Over the years, I’ve written a number of articles on using baker’s percent to express a dough formula, but it never hurts to give a refresher course for those who have recently joined our ranks. A lot of time I hear: "Why can’t you just give me a dough formula with...
Q: Can you please explain to me how to correctly season my new pizza screens? A: Pizza screens and many pizza pans should be seasoned before they can be used. Failure to do so will result in the pizza (crust) and the pan or screen becoming as one — not to mention a...
Q: How can I calculate what the total cost of making my dough is? A: Many operators simply look at just the ingredient cost when costing their dough formula, but there are more costs involved in making our dough: ingredient cost; inventory cost; overhead and labor...
Q: What are the advantages to showing a dough recipe/formula in baker’s percent? A: The advantages are that it allows you to determine, at a glance, if the dough is in correct balance. It also allows you to manipulate the size of a dough recipe with 100-percent...
Q: Can I get a different crust flavor by using brewer’s yeast instead of my regular yeast? A: The main difference between baker’s yeast and brewer’s yeast is tolerance to alcohol content. Brewer’s yeast has a slightly greater tolerance to alcohol than baker’s yeast,...
I have been thinking about adding take-and bake pizza to my menu. Can I use my regular dough, or do I need a special dough? Making take-and-bake pizza can be a pretty simple proposition, or it can be a bit more in depth, requiring a specialized dough....
Q: Do you have any suggestions for making a very quick and easy dessert item? A: Here’s one that I’ve made since the late 1960’s very successfully. It’s based on the calzone concept, except it is made with a fruit filling. Use your regular pizza dough and cut it into...
Q: We are making a thick-crust pizza but it doesn’t maintain any crispiness after we put it into the box. What can we do to make a crispier pizza? A: One of the most commonly encountered causes for a thick crust pizza to lack or loose crispiness is lack of sufficient...
Q: Can you tell me how to make a light textured pan-style pizza? A: This is getting to be a more frequent request all the time. For many operators, thin-crust pizza has been their mainstay. But now it appears that more and more customers are requesting a thicker...
Flour protein is probably the most misunderstood thing about pizza making. For many of us our definition of flour is "pizza flour." The prevailing thinking is that 'If I'm making pizza, I need pizza flour to make it with.' Well, not exactly. You see, pizza flour came...
This is very easy to do, and all that’s needed is a simple calculator. Begin by deciding how much flour you want to use in your dough formula. Keep in mind that the weights of the ingredients will be given in the same weight units in which you have expressed...
Three years ago we did a study to answer this very question. We found we could use the dough on the same day, if we allowed the dough to ferment for two hours after it was mixed and formed into balls. With fermentation times of less than two hours the dough exhibited...
