Crust Issue: Thin Crust Pizza Dough and Techniques

The new trend of thin and cracker crusted pizzas has arrived and the options to integrate thin crusts into your menu-mix are everywhere.

When you do a deep dive into thin crust pizzas in the country, you find that these pies were initially ordained to accommodate both the pizza customers and the pizza makers alike. Like all craftsmen, these pizza pioneers of the 40s, 50s and 60s used their pragmatism to achieve a thin crust goal while also thinking about their own history, the limits of their physical plant, and what pizza items were available. Many of the “Tavern Style” or “Bar Pizzas” were designed to keep customers in their seats, ordering another drink. Other thin-crust pizzas originated in working class neighborhoods to give workers a quick, hot slice and enable them to get back to work quickly. Thin crusts are not all cracker-thin with that audible crunch. This is because some of the makers wanted their customers to be able to fold the small slices with toppings into this mini pizza taco.

There are now many “Experts” online to tell you how to make the “Perfect” thin-crust pizza. Here are some things for a professional pizza maker to think about when designing your own thin crust pizzas. Warning: this is going to get geekza fast. Let’s just start with a formula you can remember.

FOHLPB (Flop):

F (flour) + O (oil) + H (hydration) +/- L (leaven) + P (Proofing) + B (Baking) = Thin for the win!

Flour:

The base of any thin-crust pizza starts with the grind and gluten contained in your flour. If you are sheeting your thin crusts to an ultra-thin skin, you may need a higher protein level of between 12-14% and high W rating. (Note: A “W” index rating is a measurement of a flour’s strength- high W between 220-330 is used for breads and pizzas, low W is for cakes and pastries.) Italian 00 flour is between 250-280 with a few exceptions. Higher protein or W gluten strands will absorb more water, negating the dry effects that produce crispness. This will produce a stronger dough which, if baked at a lower oven temperature, may produce a taffy-like and chewy crust. Commercial cracker protein content is usually a low 8% to 11.7%, or a W content of as low as 180, just strong enough to keep the dough manageable but low enough to reach the desired texture and crispness. Whatever flour you think may work best, there are other items, like cornmeal, you can add for crispness. As with all pizza, other variables can change any hard-line flour decision in your thin-crust pizza plan, including the following.

Hydration:

This is the double-edged sword of thin-crust pizza dough. To roll out dough into a thin and manageable crust, you’ll need the hydrated effects of water, but water produces swelling in any gluten scaffolding and if you are using higher protein flours, warm water soaks gluten strands quicker and more fully than lower protein flours. Some pizzerias use a super low hydration level of 40% which makes for a tough time in the dough room and becomes a training issue. I’ve had a wonderfully crisp Kernza crust at 20% hydration, but my dough staff slowly bumped the hydration up behind my back because it was easier to handle. There are some pizzerias that circumvent worrying about hydration by par-baking pizza crusts or use a simple little trick with oil below.

Oil:

It can be used with higher gluten flours in thin-crust pizzas to produce a nice crispy pie. Oil can also be used to coat the gluten strands to counteract the gluten being soaked with water. Some pizzerias use 10-15% oil in their mix, pouring it in before any hydration is added. (See recipe).

Leaven:

The separation of yeasted dough and leavening agents, like baking powder, can set the pace of how your thin crust reacts to being fired up in your ovens. In a strange paradox, yeasted doughs, when made, fermented, proofed and baked like thicker pizzas, are not good for a thin crunchy crust as they will be too airy. Even when less dough is used and you’ve rolled or sheeted it enough to read the newspaper through it, parts of the dough will give off carbon dioxide and separate like a thin pita bread. I’ve tested many thin-style doughs and added a small amount of yeast, aging it for up to 6 days and then curing it and docking it to produce a great, crispy thin crust. You may also opt to not use any yeast in your mix. This makes for a chewier crust, but it holds heavy toppings better.

Proofing:

I am finding a new method that works great in my pizzeria. I age my 50% hydrated, thin-crust dough ball for 3-5 days in cold fermentation, (something like a drier Pain l’ Ancienne method,) this cold entices the yeasties to take a little nap and thus allows the enzymes in the dough to break down the complex carbohydrates into simple sugars which evolve into a rich flavor with optimum caramelization. I take this further by rolling or sheeting the skin out and placing them on uncovered sheet pans in the walk in for another four to five days to dry off more hydration. We add plenty of residual flour to the skins and separate them with pizza liners. The whole process (which sounds crazy, unhealthy, and downright criminal) creates a leathery dough skin leading to a delicious and magical crunchy thin crust when baked. Some people call this curing, I just call it aging. As it ages the yeasties slowly die off and this overfermentation weakens the gluten scaffolding, leading to the perfect “anti-crust”, thin, crispy and flavorful.

Baking:

Let’s face it, there is no better crust to embrace an extremely hot oven than a thin crust. But you don’t have to do a 1100 F, coal-fired bake to get a crisp crust. I’ve found that a good 500-600 F makes a wonderful crust when your dough skin is properly un-hydrated, cured, aged, and docked. In a conveyor oven, the use of a pizza screen is a must because a pan captures too much steam between the crust and steel. 

Thin-Crust Pizza Dough

Here is a thin-crust pizza recipe that incorporates more oil and cornmeal into the mix with a mixable 50 percent hydration. It calls for a direct mix and no bulk fermentation and getting it into the refrigerator fast is very important to increase flavor.

Get the Thin-Crust Pizza Dough Recipe.

A History of the Thin Crust Pizza: On Thins and Needles

The sordid history of thin crusts goes back to 522 AD, when Darius the Great’s nervous soldiers were said to bake thin, flattened bread on their shields with cheese and dates the day before battle. The Berbers in Tunisia mixed wheat, flour, water, and oil to create a very thin pastry called Borek which was the beginning of unleavened Bric dough used by many modern chefs as a flatbread for items like famous French Brick a l’oeuf, and Daniel Boulud’s Wild Mushroom Tarte Flambee’. In 1925, New Haven style pizza originated by Frank Pepe and originally sold from a cart were called “Tomato pies.” Now this style is baked in coal-fired ovens and finishes with a wonderful crunchy char.

JOHN GUTEKANST owns Avalanche Pizza in Athens, Ohio.