, a fermentation produces a mild cheesy aroma. Adding over 50 percent of this porridge to each batch adds digestibility and longevity to the bread or pizza dough. Because the porridge is barely cooked, it needs lower baking temperatures, par-baking stages and extra time to set up before slicing.

Curry

There is no better statement of your innovative creativity than a curry-crusted pizza! This mix starts with roasting onions with curry powder and extra virgin olive oil, grinding them into a liquid and adding it to any dough mix. Sometimes, raisins or walnuts will multiply the flavor bomb but may inhibit some forming techniques. I’ve done this for years with great results!

Matcha Tea

This addition provides a nice earthy, sweet, vegetal taste to pizza dough. The biggest attribute being the bright green color like in Japanese Milk Bread. This pizza dough needs to be baked at 500 F or below because you may get a brown crusting on the color at higher temps.

Maple Syrup

Because I have access to many friends who make maple syrup, I’ve spent years trying to perfect the best maple bread and pizza dough around. The deep sweetness of maple infused in bread is a real crowd pleaser and best partnered with spelt and whole wheat. Like Matcha, maple syrup must be watched or baked on a parchment-covered pan in lower heat because the sugars may caramelize too much.

JOHN GUTEKANST owns Avalanche Pizza in Athens, Ohio.

The post Liquid Courage | Knead to Know appeared first on Pizza Today.

What’s causing my pizza to stick to the peel?

There are a couple of things that might cause the dough to stick to your peel. 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. If the dough is over absorbed (contains too much water) it may feel clammy or even exhibit a slight tackiness when touched. 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.

The metal blade peels are best reserved for use as oven peels. The reason for this is because the metal blade peels will force any moisture coming from the dough skin right back up against the dough surface, creating the potential for the dough to stick to the peel during unloading into the oven. This can be especially troublesome during the colder months when the metal peel blade is cold, and condensation is formed when the warm dough is placed upon it; now, any flour that is present on the dough skin quickly turns to school paste with very predictable results.

When a wood or wood laminate is used as a prep peel, the wood will have some capacity to absorb moisture, thus reducing the potential for stickiness. Because it is harder to form condensation between a wood peel and the dough skin, the issue of condensation is all but totally eliminated. Even with the best dough and wood prep peels, it is still possible for dough to stick to the peel if too much time is taken in prepping the dough skin.

Even when a novice is prepping a dough skin and taking their own sweet time about it, there is still only a slight chance that the dough will stick to the peel. But where the problem arises is when the prepped or partially prepped dough skin is allowed to remain on the prep peel while they do something else, like wash and cut a topping for the pizza or stop to answer the phone, etc.

Solution to pizza dough sticking to the peel

The solution to this is easy to address –– 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.

I think if you were to ask 20 different operators what peel dust they prefer you would probably get at least a dozen different answers. My own personal favorite peel dust is made from equal parts of fine cornmeal, semolina flour and regular white pizza flour. I’ve seen any one of these used by itself as an effective peel dust in addition to things such as whole-wheat flour, rice flour, rye flour and wheat bran, as well as bread crumb like materials more commonly added to the top of the pizza to help absorb excess moisture. All of these materials seem to work quite well in most applications, so you have plenty of things to choose from to get the dough to smoothly slide from the peel onto the oven hearth.

One last thing I’d like to share with those who are just beginning to work at peeling dressed dough skins into the oven: after you place the fully formed dough skin onto the dusted prep peel, do not try to dock the dough on the peel. Instead, dock the dough before you place it onto the peel, then, give the peel a shake to make sure the dough is sliding on the peel and not stuck to it for whatever reason. Shake it again about halfway through the dressing of the dough skin. This is a confidence builder more than anything else –– knowing that the dough is still unattached to the peel, I can now peel the dressed dough skin into the oven with the authority and commitment needed to make the dressed dough smoothly slide from peel to oven hearth.

Remember, what goes into the oven, must eventually come out again, so be sure to keep your oven rake and broom handy to loosen any debris from the oven deck and sweep it out, or you will soon have a carbonized build up on the deck, as well as unsightly, charred debris sticking to the bottom of your pizzas.

The late Tom Lehmann was a former director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas and Pizza Today’s longstanding resident dough expert. 

>> 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: The Dough Doctor offers tips to keep dough from sticking to the peel appeared first on Pizza Today.

Q: My pizza dough gets too soft to hand toss after only two days in the cooler. What do I do?

A: 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.

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.

Q: We have had a number of requests for a seafood-topped pizza. Do you have any suggestions for a starting point?

A: Seafood pizzas are one of my all-time favorites. Start with your regular dough skins and brush lightly with olive oil. Apply a thin layer of Alfredo sauce, then sprinkle with diced fresh garlic, coarse ground white pepper and dried dill weed. Apply some thin sliced onion and pieces of roasted red peppers and your choice of seafood.

My personal preference is whole raw shrimp (21 to 25 or higher count), sliced raw fish (salmon or orange roughy works well, but any firm flesh fish can also be used) and finish with a light sprinkle of mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Bake just as you would any of your regular pizzas. This is a fun pizza to make as you can use whatever seafood is available. I’ve used grouper for the fish and clams, lobster and even conch for the seafood topping.

Q: Do you have any suggestions for making a breakfast pizza?

A: I’ve always been puzzled by the fact that pizzerias are not open for breakfast trade. The box hamburger stores are all open, and now the box sandwich stores are getting their piece of the breakfast trade too, so why not pizza? Individual-sized breakfast pizzas as well as breakfast-sized calzones might be just the ticket for a fast, “grab and go” breakfast to feed hungry commuters with little time to wait in long lines.

A great breakfast pizza can be made using an individual-sized dough skin (five- to eight-inch diameter). Begin by brushing the dough with melted butter, or blend of half butter and half canola oil, add slices of fresh tomato, or tomato filets rather than a traditional sauce, then add breakfast sausage to replace your Italian sausage. For vegetables, use sliced mushrooms, onion, red and green peppers for color, add a sprinkling of crispy bacon pieces and finish with a light application of half mozzarella and half cheddar cheese. These pizzas hold well under a heat lamp on a heated tray for speedy service.

The other approach that I’ve had great success with is to make a breakfast calzone. I like to keep these on a smaller, individual sized format, beginning with a dough skin about eight inches in diameter. Brush the outer edge of the dough skin with water, then add pre-cooked scrambled egg, sautéed onion, green peppers, mushrooms, pre-cooked bacon pieces, and precooked breakfast sausage. Add a couple pieces of fresh sliced tomato, a little ricotta, mozzarella and cheddar cheese, then fold and crimp tightly closed. Cut a vent hole into the top of the calzone, brush with melted butter, or commercial butter oil and bake to a golden brown color.

These calzones hold very well under a heat lamp, or better yet, slip them into parchment paper pouches (this makes them easier to eat on the run), and hold under a heat lamp. Now, all you need to do is to grab a calzone, drop it into a bag with a cup of coffee, add a napkin or two and you have the start for a fast, ready-to-go commuter breakfast.

Tom Lehmann is a former director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas and Pizza Today’s resident dough expert.

>> 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: Soft Sell appeared first on Pizza Today.

Q: My dough feels fine after mixing, but after 24 to 48 hours of cold fermentation in dough boxes the dough is always wet and sticky. I’ve tried reducing the dough absorption to no avail.

A: 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

Tom Lehmann

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.

The question becomes this: how do we address the problem? The easiest way to address the issue is begin cross-stacking the dough boxes as they’re placed into the cooler, or if you’re already cross-stacking you may need to cross-stack for a longer period of time. How long is long enough? The length of cross-stack time will depend upon the dough temperature as well as the actual dough ball weight. Warmer doughs or heavier dough ball weights will require a longer cross-stack time. The best way to determine the correct cross-stack time for your specific dough is to place it into the cooler and monitor the internal temperature of the dough balls. When the average dough ball temperature measures 50F it will be safe to begin lidding or covering the dough boxes for extended refrigerated storage (one to three days). When discussing this I always make sure to mention that the dough balls should be lightly oiled after being placed into the dough box, as this will prevent excessive drying or crust formation on the dough balls during the cross-stack period.

Do I have to cross-stack the dough boxes? Yes, unless you want to experience the problems mentioned above. But if you want to have a process that doesn’t require cross-stacking dough boxes there are two other options for you:

1. Place the dough balls onto aluminum sheet pans, lightly oil the dough balls and slide the pan into a food contact approved plastic bag. Then pull the bag down tight onto the dough balls and fold the open end down under the end of the pan as you place it into a vertical wheeled stand with about a five-inch shelf spacing. Place the pans of dough into the cooler as quickly as possible. The plastic will not inhibit cooling of the dough as a lidded box will, so it will allow for faster cooling of the dough with minimal condensation formation on the inside of the bag.
2. Use individual plastic bags (like bread bags), oil the dough ball and drop it into a plastic bag, twist the open end into a pony tail and tuck it under the dough ball as you place it onto a sheet pan or shelf in the cooler.

In both of these cases the oil on the dough ball helps the dough release from the plastic when you go to use the dough balls. In most cases you can reuse the plastic bags a number of times before replacing them.

A less often encountered reason for a sticky dough is the use of malt as an ingredient in the dough. More specifically, the use of diastatic (enzyme active) malt. If the flour you’re using is un-malted and you are just trying to provide a normal malt level to help fermentation and promote crust color development during baking, all that is needed is 0.25 percent of a 20-degree Lintner value dry malt powder. But of recent I have seen a number of cases where malt syrup is being added to the dough to provide a unique flavor to the finished crust. In these cases the amount of malt syrup can be two percent or more. If the malt product is diastatic it will hydrolyze too much of the starch into sugar making for a sticky dough that cannot be corrected. In this case just make sure the malt syrup you are planning to use is a non-diastatic malt syrup — which is really nothing more than a type of sugar syrup that provides a uniquely different flavor to the baked crust — and you’ll be just fine.

The late Tom Lehmann was a former director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas and Pizza Today’s longstanding resident dough expert.

>> 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: Sticky Situation appeared first on Pizza Today.

Q: We have a continual problem with dough snap-back after placing it on the screen for baking. Is there anything that we can add to our dough to eliminate this problem?

A: Dough snap-back, or dough memory, can be addressed in a number of different ways (which I’ll discuss individually).

• Flour. 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).
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

A few words about these ingredients are in order though. Some are capable of completely liquefying a dough if used incorrectly or at too high of a level, so use with caution. These ingredients are all added to the dough at the time of mixing. For the most part they continue to work even throughout the cold fermentation period (though to a lesser degree), so make sure the amount used is compatible with your specific dough management procedure and shop conditions. While all of the commonly used reducing agents are “natural” in nature, some may have a scary sounding name. Here are the reducing agents most commonly encountered today:

• L-cysteine/L-cysteine hydrochloride. While the name might scare you, L-cysteine is nothing more than a protein-building block and completely safe to use. Due to its potency, L-cysteine is commonly blended with an inert ingredient (such as dairy whey) as a diluent to make scaling easier and more accurate. In one form or another, these ingredients have been around for at least 50 years. And they are still widely used today to make the dough softer, more extensible and reduce or eliminate dough memory.
• Protease enzymes. Protease enzymes are also highly effective reducing agents, but they do have one major drawback in that they work by hydrolyzing/destroying the proteins. To boot, they are fully capable of liquefying a dough, rendering it totally unusable. Like L-cysteine, they continue to work over the life of the dough. But unlike L-cysteine, protease enzymes are somewhat temperature sensitive. So if at any time the dough should warm-up, especially to temperatures in the high 80s or more, the rate of reducing action can be increased dramatically. For this reason, protease enzyme-based reducing agents are seldom used in pizza doughs.
• Dead yeast. Dead yeast is basically glutathione, another amino acid, but this one is found in yeast cells (all of the yeast that we use contains glutathione). The glutathione is locked up inside of the cell so it never poses a problem or acts as a reducing agent under normal conditions, but when the yeast cell is compromised the glutathione is released and it acts as a reducing agent. This is the reason why frozen dough always has a softer, more extensible feel to it. The ice crystals formed during the freezing process rupture some of the yeast cells, allowing the glutathione to leach out of the cell and act as a reducing agent. Dead yeast is a very effective dough-reducing agent. And because it is derived from yeast, and since all yeast contains glutathione, if you need to label your pizzas the dead yeast reducing agent can be shown right along with the live yeast that you are also adding to your dough. In essence, it doesn’t show up as another ingredient on a package label/ingredient declaration. It is also completely natural if that is important to you. I like to say that glutathione is a “first cousin” to L-cysteine since they are both amino acids and they work in almost an identical manner when it comes to reducing snap-back/memory in the dough. So the same precautions must be followed when using dead yeast as one would use when using an L-cysteine based reducing agent.
• Onion and garlic. Both onion and garlic exert a reducing effect upon the dough, making it softer and more extensible with reduced dough snap-back. As little as .25 percent, either individually or in combination of onion and/or garlic powder, will effectively reduce dough snap-back. But it brings baggage in the form of flavor and aroma that may or may not be desirable. If it is not desirable to have the characteristic flavor, a deodorized form of these ingredients (referred to as deodorized vegetable powder) is available from many wholesale bakery ingredient suppliers. This works equally as well but without the onion/garlic flavor. A unique aspect of using onion/garlic as a reducing agent is that it is all but impossible to really overdose a dough when using it. This is because of the way it interacts with the proteins, so there is only a limited amount of dough softening/relaxing achieved with its use. While the amount of relaxing is limited, it is usually sufficient to give the desired result in reducing dough snap-back/memory when opening the dough into pizza skins.

Excessive dough memory is pretty easy to address either through formulation, dough management or additive ingredients. Some of our readers may be forming their pizza skins by use of a hot or cold pizza press. If you are in this group, this article should be of special interest to you as dough snap-back/memory can be a bit problematic when using this forming method. Whatever your forming method, use just enough of the selected reducing agent to address the snap-back/memory problem. This is a case where more is not better as it can get you into trouble as fast as it can get you out if not used wisely.

The late Tom Lehmann was a former director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas and Pizza Today’s longstanding resident dough expert. 

>> 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: Snapped! Dough Snapback Solved appeared first on Pizza Today.

I’ve noticed that the dough-making procedures used by many operators seem to be getting more and more detailed, long and drawn out. I like to think that we are just making pizza dough, not rocket fuel, so the procedure should be a bit less complex than what many of us have made it. Here are some of the things I’m talking about and how we can make dough mixing a bit easier and faster, too.

Dry blending ingredients prior to incorporation of the water is generally wasted effort and really not needed. Your dough will come out just as good if you add the flour first and then put the rest of the dry ingredients right on top of the flour when you’re ready to begin mixing.

Should the water go first or should the flour be the first ingredient in the mixing bowl?

If you put the flour in the bowl first it will be more difficult to fully hydrate the flour, often requiring several minutes longer mixing time. But if the water goes in first the flour is actually hydrated faster, which will shorten the total mixing time by several minutes. Doing it this way also allows you to put all of the other dry ingredients right on top of the flour. Don’t worry, as the agitator moves it will thoroughly incorporate all of those dry ingredients into the flour and you will achieve uniform dispersion throughout the dough.

Blending the yeast, salt, sugar and oil into the water is another thing that I tend to see done frequently. Again, this serves no real benefit to the quality of the dough. In fact, it might even adversely affect the quality. When the yeast, salt, sugar and oil are blended together there are two concerns. One is that if the dough-making process should be interrupted before the flour is added and mixing begins, there could potentially be some damage done to the yeast. This reduces its ability to give consistent fermentation, which can impact how the dough rises in the oven and how it opens into pizza skins.

It is interesting to observe that when the oil is mixed with the water, as soon as the mechanical mixing action is stopped the oil almost instantly separates and floats on top of the water. When the flour is added, a portion of it comes into direct contact with the oil. The oil soaks in and that specific portion of flour is now incapable of producing gluten. This obviously affects how the dough feels and performs after the mixing process.

A much better approach is to put the water in the mixing bowl first. If you want to, go ahead and add the salt and sugar to the water in the bowl (no need to stir or whisk), then add the flour and the yeast and begin mixing. Mix for about two minutes at low speed and then add the oil. This allows the flour to fully hydrate before introducing the oil and ensures that the oil cannot be absorbed into the flour and interfere with the gluten development. As a result, your dough will be more consistent in both feel and performance.

Suspending the yeast in the water is another practice that is really just wasted motion.

This is done out of fear that the yeast will not be uniformly distributed throughout the dough. But nothing could be further from the truth. If you are using compressed yeast, all you need to do is crumble it on top of the flour and it will be incorporated just fine during the mixing process (hard to believe, but true). Instant yeast is another type of yeast that is best when added dry right into the flour. Dispersion is again complete and thorough. When active dry yeast is used, there might be a valid reason for adding it to the water in the mixing bowl as opposed to adding it to the flour (even though it is in a suspension after hydrating it). The reason why some operators like to add the activated ADY suspension to the dough water is one of convenience rather than dough performance or quality.

Is there any time when ingredients need to be added or blended in a specific manner? When a high-speed mixer such as a VCM is used, regardless of the yeast type being used, it must be suspended in the dough water. This means if active dry yeast or instant dry yeast is used, they must first be hydrated. Once hydrated, the suspension can be added directly into the dough water. If compressed yeast is being used, just put the yeast directly into the water and whisk it until the yeast is suspended. Or whisk the yeast in a portion of the dough water and pour back into the mixer. The salt and sugar are then added, followed by the oil. The flour goes in last.

The most critical aspect here is to begin mixing immediately after the flour is added to minimize oil soakage into the flour. All this is necessary due to the short (60- to 75-second) mixing time common to VCM and other similar type mixers.

The late Tom Lehmann was a former director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas and Pizza Today’s resident dough expert.

The post Dough Doctor: Dough mixing made easier appeared first on Pizza Today.

A: There are a number of factors that can contribute to a tough and chewy crust characteristic. For example, use of a flour that is overly strong (high in protein content) for the dough management procedure being used can result in an excessively tough and chewy characteristic. I am always reminded of a major pizza chain that made its reputation selling thin-crust pizzas, and then one day the decision was made to introduce a thick-crust pizza that was aptly referred to as being “thick and chewy” in nature (truer words were never spoken). My belief is that, with the existing technology at the time, the new crust formula utilized the same flour as its thin-crust counterpart. With fermentation already on the short side, not much of the protein was weakened/mellowed by fermentation. This resulted in a crust that was indeed thick as desired — but tough. How tough was too tough? For me it was when I couldn’t eat more than one slice of the pizza because my jaws were getting sore from the chewing. In this case, a lower protein content flour, such as a bread flour or even an all-purpose flour, would have probably been a better choice as it would have provided the same thick crust but with a more tender eating characteristic.

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.

Once in a while I encounter instances where the problem is related to sauce issues. In these cases the sauce has been overly diluted with water, too much sauce has been added to the pizza skin, or the pizza skins are dressed in advance of an order and allowed to set out for a period of time before going to the oven. We typically see a similar issue with the sauce and moisture from the vegetable toppings in a DELCO (delivery/carry out) situation. In this case the pizza is placed into a box, and then maybe into an insulated bag and allowed to sweat for upwards of 30 minutes. Sometimes the combination of moisture from the top of the pizza soaking into the crust and steam released from the hot pizza work their magic to create tough and chewy crust.

Lately I have seen pizzas being baked at too high of a temperature, resulting in the crust getting nice and brown while the inside of the crust is just barely baked. As the pizza begins to cool the crust may actually collapse a little or at very least it begins to take on a tough/chewy characteristic. At one time we used to see this as a common problem with the different types of conveyor ovens (both infrared and air impingement), but now I see the problem more frequently with stone deck ovens where we have the ability to bake the pizza at very high temperatures. Still, with a ton of toppings on the pizza it is difficult, if not impossible, to get a decent bake on the pizza under these conditions. Thin, lightly dressed pizzas can be baked quite well under these conditions, but if you are going to be more generous with your toppings a lower baking temperature and longer baking time will probably result in a better finished product.

Lastly, even sugar or some other browning agent, such as milk or eggs in the dough, can contribute to a tough and chewy crust characteristic. In this case the mechanism is similar to that of baking in an oven that is too hot — the browning agent gives a nice brown crust color signifying that the crust is properly baked, but in reality only the outer portion of the crust is thoroughly baked. This is not to say that you cannot or should not use any of these ingredients in your dough formula, but you should be aware that you may need to adjust the baking time and/or temperature when any of these browning agents are used if you want to achieve the crispiest and most tender eating characteristics in your finished crust.

The late Tom Lehmann was a former director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas and Pizza Today’s longstanding resident dough expert. 

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

The post Dough Doctor: Tough Sell — Causes of too tough, chewy crust appeared first on Pizza Today.

Q: We are experiencing a clammy bottom on our pizza, but our conveyor ovens were just recently cleaned. Where should we start trouble-shooting?

A: There is no escaping this one –– you have to begin trouble shooting with a thorough inspection of the oven. Cleaning the oven is one thing, but getting it put back together again might be a whole different story. Since you didn’t mention anything about the top of the pizzas, I’ll assume that the tops are coming out okay.

With conveyor ovens, as you know, there can be any number of different finger arrangements, all in different positions in your oven to provide the best bottom bake characteristics for your specific pizza. If, during finger inserts were installed incorrectly, or in the wrong (different) position, the quality of bake from that oven could be significantly compromised. I would begin my quest for resolution by removing all of the bottom finger panels/sleeves, and then checking each one against my finger profile map (which should be stored in your office or on the wall). Then make sure they are correctly installed (fit snugly into the air manifold) as you re-assemble the oven.

If, while reading this, you asked yourself: “Finger profile map? What finger profile map?” Now might be a good time to give some thought to either getting one from your oven supplier (only if you bought your oven new from them, as they will have this information on file), or you can make your own by removing the bottom fingers and inner sleeves and photographing them right next to the oven, in the order they were removed from the oven, for identification purposes.

Q: When a dough ball dries out and a dry patch of dough develops, should this dough be tossed in the garbage, or can it be sprayed with water and still opened into a pizza skin?

A: I don’t recommend spraying the dough balls with water and then opening them up. This can increase the adherence of dusting fl our to the dough ball, potentially resulting in a bitter taste. Instead, if it isn’t too bad, just open the ball up as usual, then orient the side with the dry, crusty patches to the bottom of your peel or pan/tray/screen. This way, the crusted area gets the most heat during baking. This will allow the patches to color up reasonably well.

If the dry patches are oriented towards the sauce, there is a possibility that they may result in a localized area with a dense structure and tough eating characteristics. A lot will depend upon how dry and crusted the dough actually is. The bigger question is this: Why are your dough balls drying out?

If you’re managing dough through the cooler overnight or longer, do you lightly oil the tops of the dough balls after placing them into the plastic dough boxes, before putting them into the cooler? Omitting this important step can allow the dough to begin drying out while the dough boxes are cross-stacked in the cooler. It can also hasten the drying of the dough surface after you remove the dough from the cooler and begin using it on the following day(s).

I think the most common cause of the problem, however, is failure to replace the lid on the dough boxes promptly after removing a dough ball. This seems to be especially troublesome during busy periods. It is true that the dough balls won’t develop crusty patches in the few minutes that it normally takes to open a full box of dough balls into skins. But when a box is opened and one or more pieces are removed and the lid is not replaced for a long period, that’s when trouble develops. ?

The late Tom Lehmann was a former director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas and Pizza Today’s longstanding resident dough expert. 

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

The post Dough Doctor: Clammy bottom pizza? There’s help for you yet appeared first on Pizza Today.

A: The words “natural” and “organic” are consumer buzzwords in the food industry. There have been supermarkets, delis and restaurants developed to cater to this market niche. The interesting thing about natural or organic is that your product doesn’t have to be 100 percent natural or organic to be embraced by the average consumer. For example, just stating that your pizzas are made using 100-percent organic or natural tomatoes in the sauce can suffice in the eyes of the consumer to make your product better than others. Organic flour is readily available from a number of commercial sources, and it fits pretty well into the existing specifications of many pizza flours being used in the industry. It shouldn’t pose a problem to just replace your existing flour with an organic flour and genuinely state that your crust is made with 100-percent organic flour. Additionally, there are a number of organic ingredients that you can purchase to use in making your dough or in topping your pizzas.

Q: We have had a number of requests from customers asking us where our topping ingredients come from. What’s this all about?

A: With all of the recent food issues concerning imported this and that, is it any wonder that our customers now question where our ingredients come from? We are seeing an emerging trend where customers are pushing back from stores using imported ingredients, while embracing those that utilize locally grown or domestic grown toppings/ingredients. For example, where I live, we have a new restaurant that specializes in using locally procured foods whenever possible. The name of the restaurant says it all, LOCAL. Some stores have made it a point to secure as much of their produce from local markets as is possible, but wait a minute! It isn’t as easy as just running over to the local farmer’s market and picking up your onions, garlic, tomatoes and whatever. There are now guidelines published called GAPs (Good Agricultural Practices) that were written and intended to be used as guidance for fruit and vegetable growers to follow as a way of ensuring that safe food/produce is being made available to their customers. It is highly recommended that all growers adhere to these guidelines as with time it is a probability that these guidelines will evolve into a safe produce handling law of some type.

To learn more about these GAPs, go to www.fda.bov and look for the Guide to Minimize Microbial Food Safety Hazards for Fresh Fruits and Vegetables. By asking your local produce vendors if they are following these GAPs, and only buying from those who do, you will be taking a major step in helping to ensure a safe and wholesome food supply, and who knows? It might also help to keep your pizzeria out of the headlines as a restaurant responsible for sickening a multitude of people. Using fresh and locally grown produce can be an asset to your business, just be sure to do it in the safest manner possible. After all, the words “fresh” and “locally grown” conjure up warm and secure feelings with our customers, so it’s important that we do all that is possible to protect that image.

Q: What is one of the better, more profitable segments of the pizza industry that you see right now?

A: Artisan pizza is rapidly gaining in popularity. The reason for this is because as pizza ages, consumers are looking for something a little different, not too far from mainstream, but not your run-of-the-mill box store pizza that they are so familiar with. Anymore, when I hear a group of people talking about how great a pizza was it’s better than even money that the pizza came from a store with an artisan concept. To be done correctly, the entire store should be designed around the artisan pizza concept.

Also, the preparation area should be open so as to allow your customers to see or watch the pizzas being made. A good friend of mine has gone so far so as to have bar seating right in front of the dough prep area so his customers can sit and watch the pizzas being made in real time.

For artisan pizza, less is actually better. Rather than slathering the top of the dough skin with sauce we like to use a much lighter application of sauce, or no sauce at all. Sometimes it works well to just use pieces of tomato –– either fresh or processed to replace the sauce. Furthermore, a much lighter application of a very flavorful cheese is in order. For example, many traditional pizzas will use upwards of six to seven ounces of cheese on a 12-inch pizza, while an artisan pizza may contain as little as only four ounces of cheese.

Flavoring is another place where artisan pizzas differ. While dried basil and oregano are the norm for many mainstream pizzas, artisan pizzas are typically flavored with fresh, green leaf basil and possibly oregano along with fresh garlic, making for a very bright and flavorful profile. As an added bonus, many consumers report that they can actually taste the cheese and tomato on an artisan pizza, where with the more traditional pizzas these delicate flavors are lost in the pungency of the dried herbs and excessive use of cheese.

Possibly the one greatest component of artisan pizza that really makes it stand apart from other types of pizza is its appearance. Since these pizzas are baked at high temperatures, the crust will be mottled hues of light brown, dark brown and something that might be described as black, which is the char that forms on random points of the crust as a result of baking at those very high temperatures. This char provides an added dimension of depth to the flavor of the baked pizza.

The crust also has a pronounced raised edge with a very open, porous crumb structure, much like that of an English muffin. Crispiness, while definitely present, doesn’t seem to be as much of an identifying characteristic with artisan pizza as it is with other types of pizza. The key elements of an artisan pizza are ambiance, appearance and flavor. You will need to do an extensive market study to find out if this type of pizza is right for your specific store location. At the very least, elements of the artisan pizza might be able to be incorporated into your existing line of pizzas to provide more variation for your customers to enjoy.

The post Dough Doctor Tom Lehmann takes a look at organic pizzas, local ingredients and artisan pizzas appeared first on Pizza Today.

Chicago is perhaps best known for its deep-dish pizza – that ooey, gooey, cheesy, saucy concoction served in round pans (read on for more on creating this type of crust). But Chicago thin-crust is gaining popularity. This cracker-like pizza is less about the toppings and more about the dough.

Chicago Thin Crust Pizza Dough

Typically, Ceresota flour is used in making this type of crust. If that isn’t available to you, any good, patent-grade bread flour with 10.5- to 11.5-percent protein content should work well. If all else fails, an H&R (hotel and restaurant) flour should work for making this type of crust, too.

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.

And remember: If in doubt, err on the side of under mixing the dough. The worst thing that you can do is to over mix this dough.

Chicago Thin Pizza Dough Recipe and Dough Formula

Formulation
Flour 100 percent
Salt 1.50
Sugar (optional) 1.50
Compressed yeast 0.25
Corn oil 8.00
Unsalted butter (optional) 4.00
Water (variable) (70 F) 45.00

Note: Some Chicago-style crust doughs are made using a 50/50 blend of olive oil and corn oil.

Here’s the procedure for making the thin crust:

1. Add the water to the mixing bowl, than add salt and sugar to the water.
2. Add the flour, followed by the compressed yeast and butter (if used).
3. Begin mixing at low speed and gradually pour in the oil over about 60 seconds.
4. Continue mixing for a total of about 4 to 5 minutes at low speed, or until about ¼ of the flour is still seen as white, dry flour in the mixer.
5. Transfer the dough mix to a plastic tub and cover to prevent drying.
6. Allow the dough to ferment/rise in the tub for 4 to 5 hours.
7. Bring the dough to the bench and scale into desired weight pieces and then form into balls.
8. Place the dough balls into dough boxes, wipe lightly with oil, and cross-stack in the cooler for two hours. Down stack the dough boxes and nest to prevent drying.
9. Remove dough balls from the cooler 2 hours before anticipated use, and allow to warm at room temperature.
10. Flatten the dough ball(s) by hand and feed into the sheeter/roller to give a finished skin of desired thickness.
11. Trim the dough to the desired diameter using a knife or pizza cutter.
12. Apply slices of mozzarella cheese to the dough skin, followed by sauce and toppings.
13. Pizzas can be baked on the deck/stone or on a screen/disk if desired.

Making Chicago Thick Pizza

For making a Chicago-style thick crust, the following formula modifications are suggested:

• Include the optional unsalted butter in the formula for improved flavor.
• Increase the water to 50 percent of the weight of the flour.
• Add egg-shade coloring, if desired.

Procedures for Making Chicago Thick Pizza

Here are the procedural changes:

1. Increase the weight of the dough balls to be appropriate for the diameter of pizza crusts being made.
2. Adjust the sheeter roll settings to give a sheeted dough piece approximately ¼-inch thick.
3. Cut the dough piece to the desired diameter using a knife or pizza cutter.
4. Place the cut/trimmed dough skin into a dark-colored (anodized finish) deep-dish (2-inch deep) pan that has been oiled with salad oil or an olive oil/salad oil blend.
5. Allow the panned dough to rise for about 45 to 60 minutes.
6. Using your fingers, carefully pull some of the dough up the sides of the pan to form a raised edge.
7. Apply sliced mozzarella cheese to the surface of the dough, add the sauce followed by toppings.
8. Bake at 425 to 450 F in a deck oven, or at 400 to 415 F in an impingement oven. These pizzas should be given a long, slow bake to develop their unique flavor and texture. When baking in a deck oven, a wire screen placed under the deep-dish pan will help to keep the bottom of the pizza from getting too dark or burning during the lengthy baking time.
9. Cut the finished pizza using a rocker knife.

Note: Part of the Chicago-style deep-dish pizza eating experience is in the flavor of the finished pizza. This flavor results from the use of raw sausage in the assembly of this type of pizza. Be sure to take appropriate food-safety measures when handling/using raw sausage.

Tom Lehmann is a director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas.

>> Explore Pizza Dough Recipes for Top Trending Pizza Styles including Detroit, New York, Grandma, Sicilian, Chicago Thin and Deep Dish. <<

The post Dough Doctor Tom Lehmann explores Chicago thick and thin-crust pizzas appeared first on Pizza Today.