What is your plan if your pizza dough fails?
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? <<