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.

Some of the best meals I’ve ever had have involved pizza, but have also involved pasta of some kind. There’s a restaurant in Rome that will forever be imprinted in my mind because sometimes the pasta will come to the table on a beautiful plate and sometimes it will be served directly from the pan it was cooked in. Why dirty another dish? As Americans, we all know dried pasta. While dried pasta is great, versatile and relatively cheap, fresh pasta is in a category unto its own.

Learning to make fresh pasta is its own art form and countless cookbooks have been written in its honor. With more shapes than you can imagine, there is a science to fresh pasta as well as a honed technique that can take years to master. Learning how to roll the perfect sfoglia (sheet) and pairing it with its perfect sauce as well as learning the details of each cut and shape can seem daunting. But just like pizza, pasta is a perfect vehicle for flavor, whether it’s sticking to traditional carbonara or Bolognese or completely switching it up and doing something outside the box. Pasta is beloved by all and is a lot easier to incorporate into a concept than you think.

There are two kinds of fresh pasta to consider.

The first is the kind that is either rolled out with a rolling pin or flattened out using a sheeter.  Most associate ravioli and other filled shapes with this. The hand crank machine is the smaller one and normally what you would have at home. They make larger commercial versions that are electric and can sheet out large quantities rather fast. The second kind of fresh pasta is one that is extruded out of a machine. For both kinds, specific equipment is necessary. But like any great nonna at home, using what you have always works just fine.

For those who are opting to go the hand rolled and hand filled route, a little more technique is required. If using a rolling pin or mattarello, learning the proper thickness of each shape as well as how to keep the dough uniform in thickness can take time. Just like any skill, it takes repetition and a lot of attention to detail. But before you get to rolling, you need to begin with the dough. Like pizza dough, hydration and flour choice is key. The type of flour can vary, but most commonly it will be a “00” and a low protein or a semolina/semola flour. Pasta has just as much nuance as any other flour-based product, but for those going the super simple route “00” flour and water works just fine. For those wanting a richer and more golden color to the dough will want to add eggs, either in their entirety or just the yolks. Traditionally, pasta dough with eggs was reserved for special occasions and the upper wealthy class.

If you’d like to try just flour and water first before adding in eggs, I would start with a 50-percent hydration and practice your kneading skills. Pasta dough will need to be kneaded for a bit to develop some strength and texture. But just like pizza dough, it can be overworked. A rest period is always advised between kneading and rolling.

If you’re ready to add in eggs or even a vegetable puree of some kind I’ve seen the hydration level go up to 55 to 60 percent — but you don’t really want a super wet dough. There are a lot of cookbooks out there that can teach you the finer points of rolling out a fresh sheet of pasta, but not every operation has the time or enough staff to hand shape each order of ravioli. For those restaurants that specialize in hand formed pasta, the work is worth it as you can tell by the texture on the tooth when you bite into it that it was made by hand and not by a machine.

One of my all-time favorite noodle shapes is bucatini.

I love long noodles similar to a spaghetti. But the fact that it is hollow in the middle gives it a completely different texture. Other shapes I love are conchiglie (shells) and fusilli, and flat noodles like mafaldine. There are so many fun shapes out there that lend to a different eating experience, but shapes like these are better as extruded pastas.

An extruder is a machine that has a hopper where you add flour and water and it will mix it for you and then push the dough out through a die. The good ones are made from bronze, and as the dough is pushed out through the die, the noodle takes its shape. The important thing about bronze cut dies is it helps with the texture of the noodle. Some of this comes from the hydration and proper mix time, but you don’t want a super slick noodle regardless of the shape. What you are looking for is a little bit of texture, so the sauce has something to stick to. If you’ve ever bought dried pasta from the store and your sauce has a hard time sticking even though you haven’t added any oil, this is why. Bronze dies can be more expensive, but the quality of the product speaks for itself.

Now let’s talk equipment and cost.

Is it really worth it to invest in the equipment and knowledge needed to make great fresh pasta? Extruders can vary in size and cost depending on your needs, but on a menu most people are charging the same as a regular entrée or pizza which pays for itself in time just as your mixer.

The equipment needed to make filled shapes like ravioli and agnolotti is minimal, and even a fork and pizza wheel will do most of what you need. But the time it takes to learn technique and consistency is the hard part. One of the things I love most about fresh pasta is the cook time. Smaller shapes can cook in as few as two minutes, whereas thicker shapes can cook in about five with the texture coming out al dente and it is still cooking in less time than a dried pasta. This quick cook time means you can churn out pasta dishes in less than 10 minutes, turning tables much faster.

Ultimately, fresh pasta can be a great addition to any menu and can be as simple or as complicated as you would like it to be.

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

The post What You Need to Know About Making Pasta in Your Restaurant 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.

Whole Wheat Wander

So, you want to make whole wheat dough? When I first started, whole wheat was terrible. It was dense and dry and was for the older generations or for those who were dieting. A lot has changed since then — and once you learn what whole wheat really is, making it doesn’t seem quite as daunting.

What is whole wheat to begin with?

It’s exactly as it sounds. This is flour that comprises the entire part of the grain.

Depending on the baker or pizza maker, some breads and doughs are labeled as “whole grain” but really the flour only consists of a small portion of whole wheat. The label is not strictly defined or regulated, so the amount of whole grain can vary widely from product to product.

The amount of whole grains can vary for a number of reasons, but the main one is that the higher percentage of whole grain the harder it is to make a light and airy loaf. Most 100-percent whole grain breads and flours tend to produce doughs that are denser than those made with refined flours because the gluten percentage decreases the more whole grain you use.

Flour is made by grinding kernels of wheat, sifting (also known as refining), and then packaging. There are many steps in between but the main goal is to breakdown the kernel from its three main parts. For whole wheat flour, you mainly hear a lot about the bran and the germ. One of the biggest selling points in the commercial bread industry, cereal industry and even in the larger health industry are the buzz words of wheat bran and wheat germ that tell consumers a product with these two things is healthier.

Wheat bran is the outer coating on a kernel of grain. It is this part that is more nutrient dense and contains fiber but is separated from the other two parts of the grain and then added back into the flour at varying amounts. Bran can have a large effect on the volume of your dough as it does not contain much gluten and can be physically jagged (which can damage gluten formation).

The germ is the reproductive part of the grain. Like bran, this portion is normally removed from the other parts and processed separately. This portion only makes up a small percentage, less than five percent, but contains a larger quantity of fat. Having a larger quantity of germ in flour can be tough as the higher percentage of fat/ oil means the flour will go rancid faster because of oxidation. The germ contains no gluten, so a high percentage of germ can have a large effect on the final rise of your dough. A tip when adding germ to your dough is to toast it separately, bring it to room temperature and then add it in to your dough. This will help keep oxidation at bay.

The endosperm is the largest part of the grain and is the main component in a bag of flour. For whole wheat flour, the germ, bran and endosperm are processed separately but then mixed back together. The five refinements of flour will help you determine how much bran and germ is still in your flour.

00 – The most refined. Contains as little bran and germ as possible.

0 – Contains some bran and germ, but is not super noticeable.

1 – Contains a decent amount of bran and germ and you can really see the flecks within the flour. The color is now a mix of white with flecks of brown.

2 – The color of this is on the browner side as this contains the most amount of bran and germ without being considered whole wheat.

Whole grain contains all of the grain. As little as possible has been removed. The components may have been
processed separately but have been added back together.

Incorporating Whole Grains in Pizza Dough

Learning to incorporate different refinements and increasing amounts of whole wheat can have dramatic changes on your dough. The colors deepen and it is easy to smell the sweetness as well as the nuttiness that is held within wheat. The hard part is learning how much is too much, as the more you use the more it will affect the gluten structure (which ultimately will affect the rise of your dough).

A great way to dabble with whole wheat is to start small. Whether you introduce a different refinement to learn your comfort zone or blend whole what flour into your main 00 flour, I would recommend staying under 20 percent at first. Nothing says you can’t go for it, but staying around the 20 percent will ensure you build a gluten structure giving you the rise you want while still incorporating the other benefits of adding whole wheat like flavor, aroma and texture.

A tip when adding in bran to your doughs is to grind the germ down to a smaller size. This will help with water absorption as well as add to better gluten formation (leading to a lighter less dense dough).

One of the great things about today’s industry is the blurring of lines between bread and pizza. Techniques that were once specific to bread baking are now being used regularly in pizza making. The incorporation of ancient grains like Khorasan, Spelt, Emmer, Einkorn and others, like Rye and Buckwheat, mean the options are endless. But finding the right balance is key. Some of these grains will not have the same gluten forming proteins as the wheat you find in your 00 bag of flour, and others are used for gluten-free baking because they’re predominantly starch. So, the amounts you will use to blend will vary.

Whole wheat is nothing to be afraid of. But understanding gluten formation and the need for certain proteins will help you understand the correlation between flavor and rise and how much to use.

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

The post Knead to Know: Whole Grain Pizzas appeared first on Pizza Today.

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

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

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

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

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

Where does acidity come from?

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

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

Role of time, temperature and hydration in dough production

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

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

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

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

Dough Resources

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

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

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

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

Leo Spizziri – Chicago, Illinois. IG:askchefleo

Karl De Smedt: IG: sourdough_librarian

Books by Modernist Cuisine: Modernist Bread

Bread Science by Emily Buehler

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

Podcast: The sourdough podcast by Michael Hilburn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Knead to Know: Most Common Pizza Dough Questions appeared first on Pizza Today.