Q: We make our personal dough as we’ve got been for a few years. We use an air impingement oven to bake our pizzas, however for some purpose, we will by no means get the pizzas as crispy as we want them to be. The perimeters are crispy, however the remainder of the pizza leaves one thing to be desired. What can we do to assist get a crispier pizza?
A: In reviewing your dough formulation, I see that it accommodates entire eggs. Entire eggs contribute considerably to the browning strategy of the dough throughout baking, thus permitting the dough to color-up quicker, leading to a shorter bake time. That is all nicely and effective, apart from the truth that the shorter bake time additionally signifies that the pizza won’t be baked sufficiently to develop the utmost crispy texture attainable. My advice is to eradicate the entire eggs from the dough formulation, after which experiment with the baking time to attain the identical baked shade, however with an extended baking time. This may assist to develop a better stage of crispiness within the completed crust. In case your oven is an older mannequin, greater than 10 years previous, your pizzas could profit from an extended baking time at a decrease temperature. To start, I’d recommend beginning out at 435 F with a baking time of 7½ minutes, after which alter the time and temperature till you obtain an enchancment in total crispiness of the completed crust.
Q: We’re presently making an excellent high quality thick-crust pizza with an amazing taste achieved by permitting the dough to ferment at room temperature in a single day. We wish to now introduce a really gentle and ethereal kind of crust. Will the substitution of about 25 % of our current pizza fl our with cake or pastry fl our give us the sunshine, and ethereal traits that we’re on the lookout for?
A: No, it gained’t. Each cake and pastry fl our are a lot decrease in protein content material than any bread or pizza fl our, so the addition of both to your dough would solely serve to weaken it, presumably to the purpose of collapse, in view of your lengthy fermentation interval. Relying upon your dough temperature, formulation, room temperature and yeast stage, your fl our will have the ability to present enough carbohydrate to assist one thing between 5 and eight hours of fermentation. After that, the yeast can be fairly nicely spent, making for a thicker, extra dense completed crust. With out figuring out the way you handle the dough when making your common pizzas, it is perhaps one thing so simple as simply permitting ample time for the yeast to do its work once more. After panning the dough, permit an hour or extra for the dough to rise between panning it and dressing/topping it in preparation for baking.
In some instances, we discover that the dough should be allowed to rise for no less than 45 minutes to a most of 90 minutes to attain the specified completed crust textural properties. We commonly produce what’s known as a California fashion deep-dish pizza. That sounds loads like what you might be on the lookout for. To make this sort of pizza, we use dough that has been managed by means of the cooler in a single day; it’s then allowed to mood at room temperature for about two hours earlier than the dough ball is fitted to a well-oiled, dark-colored, deepdish pan. We usually use 14 ounces of dough weight for a 12-inch pizza of this kind. The pan is roofed with a fl at pan separator, or a number of pans are stacked one on prime of one other if they’re stacking pans, and the dough is allowed to rise for about 70 minutes at regular room temperature (72 to 75 F). If the room is colder than this, you could want to make use of a proofing field set at 90 to 95 F / 70 to 75 %. On this case, you’re taking a look at a proof time within the 45- to 60-minute vary.
Completed crusts may be both baked on the uncooked dough, or the crusts may be par-baked, after which the pizzas ready on the par-baked crusts. In both case, the completed crusts can be a couple of full inch thick, and they are going to be tender. If the yeast is just too broken to offer the wanted leavening for producing this sort of crust, you could must take half of the dough and blend it with the components to make a half-size dough. That is basically a 50/50 sponge dough course of. The introduction of contemporary components, in addition to contemporary yeast, will refresh the dough, permitting it to proof and bake in a extra regular method as soon as it has been positioned into the deep-dish pan, whereas nonetheless retaining a lot of the fermentation taste achieved by the lengthy, in a single day fermentation interval. ?
Tom Lehmann is a director on the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas.
