Pizza Today Reader: I’m just getting started in the pizza business and would like to know how to determine the correct dough weight for each of my pizza sizes. How to calculate dough ball weight for 10 inch, 12 inch and 16 inch pizzas How heavy should a dough ball be?...
What is the best material to use as a pizza peel release agent? I've watched a lot of people make hand-tossed pizzas, and I see that some people use plain flour and others use corn meal on their peels to help slide their pizzas into the oven. What is the best material...
Dough Handling Sizing Dough for 18- and 36-inch Pizza By Tom Lehmann When it comes to sizing, do you need to change your dough recipe depending upon how big the crust or pizza is going to be? What if we wanted to offer an 18- or 36-inch pizza? Because our pizza crust...
If your thick crust doesn’t have a light texture, you likely are not proofing the dough properly. Proofing is the act of allowing the dough to rise after it has been formed. This is the final processing step before baking. During proofing, dough is aerated,...
Five Tips to Achieve a Crispy Pizza Crust For some of us achieving a crispy crust pizza is like chasing down that legendary Golden Fleece, but it really doesn’t have to be such a massive undertaking. Below are some tips to get you on your way. Tip No. 1: The protein...
Did you ever feel like you were in a "tug of war" with your pizza dough? You form or stretch it out to 12 inches in diameter and before you can say “Mozzarella cheese”, then it magically assumes the rather unwanted shape of a 10-inch pizza skin. Now you...
Oh no, my pizza dough is blown. What do I do? Have you ever had one of those nights where a storm kept you awake? Then, after getting a few hours of sleep you go to your store to open and find that your dough has blown courtesy of a power outage. It’s a nightmare come...
One commonly overlooked aspect of dough management is that of temperature control. Temperature, temperature, temperature — our life in the store revolves around temperatures. The temperature of the cooler and oven, the holding temperature of the food on the...
Like a fine wine, rum, bourbon or scotch whiskey, pizza dough is one of those things that just seem to get better when they’re allowed to age a little. There are times when aging, or allowing the dough to ferment, just isn’t an option — such as when...
Dough Mixing / Proofing Temperature Essentials Our Dough Doctor addresses dough, water temperatures By Tom Lehmann I’ve heard you say that the temperature of the dough after mixing is the single most important aspect of dough management. Would you please explain...
What causes pizza dough to become tough, and how can you avoid it in the future? Flour Protein Content There are a number of things that can cause a pizza crust to become excessively tough or chewy. The tough and chewy stage is set when a high protein (very strong)...
While yeast is a simple, single cell organism, what it does in a dough is rather complex. In addition to the yeast feeding on available carbohydrates, producing acids, carbon dioxide and alcohol as byproducts, the yeast also provides a source of enzymes such as...
