My son just over a small bar/restaurant and really wants to offer hand-tossed pizzas. Can they be cooked in the convection oven? A: You can bake a decent pizza in a convection oven, but you can’t bake it in a pizza pan. See, in a traditional pi...

How do you determine portion sizes? How much difference should there bebetween lunch and dinner portions? Well, first you need to determine what food cost percentage you want to run. Then you’ve got to cost out your raw product by the ounc...

I bought some new pizza screens for use in my conveyor oven, but pizza keeps sticking to them. What is the problem? Before using new pizza screens, you need to spray them (make sure it’s an oil-based spray) and run them through the conveyo...

What are the advantages of portion control, or is it best to freehand? The biggest advantage of portion control is definitely food cost control. This is an area that many foodservice workers miss out on. Over-portioning can account for a la...

I prefer using fresh vegetables on my pizza, but they have more water content and create a soggy pizza. Is there a solution to this problem? A: Yes, there is. I like fresh veggies too, and I solved that problem by using a Japanese breadcrumb. I find ...

If you’d like to make sourdough breadsticks or pizza crust, you’re going to have to start with a sour! Thankfully, there’s nothing to it. Begin by whisking together 1 1/2 pounds of flour and 1 1/2 pounds of water to make slurry. Pla...

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. Pick a size (any size will do). Personally, I like to work with a 12-inch pizza, or something close to it. N...

My mother made pizza once a week, usually on Saturday. In all those weeks and years of watching her make pizza, I never once saw her toss pizza dough. Stretched, not tossed (I believe that would be how James Bond would do it) was how that ball of piz...

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. W...

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? Becaus...

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 ...

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. Itâ...