Gummy pizzas can be caused by a number of things. One, the pizza may not be thoroughly baked. If the oven temperature is too high, the outer portion of the crust can be nice and brown, but the center has not been fully baked. In these cases, the crus...

Our pizza crust doesn’t seem to have much flavor. What can we do to improve the flavor of our crust? If you are allowing your dough to ferment overnight in the cooler, or several hours at room temperature, in all probability your dough has enou...

Like other types of yeast leavened bread doughs, pizza doughs will benefit from fermenting for a period of time before using or baking it. Fermentation provides dough conditioning, making the dough easier to shape. It also reduces the propensity of t...

Question: We bake our pizzas at 600 F and they are crispy when they first come out of the oven, but they soon turn soft and chewy. What can we do to keep our pizzas crispy longer? Answer: Three things come to mind that might be causing your problem. ...

Question: Is there a good way to fix dough stickiness without drying it out? A sticky dough can indeed create a sticky situation. There are a number of things that can cause the condition, therefore there are a number of solutions to the problems. So...

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 th...

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 ...

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 protei...

Q: I am new to the pizza industry and I have read about “proofing” dough. Would you explain what this is and why it’s done. A: Proofing, or rising, is done primarily to allow the dough to achieve a greater height, or lightness than it would if ...

Dough Uses Calzone Do I need to use a different dough for making my calzones? Tom Lehmann No, not really. Most pizza doughs will make a perfectly good calzone. But, there are some modifications to a pizza dough that will make it an even better choice...

Calzones Calzones are easy — if you don’t have them, you’re missing out From time to time I get requests from readers asking for a dough formula suitable for making calzones. The truth of the matter is that while you can use a speci...

One of my cookbooks on pizza, The Great Chicago-Style Pizza Cookbook, first came out in 1983. If my math is correct, that was 25 years ago. Holy pepperoni, pizzaman, that’s a long time ago. Yes, even though this book is still in print, I honestly a...