If the 2025 International Pizza Challenge (IPC) is a “royal rumble,” as Wilhelm Rodriguez says, he is king of the Traditional Division after taking home a first-place trophy and a $7,500 prize. Rodriguez, who owns Papa’s Pizza in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, says he spent months planning for the event and achieved “incredible fermentation” when it came time to compete during the 2025 International Pizza Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

“Everything went as I planned it,” Rodriguez tells Pizza Today, adding that a win at the IPC “is something I’ve always dreamed of.” Rodriguez is no stranger to the IPC; in 2023, he took first place in the international region for traditional pizzas. (Other regions are limited to the continental United States.)

Winning the top prize in the Traditional Division is especially meaningful, Rodriguez says, “because it is what I do every day.” The IPC Traditional Division is limited to 100 competitors, with preliminary rounds beginning Tuesday during Pizza Expo and the top scorers advancing to the finals held Thursday.

Wilhelm Rodriguez presents his award-winning pie at the 2025 International Pizza Challenge.

“Everyone was happy and ran to hug me and congratulate me,” Rodriguez says of being named division champion. “I’ve received hundreds of messages congratulating me, (and) I’ve been invited to different TV shows.” Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón met with Rodriguez personally to celebrate the win.

Second place in the Traditional Division went to Chris Battiste of Miaava East Coast Pizza in Pahrump, Nevada. Fiodar Huminski of Pizzeria No. 900 in Montreal, Quebec, took home third place. Rodriguez also placed second in the IPC Pizza Maker of the Year category, the contest’s top honor.

Back at Papa’s Pizza, Rodriguez says he is happy with the results. “It was a royal rumble: so many great pizzas and pizza makers in the same place.”

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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.

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“The magic of pizza and the foundation for it – the dough – is often hidden behind closed doors, but as a restaurant group, we love to celebrate the craft and the process behind everything we do,” says co-founder and Chef Ryan Pollnow. “It’s why our handcrafted pasta production is on display in our Flour + Water Pasta Shop, as well. Our flagship Pizzeria dough room is at the center of the restaurant, located between our full-service dining room and our quick-service Pizza Shop space. It’s the heartbeat of our flagship and entire pizza program.”

Flour + Water is joined by other pizzerias, large and small, looking to perfect dough making and management. When Pizza Today visited our 2021 Pizzeria of the Year, Razza Pizza Artigianale in Jersey City, New Jersey, owner Dan Richer was in the midst of building out a dedicated dough room.

In Editor In Chief Jeremy White’s December 2021 feature article, Richer said, “We’ll be able to better control variables in that room. We’ve got water lines dialed in to the exact temperature we want, we’ll control the air temperature in there to what we want. It’s going to make such a difference to our consistency and our ability to put out the pizza dough we want to put out.” Four years later, we caught up with Richer for an update.

Rose City Pizza, a ’90s-themed pizza joint in Covina, California, took a different approach and adapted a space previously used for dry storage into a designated dough area. Owner Brian Nittayo was looking to address environmental issues impacting the consistency in his dough-making area, which was by a back door.

The three pizzerias have very different dough room setups, but they share a common drive to make the best pizza dough they can.

What Is a Dough Room?

Typically, a dough room is a self-contained temperature-controlled room or area for dough making. Alastair Hannman (aka The Pizza Buddha), a pizzeria consultant who worked with Nittayo to convert a storage area into a dough room, says, “To me, a dough room is a room that is separated from the hot line. What I mean by that is it is not susceptible to the oven temperature. It’s got a residual humidity under 75 percent to where you are able to maintain it.”

Dough rooms aren’t new. Many pizzerias over the years have incorporated dough rooms into their pizza dough-making process. As techniques changed, operations shifted to using fermentation shelves a.k.a. fermentation containers.

Dough-making environments are constantly shifting, and operators are constantly looking for ways to add consistency to the dough process. Enter dough rooms of today.

Dough Room Features Focus on Tech and Consistency

Razza’s dough room is all business. Richer says, “Our equipment includes a spiral dough mixer and a water meter – something I’ll never build another restaurant without. The water meter has proven to be a huge time-saver for accurately dosing the correct water quantity and temperature. It is also connected to a water chiller, which eliminates the need for ice. While water chillers can be pricey, they are especially beneficial in hot climates. We have a Thermoworks node, which is a thermometer that tracks the temp of the room 24/7, and you can set alerts to be notified if the temp is outside of the range that you set. Ideally, the dough room would have its own dedicated AC unit, but that can be expensive.” Richer commends installing an air filtration system, if possible. The room includes a proofer/retarder, which he says was a mistake because the compressor can affect the room’s temperature.

Flour + Water features include a 70-quart spiral mixer, four proofer retarders, a blast freezer for its upcoming frozen line, dough rounder, scales and a small 6-kilo max capacity spiral mixer. “Other features include wall-mounted filtered water for use in our dough, and a table made from a recycled paper composite material called Richlite. We love Richlite here, as the table doubles as both a prep table and a dining table for guests when the space transforms to a semi-private space for larger parties at night,” says Pollnow. “The surface has natural grip to it which is essential for portioning dough balls, and it can be cleaned easily, so it offers an aesthetically pleasing dining surface for our guests at night.”

In addition to the mixer, Nittayo wanted to automate his dough-making space. “We have the dough divider and the dough rounder,” he says.” Everything flows. We have the water meter. It measures out 24 pounds, exactly into the mixture.” Automation has paid off tenfold for Nittayo as Rose City is able to generate more output and labor efficiency. The dough-making efficiency, along with new conveyor ovens and reducing the menu size, has even sparked him to lower prices.

Fermentation Temperature

When it comes to dough texture and flavor, one of the most significant benefits is the vital element of dough making: temperature. “Those characteristics can be achieved at any temperature, but without temperature control, your results will be inconsistent from day to day. Having a dough room allows us to control the ambient temperature, which is especially important when using preferments of any kind and when bulk fermentation lasts longer than 30 minutes.”

With Flour + Water’s build out, they took advantage of San Francisco’s mild weather. “The room is equipped with air conditioning, but because of the location of the dough room within our space (away from windows and the heat of our Pizza-Master electric deck ovens and kitchen equipment), the space sits between 72 and 74 degrees, year-round – without the use of AC. We’re constantly monitoring the temp and humidity in the room to portion dough at that true room temperature.

Think of the room itself as a clean room. For Flour + Water and Razza, the spaces are enclosed rooms. Razza has floor-to-ceiling tiled walls and floor drains so it is easy to clean. It also features a window to help employees not feel claustrophobic. At Rose City Pizza, Hannman and Nittayo went with a new version of FRP wall panels with the smooth side out to make cleaning easier.

Since Nittayo made use of an existing dry-storage area that had air conditioning duct work, he was able to simplify the conversion and add clear vinyl curtains at the entry to the area, limiting the exposure to other areas of the kitchen and storage.

While costs can vary depending on size of room and features included, Nittayo’s conversion was a few thousand dollars, according to Hannman, not including the addition of the automated equipment.

Dough Rooms Are ‘a Luxury’

Pollnow realizes a dedicated dough room may not be an option for other pizzerias. “We recognize building a dough room is a luxury, but it’s not a necessity for great pizza production. Because our dough room will be acting as a commissary for satellite Pizza Shops and our retail frozen pizza line, we built it to be large. But if you are looking for similar benefits in terms of temperature control, we do recommend investing in a proofer retarder, especially if you are working in a setting that runs hot because of other equipment.”

Richer concurs. “I’ve been making pizza for more than 20 years, but it’s only in the past three years that I’ve had a dedicated dough room. It is possible to achieve consistency if you truly understand your space, can be flexible in the moment, and are able to adapt to daily changes.”

Denise Greer is Executive Editor at Pizza Today.

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Dough History

Until recently, anthropologists thought breads had been baked for over 20,000 years. But according to a discovery in a Neanderthal cave, a pancake-style flatbread made with local seeds dates back 70,000 years. The use of natural yeasts has been common throughout history and made a big debut in the days of the Roman Republic. The bakers (called pistor or triticarius) preferred a pre-ferment made with millet flour mixed with must from beer making. This was set aside to ferment, then it was dried in the sun for use in bread dough. The Romans also used dough balls of barley and water baked brown in ashes and kept until fermented. But the most common pre-ferment method that is still popular today ­– Pâte fermentée – was the use of a previous day’s dough to add into a new batch of panus, or bread.

Friend or Dough

The two types of flour mixes in any pizzeria are the direct method and the indirect method.

The Direct Method: This is flour that is directly mixed with yeast, salt and water. This method sets off an alcoholic fermentation, leading to alcohol and carbon dioxide that raises the dough. There are many factors in manipulating the outcome of this dough, including changing the temperature, mixing methods and holding time before using. This mix is less flavorful than the indirect – or sourdough mix – and may give you less dough strength.

Advantages of the direct method in pizza making: The mixture can be highly predictable, less sloppy and may fit your schedule and staff’s attentiveness. There are many delicious examples of direct-method pizza dough, such as the Roman-style pan pizzas that use higher hydration and a long, cold refrigeration method of up to 72 hours, creating a large cell structure and a crisp and light pan pizza flavored with extra virgin olive oil.

The Indirect Method: This is a final batch of pizza dough that is made using another, smaller batch of commercially yeasted flour and water that has been aged. This method with a lower hydration is called a Biga. The French Poolish has a higher hydration, and the Pâte fermentée is a salted, old dough saved from the last batch of pizza dough. Adding these pre-ferments to your final mix puts your pizza dough in “hyper-drive,” enabling you to use it faster.

Advantages of the indirect method in pizza making: Because the indirect method introduces an already fermenting bacteria into your pizza dough batch, it will enable a stronger gluten net, moister cell structure, better taste and browning of the cornicione (crust.) Each pre-ferment has its own qualities, depending upon the hydration.

Crust Issues

There is a BIG conversation in the online pizza and social media space about the consequences of using a pre-ferment. Much of the pushback is that, because it is “pizza” and not “bread,” the change in crust taste, structure and bake is nominal and goes unnoticed by trusted customers. These excuses come from the belief that the cheese, sauce and toppings on a pizza tone down the importance of the crust and crumb. This business is hard and unforgiving, so the backstory of some of these comments may come from the hardship of keeping a crew trained and dedicated to taking more steps to improve pizza dough. Shortcuts and “the easy ways” are hard to ignore both financially and for all our stress levels. As a business owner, I get it. It’s a tough call and it’s up to you which way to go.

Sponge Bath

Because each pre-ferment has differing qualities, you can choose to use one that matches best to the qualities that you want for your specific pizza crust. The following is just a guide for better tasting pizza dough – only you can match your best pre-ferment to your operation. I use all these – and sometimes a combination of one with some sourdough starter – in my pizza dough. Here are some specifics for each pre-ferment, remembering that these may vary depending on flour protein levels, the grind, PH levels, the environment and water temperature. Let’s take a deep dive.

• Pâte fermentée (old dough, or scrap dough): This is pronounced (pot fer mawn TAY) and it is simply a piece of fermented pizza dough saved from the last batch. I chop this up and put it in warm water to create a “soaker,” which will better integrate into the final pizza dough mix. This is the only pre-ferment that contains salt as well as flour, water and yeast; it is very forgiving. The usual amount is 40 percent to 50 percent based only on the total weight of your flour. So, if 10 pounds of flour is used, 4 to 5 pounds of old dough can be used. This old dough should be used at the end of the pizza dough mix because its gluten net already is developed.
• Poolish: Originating in Poland, this mix is equal parts of flour and water mixed into a thin starter with varying percentages of yeast depending on the speed of fermentation you need. Because of the high amount of water, poolish is very active. A long fermentation at room temperature with very little yeast will struggle and bubble, increasing in volume and, at its peak, will appear wrinkled and fragrant and start to fall back down and only be good to use for a few hours. A shorter fermentation using more yeast will create fermentation faster, but you may lose some of the pre-ferment benefits. For 1 percent of dry yeast to flour (3 percent fresh yeast), the fermentation time is two hours, but this may not help with flavor or bake. Better pizza crust qualities are 0.5 percent of dry yeast to flour for four hours, 0.28 percent dry yeast to flour for eight hours, or 0.08 percent for 13 to 16 hours. It is important to know that, because you are using so little yeast, you may need to add yeast to the final batch also.
• Biga: This term is Italian for starter or pre-ferment. The typical formula for a biga is 100 percent flour, 50 to 60 percent water and 0.8-1.5 percent fresh yeast. This formula varies widely depending upon the hydration and room and water temperatures. This stiff dough ferments slower and can be fermented from 16 to even 48 hours depending upon temperature control. If it is too hot, this pre-ferment will exhibit too much lactic acid activity.

Catch “Beauty and the Yeast,” where John details sourdough starters in his Knead to Know column for the April 2023 issue.

John Gutekanst owns Avalanche Pizza in Athens, Ohio.

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Every time I look at social media, I am bombarded with pictures of pizza crust close-ups. People displaying the huge air pockets in a cross section of crust, also known as a cornicione. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good crust shot as much as anyone, but what is it that they are really showing off? Proper fermentation. For me, this is what creating the perfect dough boils down to. You can use all of the right ingredients but if your dough is not properly fermented then you’re not going to have the light and chewy crust that is so desirable. To understand just how to achieve your perfect cornicione, it is important to understand the fundamentals of dough production and a few crucial steps that should not be left out in order to create the perfect dough. They all center around fermentation: the initial bulk rise, doing an autolyse and the final rise.

What exactly is fermentation?

It all starts with yeast. Whether you are using instant, fresh, active dry or a sourdough starter, the fermentation process you choose will have a huge impact on your final dough product and thus your beautiful crust. While there are over a thousand different species of yeast, commercial yeast is almost always Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Once you have added yeast to your dough the fermentation process begins. Fermentation is an anaerobic reaction where the yeast feeds on simple sugar in the absence of oxygen. It produces ethanol and other derivative chemicals. Basically, the yeast is eating the simple sugars released by the flour’s starch that has been broken down and in turn releases carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is what forms the tiny air bubbles in the dough. This process is highly affected by your dough’s temperature. If the dough gets too cold the yeast won’t activate and if it’s too hot it won’t survive. This is why you always hear people talking about IDT or the Ideal Dough Temperature. Not everyone’s IDT will be the same depending on what type of yeast you are using, how long you plan on bulk rising and if you do a longer cold fermentation. You can control the temperature of the dough by the temperature of the water that you add to it and plugging it into this formula:

Temperature T water = T dough x 3 – (T room + T flour +T mixer heat)

In general, the longer you ferment your dough, the more flavor you are going to get out of it. A slower fermentation creates a better gluten structure which means better bubbles in the crust due to the aid in gluten development. By rushing the process, you end up with a one-dimensional dough, in both flavor and texture. One way to save time on your overall bulk and cold fermentation is to use a pre-ferment. The two most common are a Poolish or a Biga. Simply combine flour, water and yeast and allow it to ferment at room temperature overnight. By adding this to your dough, you are getting a head start on its flavor and structure.

With pizza dough there are several ways to achieve your ideal fermentation.

The first step is to incorporate an autolyse into your process. This is a step in dough making that I find a lot of people leave out, but all of the best bakers find essential. It is the step right after you have combined the flour and water (I add the yeast here too) and before you add your salt and oil. An autolyse, or rest period, is basically just letting your dough rest for 20 to 30 minutes. This allows the gluten net to strengthen and increases the dough’s extensibility. This is an important quality, not only in the dough’s ability to be stretched without ripping but also in achieving a good rise or volume. It can be the difference between having a pasty, flat crust and a bubbly, chewy one.

After the autolyse and your final mix, the next step is to do a bulk fermentation (also called a bulk rise). For my own shop, we do a five-hour bulk rise (once the dough has finished mixing, we place it in large bins at room temperature). Since we use a sourdough starter, this allows for the yeast to really kick in and start to develop the flavor and texture that I am looking for. If you are using a commercial yeast, you might want a shorter bulk fermentation. Whatever length your bulk rise is, this is the stage where the strength, flavor and structure of the dough are developed. At this stage, you want to make sure the dough stays at a consistent temperature. You can speed up or slow down the rise by either placing it in a warmer area or placing it in the walk-in. However, just like it is possible to under ferment a dough, you also want to be careful not to over extend it. If you let the bulk fermentation go too long or get too hot, the glutens in the dough begin to degrade due to increased acidity and result in a tighter, smaller crumb.

After that, we cut and ball the dough. Once the dough is balled, we let it rise another five hours outside of the walk-in before giving it a 24- to 48-hour cold rise. By giving the dough the chance to rise in the beginning, it cuts down on the time we need to pull it out before service because the yeast is already activated and proofed to the point that we want it to bake at.

Do you ever get a slice of pizza and notice that there is a huge gum line? The reason for this is improper proofing. Proofing is the final rise that the dough goes through before baking. It is a crucial step, as it helps to create those beautiful corniciones. Once your dough is ready to be pushed out into a pizza, all of the internal chemistry has been done. If you have accomplished a proper fermentation and rise, then the dough should pop in the oven.

In theory, all dough is fermented but how you choose to carry out the process will affect your final crust. Everyone has a slightly different approach to making their signature recipes, but there are a few important steps that anyone can benefit from adding into their process. Don’t be afraid to play around with a variety of methods to achieve your perfect crust.  

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

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