By Tony Gemignani
Photo by Rick Daugherty

Q: I’m looking for a standard American-style pizza dough as well as a standard Italian-style. Can you help with recipes?

A: I sure can! Here you go:



Standard Classic America

High gluten/ High protein flour
100 percent flour
58-60 percent hydration
2 percent sea salt
1 percent oil
1 percent malt/sugar
.50-1 percent yeast

Standard Classic Italian

1 liter water
1.8 kilograms flour
50 grams sea salt
50 grams oil
3 grams malt/sugar
2-10 grams yeast

These two recipes are given to each student here on the first day of instruction at the International School of Pizza in San Francisco. The class makes each batch according to the recipe and usually finds that the dough comes out great if made correctly.

When the students leave and go back to their respective kitchens and restaurants, it is up to them to decide if the recipe needs to be changed in any way. What each student generally finds is that, yes, every recipe has to be altered. There is no magic recipe that exists that never needs to be changed. Not only do individual tastes have an effect on recipes, but a host of environmental factors must also be considered.

The environment in which you make dough plays an important role in how each batch comes out and how you decide to tweak your recipe. Heat, humidity, cold, elevation, water, and even the placement of your mixer in your kitchen will all affect the making of dough and should all be considered before mixing. u

Respecting The Craft

Is a new column featuring World Pizza Champion Tony Gemignani, owner of Tony’s Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco and Pizza Rock in Sacramento. Tony compiles the column with the help of his trusty assistants, Laura Meyer and Thiago Vasconcelos. If you have questions on any kitchen topic ranging from prep to finish, Tony’s your guy. Send questions via Twitter @PizzaToday, Facebook (search: Pizza Today) or e-mail jwhite@pizzatoday.com and we’ll pass the best ones on to Tony.

By Carol Meres Kroskey
Photos by Josh Keown

As a rustic bread of northern Italian origin, ciabatta is one of those breads that can be anything you want it to be. It’s thought that ciabatta means “slipper” in Italian, though the resemblance might escape some people. “This slipper is supposed to be big and fluffy, to wear during cold weather,” says Sarah Sciortino, who, along with her husband, Renzo, owns Renzo’s Restaurant and two Renzo’s Café & Pizzeria locations in Boca Raton, Florida. That explains a lot about ciabatta’s appearance.

It’s generally agreed, though, that a ciabatta loaf or roll is fl at, irregularly shaped, has large holes in the interior and retains on its surface some of the fl our with which it’s dusted to prevent it from sticking to everything. In addition, the dough usually is given a long, slow fermentation for at least 24 hours to compensate for the fact that the very wet dough isn’t mixed much. Instead, much of the flavor and structure develop during the fermentation period. The long two-step process, which also includes overnight fermentation for a sponge, explains why many operators prefer to buy their ciabattas.

For example, when Renzo and Sarah started their business in New York 42 years ago, they made ciabatta in their shop. “We like ciabatta because it has very good fl avor,” says Sarah. “It’s like an artisan piece of jewelry, but it takes a lot of work and time to make. After we moved to Florida, when an Italian bakery opened near us, we decided to buy it instead. They deliver ciabatta every day at 8 a.m., still warm from the oven, so we know it’s nice and fresh. We usually don’t have leftovers, because we have the same order delivered every day, with a little more on weekends. But if we have any left, we put it on top of the oven to dry out, and make breadcrumbs for our other dishes.”

“We buy ciabatta made with some whole-wheat fl our so you can see the bran in the slices,” Renzo explains. “We use a 10-inch size for sandwiches at our cafés. That gives customers their money’s worth, which is important in this economy. We also use a 16-inch loaf to make garlic bread for the restaurant breadbasket. We cut the ciabatta in half, add olive oil, garlic, paprika, parsley and Romano cheese, then cut it into strips after it comes out of the oven. When we have a big table, we include plain ciabatta too, and customers can request just the plain ciabatta if they don’t want garlic bread.”

Sherri Dominic, owner of Lone Elder Pizza in Canby, Oregon, also buys ciabatta, though as a former baker, she knows how to make it. “We make all our other doughs from scratch,” she says, “but making ciabatta is a long process, so we buy frozen prebaked ciabatta rolls from our supplier. We can just pull it out of the freezer to thaw for our toasted sandwiches and ‘pizza’ slices. For slices, we split the rolls, add sauce and two toppings, then run them through the oven. It’s easy and inexpensive for customers who just want a quick bite, and the ciabatta provides a nice chewy crust. We also serve the rolls in bread baskets for customers who dine in.”

Using a sourdough starter to accelerate the fermentation process and provide some flavor development is an option for ciabatta dough. But some operators don’t see that much difference between producing pizza dough, which has to be retarded, and ciabatta from scratch. “Making ciabatta takes a couple of days,” says Roberto Ienzi, owner of Luciano Italian Restaurant and Pizzeria in Herndon, Virginia. “But we make everything else from scratch, too. We want our food to be authentic Italian, so we don’t take any shortcuts. We added ciabatta rolls to our menu about a year ago for our sandwiches, and our customers already order more of them than sub rolls.

“Fermenting ciabatta at least 24 hours after making the dough is important. If you try to make them right away, the rolls will be gummy and won’t taste right. A lot of the flavor comes from letting the dough rest after dividing it into 4-inch balls. We cover the tray with plastic wrap so the dough stays moist in the cooler.

“Once we’re ready to bake the rolls, we flatten them like small pizzas, put them on double screens and put the trays on top of the oven to start rising. This step is also important because the rolls have to proof to have the right texture inside. They should be fluffy, not heavy, and proofing them at a low temperature helps to develop more flavor.

“When they hit the right height, we put them in a 500 F oven — I wouldn’t go any lower than 480 F or more than 550 F. We don’t use steam, but we can squirt water into the oven to make sure the crust is thin and not too hard. We put the rolls near the edges of the oven, but not near the corners, so we get an even bake every time. It takes about 15 minutes for the rolls to bake.

“One advantage to making our own ciabattas is that they aren’t perfectly round, so they don’t look like they were bought. Also, they stay moist without heat for at least 12 hours, and probably longer than that. However, we don’t keep it any longer than that, because we want to maintain the highest quality. Besides, about 90 percent of our ciabatta rolls are used in lunch sandwiches.” 

“Fast” Ciabatta
Makes 4 large loaves or 24 to 30 rolls

6 cups high-gluten fl our
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons instant yeast
4 to 5 cups warm water (95 F to 100 F)
1 to 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Blend dry ingredients in mixing bowl using a paddle. Add water and oil. Mix on low speed to blend, then mix on medium speed 5 to 6 minutes or just until dough starts to pull away from the bowl. The dough will be very soft and sticky. Pour dough into well oiled container with enough room to double in size. Lightly spray with olive oil or cover with plastic wrap (or use container with cover). Ferment 1½ to 2 hours at room temperature. Dust workbench generously with fl our. Gently transfer dough to bench, using oiled scraper to avoid deflating dough.

Dust dough with fl our. Use scraper to divide dough into rectangular rolls or loaves. Gently elongate dough pieces using your hands, then fold to middle, forming desired width and length.

Transfer to fl our-dusted pan; dust again with fl our, if necessary. Cover with plastic wrap and proof until doubled. Gently flatten, fold ends to middle and elongate to desired width and length again. Cover and proof until doubled.

Oil or fl our sheet pan. Gently lift dough, place on pan, and stretch to desired length. Place in 475 to 500 F oven, using steam. Bake loaves 25 to 30 minutes (rolls 15 to 20 minutes) or until golden brown. Test by tapping on crust; baked bread will sound hollow. Tap baked loaves to remove excess dusting fl our, if necessary.

Note: This procedure allows you to produce a bread that has ciabatta like characteristics. However, it will lack the fermentation flavor that can only be developed during long fermentation.

Carol Meres Kroskey is a freelance writer based in Chicago. She has extensive knowledge covering the baking and food service industries for a variety of publications.

By Steve Coomes
Photos by Rick Daugherty

It’s 6 a.m. on a Saturday, and loaves of artisan bread are pouring from the mouth of the impinger oven at Avalanche Pizza in Athens, Ohio.

Yes, artisan breads. Fifteen types ranging from classic ciabatta, Afghani na’an, fougasse stuffed with cheese and vegetables, whole wheat couronne studded with berries, and pizza al taglio laced with white anchovies and roasted cherry tomatoes.

Out of an impinger oven. “Pretty cool, isn’t it?” asks Avalanche owner John Gutekanst, smiling at the irony. “Nobody thinks you can get loaves like that from an impinger oven. Not supposed to happen.”

But Gutekanst does it every weekend. He leapt into artisan bread baking after tasting the low-quality bread sold at the town’s farmers market. Though Athens is a largely sleepy town of 22,000 (its population swells by 30,000 each fall as students return to Ohio University), its farmers market is one of the nation’s top rated. Today, the year round outdoor affair will see Gutekanst outside for several hours hawking loaves in the February deep freeze.

“It’s cold as hell out there, but people still come, and they’ll buy everything I have,” he says, motioning toward 300 loaves he’ll sell for $5 to $6 each. The production effort required is tremendous, but the revenue makes it worthwhile. “It’s very lucrative, about $2,000 in sales each time. Do that four times a month and you’ve almost added an extra week’s sales to your month.”

To develop his dough’s’ flavor, Gutekanst builds a pre-ferment (or biga) every Thursday from day-old pizza dough, flour, water and yeast. While the mixture rests 24 hours until Friday night’s forming, he chooses his toppings.

“The stipulation for this market is you use all local products,” he says. Foraging for those ingredients is time consuming, while other toppings and fillings, such as olives, sausage and white anchovies, come off his makeline. “My clientele knows what I bring is different. Okay, sometimes a little weird. They look at me thinking: ‘I don’t know about eating a bacon, cashew and green olive bread, but the sample tastes … good, so I’ll get it.’”

When Avalanche’s Friday night rush eases, Gutekanst gets his turn at the oven. He bakes throughout the night with the help of an assistant who joins him in the predawn hours. He adjusts the oven temperature to between 470 F and 480 F to get the proper browning on the highly hydrated dough, but not so low that it would change his pizzas’ character — Avalanche is open until 4 a.m. on weekends, so Gutekanst has to be able to make room for a pizza order when he’s baking the breads.

The high-rising doughs have taught Gutekanst to move carefully inside the oven. More than once his ciabattas have risen and fused themselves to the fingers inside the impinger. The cleanup is frustrating — and ultimately costly if he has to shut down the oven.

Since the impinger is highly adjustable, top bake isn’t a problem, but bottom bake is challenging since non-perforated pans must be used to contain the nearly gelatinous dough. Over the three years he’s baked and sold bread, Gutekanst has found that hard anodized aluminum pans brown best, and currently he’s working with a manufacturer on pans with pinhole perforations to allow air flow.

Given the time required to produce so much bread that isn’t sold at Avalanche, one wonders how the shop benefits. Gutekanst says it’s mostly sales, and since his tent at the farmers market has Avalanche signage, he gets some local marketing out of the venture as well. Above all that, though, the pizzeria owner says making the bread is a labor of love for him.

“Bread making is very cathartic for me,” he begins. “I get a lot of pride from the stuff I’m doing, and people really do appreciate it. Plus, I like to challenge myself as a chef to do new things. So, if you can do that and make money at it, why not, right?”

The Pizza Guy’s Ciabatta

Pre-ferment (biga)
18 ounces of day-old dough
7 ounces or 1½ cups high-gluten fl our
1½ cups warm water

Dredge dough ball in fl our and chop dough into quarter-sized pieces. Place in a large plastic bucket with the fl our and the water. Using hands, squeeze mixture through fingers to achieve texture of thick, lumpy soup. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rest 24 hours in a 70-80 F spot. Mixture will bubble and double in size.

Ciabatta Dough
Biga
4 cups (18 ounces) high-gluten fl our
½ tablespoon yeast
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon salt
1½ to 2 cups water

Add biga to mixer. Add fl our, oil, salt and water and mix slowly 6-8 minutes, until dough no longer sticks to sides. If sticking, add a bit more fl our and work gently until releasing from bowl. Dough should be soft and tacky. Remove to workbench.

First Fold and Proof
With floured hands, fold dough over itself like an envelope, then stretch and fold upon itself 3 more times. Transfer to lightly oiled large bowl and let rest 30 minutes. Lightly oil the top.

Second Proof
Place parchment paper on hard anodized sheet pans. Flour or wet hands in cold water and cut and weigh 15-ounce dough balls. Dust each with fl our and let rest 30 minutes.

Pan Proof
Form each dough ball into oblong loaf by gently stretching to a length equal to the width of sheet pan. If it won’t stay stretched, let rest until the gluten relaxes. Place only four loafs on each tray. Dust loaves with fl our and dock with fingers to form dough (as it rests, it will rise again slightly). Place panned dough near oven; proof 45 minutes to an hour at 70 to 75 degrees. It will swell noticeably.

Baking
Heat oven to 475 F. To create classic crust, mist each loaf with water within first 1 to 2 minutes of baking. Remove loaves, still on pan, and mist each loaf lightly and quickly. Midway through oven chamber, rotate loaves on pan to ensure even baking. Bake ciabatta total of 10 to 12 minutes. When loaves are golden brown and hard when tapped, they are done. Coming directly from the oven, they will be very hard and crusty, but will soften some when cooling. Cool on rack 1 hour before serving.

Steve Coomes is a former Pizza Today editor and a freelance writer living in Louisville, Kentucky.

By Tom Lehman
Photo by Josh Keown and Rick Daugherty

TIP: Be sure to use a wood or wood laminate peel for your prep peel. The metal blade peels are best reserved for use as oven peels.

We bake in a deck oven and we are presently baking on aluminum screens because when I use a peel to bake on the deck, the dough ends up sticking to the peel and making a mess in the oven as the toppings slide off of the dough. How do you keep the dough from sticking to the peel?

A: There are a couple of things that might cause the dough to stick to your peel. If you are using malt in your dough, make doubly sure that it is non-diastatic (non-enzyme active) malt. If the malt is diastatic malt (enzyme active), it will convert starch in the flour to sugars, making the dough sticky or tacky to the point where it will stick to almost any surface it comes into contact with, including a prep peel. If the dough is over absorbed (contains too much water) it may feel clammy or even exhibit a slight tackiness when touched. Over absorbed dough tends to be difficult to work with as the dough is just too extensible and is easily over stretched during the forming operation. While some of the traditional doughs are fairly high in absorption and difficult to handle during forming, they can still be peeled into the oven without much of a problem if they are well floured for ease of handling, and either fine cornmeal, or semolina flour is used as the peel dust to aid in sliding the prepared dough skin off of the peel. Be sure to use a wood or wood laminate peel for your prep peel.

The metal blade peels are best reserved for use as oven peels. The reason for this is because the metal blade peels will force any moisture coming from the dough skin right back up against the dough surface, creating the potential for the dough to stick to the peel during unloading into the oven. This can be especially troublesome during the colder months when the metal peel blade is cold, and condensation is formed when the warm dough is placed upon it; now, any flour that is present on the dough skin quickly turns to school paste with very predictable results.

When a wood or wood laminate is used as a prep peel, the wood will have some capacity to absorb moisture, thus reducing the potential for stickiness. Because it is harder to form condensation between a wood peel and the dough skin, the issue of condensation is all but totally eliminated. Even with the best dough and wood prep peels, it is still possible for dough to stick to the peel if too much time is taken in prepping the dough skin.

Even when a novice is prepping a dough skin and taking their own sweet time about it, there is still only a slight chance that the dough will stick to the peel. But where the problem arises is when the prepped or partially prepped dough skin is allowed to remain on the prep peel while they do something else, like wash and cut a topping for the pizza or stop to answer the phone, etc.

The solution to this is easy to address –– just make sure once the dough is placed on the peel it is dressed and peeled into the oven without interruption. Of course, a good peel dust doesn’t hurt either.

I think if you were to ask 20 different operators what peel dust they prefer you would probably get at least a dozen different answers. My own personal favorite peel dust is made from equal parts of fine cornmeal, semolina flour and regular white pizza flour. I’ve seen any one of these used by itself as an effective peel dust in addition to things such as whole-wheat flour, rice flour, rye flour and wheat bran, as well as bread crumb like materials more commonly added to the top of the pizza to help absorb excess moisture. All of these materials seem to work quite well in most applications, so you have plenty of things to choose from to get the dough to smoothly slide from the peel onto the oven hearth.

One last thing I’d like to share with those who are just beginning to work at peeling dressed dough skins into the oven: after you place the fully formed dough skin onto the dusted prep peel, do not try to dock the dough on the peel. Instead, dock the dough before you place it onto the peel, then, give the peel a shake to make sure the dough is sliding on the peel and not stuck to it for whatever reason. Shake it again about halfway through the dressing of the dough skin. This is a confidence builder more than anything else –– knowing that the dough is still unattached to the peel, I can now peel the dressed dough skin into the oven with the authority and commitment needed to make the dressed dough smoothly slide from peel to oven hearth.

Remember, what goes into the oven, must eventually come out again, so be sure to keep your oven rake and broom handy to loosen any debris from the oven deck and sweep it out, or you will soon have a carbonized build up on the deck, as well as unsightly, charred debris sticking to the bottom of your pizzas.

We have been thinking about doing an individual-sized breakfast pizza. What type of meat topping(s) do you recommend?

A: I’ve seen thinly sliced beef and pork used on breakfast pizzas, but I’m a traditionalist in some ways, so I really like to stay with things that people can easily relate to as a breakfast topping. My preference is to use breakfast sausage rather than Italian sausage, not the links, but rather hand portioned pieces, either pre-cooked, or raw (depending upon how you normally apply your sausage to your regular pizzas), and then there is the old stand-by, bacon bits/pieces. In this case, I always opt for the pre-cooked bacon pieces due to the added crispiness and flavor that they provide. I’ve found that if you offer too many different meat topping selections, your breakfast pizza will soon begin to lose its identity and begin taking on the appearance of a regular pizza. I don’t know about your thoughts on this, but I want my breakfast pizzas to look like a breakfast pizza, and to have a unique, stand-alone flavor, tasting like a breakfast offering,- rather than just a regular pizza, served at an earlier hour of the day. u

Tom Lehmann is a director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas.

Q: We want to make some type of apple dessert pizza. What can you suggest that is easy to make?

One of my all time favorites is a dessert pizza, and making them is almost as much fun as eating them. They are really very easy and they don’t require any special handling or preparation.

Use your regular dough skin as if you were going to make a regular pizza. Brush it lightly with melted butter, then sprinkle it with cinnamon and granulated sugar. Next, thinly slice a few Granny Smith apples (no need to peel them) and drop the slices into a bowl of water to which one ounce of lemon juice has been added for each quart of water. This will keep the apple slices from turning brown.

Remove apple slices from the water, as needed, and arrange them on the dough skin so that the ends of the apple slices are oriented towards the center and rim of the dough skin. I then hen apply cherry size dollops of ricotta cheese over the pizza, but this isn’t necessary if you are watching costs.

Top the pizza with a streusel topping made as follows: blend together one pound of sugar, one pound of butter, ¼ ounce of salt, ½ ounce of vanilla flavoring and 4 pounds of flour. Lightly mix until the mix takes on a crumbly consistency. Be careful so as not to over-mix into a paste. The streusel should freely crumble when rubbed between your hands.

Apply a moderate topping of streusel to the pizza and take directly to the oven for baking. These pizzas will bake at the same time and temperature as your regular pizzas in most cases. When the pizzas come out of the oven, set aside to cool for about 10 minutes, then ice with a simple powdered sugar/water icing.

Here’s a tip: When making the icing, use regular tap water, not hot water, and immediately transfer into squeeze type bottles (like you might use for mustard or other squeeze condiments). Then just squeeze the icing onto the pizza. The icing can be stored at room temperature for up to three days.

For a quick up-charge, reheat a slice of the dessert pizza before applying the icing and finish with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert pizza ala mode. It is delicious and eye catching when your customers see it move through the dining room!

If you want to “up the ante” a little, try this for a dessert pizza: prepare the dough skin as described above, add the apple slices, then add halved red and green grapes, strawberry slices, a few blueberries, and maybe a few peach or mango slices for additional color.

Garnish with the streusel, bake and finish as described above. I like to keep my dessert pizza portions on the smaller size to control cost. I normally make them on a 12-inch format, slice into eight slices and sell by the slice. You can make these during slow times and hold them in the cooler for up to two days if desired. Warm, cold or a la mode, they are great tasting and carry their weight on your table tickets, too.

Q: What makes my dough so rubbery when I take it out of the mixer?

To answer your question in one word: gluten. It is what is responsible for the rubbery consistency of your dough, but I don’t think that’s the answer you’re looking for. If your dough feels unusually tough, or rubbery after mixing, the problem is usually due to under- absorption of the dough. To put it another way, you may not have added enough water to the dough. Even though it’s the same amount of water that you have always added, any one bag of flour may exhibit absorption properties outside of the normal bounds. Remember, flour is a very dynamic ingredient. It is constantly changing, and every shipment is somewhat different from the last shipment.

This is one time where the knee-jerk reaction is to add more water to the dough in an attempt to soften/loosen it up a little. And, indeed, that is the right thing to do in this particular circumstance.

If you are using 50 pounds of flour in each of your doughs, begin by increasing the amount of water in your dough by 1 pound, and then make further increases in 8-ounce increments until the dough feels like something closer to normal again. If the problem has started when you changed flour brands, it might be the result of using a flour with an excessively high protein level. Even though both brands may have indicated “high protein” or “high gluten,” that doesn’t mean that they’re the same. Far from it, in fact, as there is no standard for high protein or high gluten flour. I’ve personally seen bagged flour with the words “high gluten” on the bag that, when analyzed, only contained a little over 11 percent protein content. That is a far cry from the 13-plus percent protein content that we typically recognize as high protein flour.

Lastly, if your observations are that the flour is only occasionally tough and rubbery, seemingly with no rhyme or reason, check the actual weight of your bags of flour. We have seen 50-pound bags of flour vary in weight by 12, or more, ounces. This could possibly be the reason why you are occasionally seeing your doughs come out unusually tough and rubbery.

Good luck!

 

Tom Lehmann is a director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas.

By Tom Lehmann
Photos by Rick Daugherty

Q: We are planning to open our first store soon and we want to do something that will help to set us apart from the local competition.

A: There are a number of things that you can do to set yourself apart from the other pizzerias in your area, here are a few of them:

While the traditional pizza might be round, try a different shape. Square and rectangular are some commonly seen shapes, but one that you don’t see all that often is what I call the “free” shape. This is where the pizza shape is irregu­lar, looking more like it was made by a novice. It reminds me of the time when I worked in a bakery and we made what we called our “homemade” cookies. They were, in reality, our regular cookies but we continually adjusted the weight of the cookies as they were being cut and deposited, resulting in a package with all different sizes of cookies. We also sold them by the pound to make them different in the eyes of the consumer. They were a great success, so just changing the shape of your pizza can make it stand out/apart from the others.

Another approach is to appeal to the concept of healthy eating. Think of offering pizzas made with whole-wheat flour, or a por­tion of the flour as whole-wheat rather than the traditional all-white flour. Remember, not all whole-wheat flour is brown. There is also whole white-wheat flour, which has a more tan or creamy color than what we normally think of whole-wheat flour as being, and the flavor is different, too. It’s not as bitter, but rather much more mellow tasting than the normal whole-wheat flours made from hard red wheat varieties, so it has a much wider ap­peal, especially to children. This is the flour that is being used to replace white flour in many of our school lunch programs.

If you opt to go this direction, think about offering a reduced-cholesterol pizza using a cheese blend made from 50 percent of your regular mozzarella cheese and 50 percent of a cholesterol free cheese analog, combined with a poultry meat topping and some veg­gies for toppings. This isn’t a bad pizza by anyone’s standards.

One of my personal favorites for a different pizza presentation revolves around thin-crust pizzas, which seem to be getting ever more popular. We take a thin crust pizza skin and very lightly brush it with olive oil and then add fresh chopped, sliced or pressed garlic, followed by several leaves of fresh green basil randomly placed over the dough skin. This is then followed by slices of fresh tomato or well-drained tomato filets (no sauce as we know it, please). Then dress the dough skin to the order and top with torn pieces of mozzarella cheese (no shred­ded or diced). I like to follow this by a sprinkling of shredded Parmesan and Romano cheese before sending it off to the oven. The use of torn cheese pieces rather than shredded or diced gives this pizza a whole different outward appear­ance, and the use of fresh tomato or tomato filets along with the fresh, green leaf basil gives the pizza a different flavor than you will find at any of the box pizzerias.

While many operators have experimented with adding herbs, cheese or ground pepperoni to the dough to make a uniquely flavored crust, these have only been marginally successful on the whole. It seems that they can be used to produce a unique­ly flavored crust for use as a special offering, but acceptance appears to soon wane as the customers look for other flavor options. More recently, we have seen cheese-filled crusts, where the edge of the pizza is formed with a cheese filling, but even these have only been marginally successful.

I’ve seen a lot of interest in devel­oping pizzas based on different types of seafood toppings which can be big sellers for those taking the time to develop a good, economically priced seafood pizza. The easiest way to make a good seafood pizza is to start with a thin-crust pizza skin. Apply a light application of Alfredo sauce followed by a sprinkling of dried dill weed and a few pieces of sliced or diced garlic. Add pieces of shrimp and raw fish. Any firm flesh fish works well. For a 12-inch pizza you will need to use about four ounces of mixed seafood and then add a few slices of red onion and some sliced fresh tomato. Finish with a very light application (about three ounces) of shredded mozza­rella cheese and 1 ounce of shredded Parmesan cheese, and bake the same as your regular thin crust pizzas. This makes for a reasonably priced, flavor­ful seafood pizza that will stand apart from that of most competition.

To help in keeping your menu fresh and exciting, I like to recommend that you have a weekly special pizza that is just a little different from other mainstream pizzas. This will give you something to flag your customers with, and hopefully give your customers something to talk about, keeping your pizzeria in their immediate plans for their next pizza dining experience. u

Tom Lehmann is a director at the Ameri­can Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas.

By Tom Lehmann
Photos by Josh Keown

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 version of their longtime favorite, leaving some operators asking: “How do I do that?” It seems that for some, the answer was to just double up on the dough weight for the crust and call it good, but this appears to miss the customer expectations as they want something lighter to eat. This takes us to the need to proof the dough, or allow it to rise in the pan for a period of time before dressing and baking the pizza. But now this brings us to another dilemma: once the dough is proofed in the pan, it must be used within a relatively short period of time or the dough can over proof and collapse under the weight of the toppings. The answer to this is to manage the thick crust dough from the retarder/ cooler. To do this effectively we need to begin with the dough formulation. I’m showing a dough formulation as an example of what this dough might look like. you can use the formulation shown below, or you can modify your existing dough formulation.

Flour (11.2 to 12.8 percent protein content):
100 percent Salt:
1.75 percent Sugar:
2 percent Oil/Shortening:
2 percent Yeast: (IDY: 0.25 percent);
(ADY: .375 percent);
(Fresh/ Compressed: .75 percent)
Water (70 F): 55 percent

Note: Ingredient amounts are shown in baker’s percent, with the weight of each ingredient expressed as a percentage of the total flour weight.
The dough can be mixed and managed in the same manner as your thin crust dough, but when the dough goes into the pan, this is where the differences show up.

To make a pan style or deep-dish pizza, place the dough into an oiled or greased dark-colored baking pan and then cover it and set it aside to proof/rise. If the dough will be used
soon after proofing, it can be given full proof, meaning that the dough can be proofed to something between two and three times its thickness when placed in the pan and then dressed and baked.

For most of us though, this will prove to be problematic as we try to maintain a working inventory of dough throughout the day. To address this, we can allow the dough to proof/rise to no more than 75 to 100 percent of its thickness when initially panned. The dough is then taken to the cooler and placed into a tree rack for thorough cooling. During this time, it will continue to proof/rise until fermentation is arrested by the temperature of the cooler. The pans of dough can now be covered to prevent drying. Typically, this takes about an hour in the cooler to accomplish. we can then cover the dough by placing a plastic bag over the tree rack. In this condition, the dough can normally be held in the cooler for up to 24 to 36 hours.

To use, remove a pan of dough from the cooler, dress it to the order and bake. Because this dough may be colder than your normal dough, it might be necessary to adjust the baking time and/or temperature slightly for thick crust pizzas when managed in this manner. If you use a deck oven, I’ve found it useful to begin baking these pizzas with an aluminum screen under the pan for the first two to three minutes, and then finish baking directly on the oven hearth as this allows the dough portion to warm more gradually, thus reducing the potential for bubble formation during baking. If you’re using an air impingement oven and have more than one deck, I would suggest trying to dedicate one of the decks to thick crust pizza production by lowering the temperature to 425 to 440 F, while extending the baking time to ensure a thoroughly baked pizza (typically 8 to 10 minutes). That colder dough just needs a little more time to get thoroughly baked.

In case you’re wondering how much dough to use when making a thick crust pizza, a general rule is to increase the dough scaling weight by approximately 25 percent. Thick crust pizzas can help to improve your bottom line too. When you consider that the only real difference between a thin crust and thick crust pizza is in the amount of dough used for the crust, and that dough is probably your cheapest “ingredient”, if you sell a 12-inch thick crust pizza for a premium, your actual cost was only about five cents more. Rack up that 95-cent profit to the extra handling needed for the thick crust pizza.

Q: How can we make a great tasting, healthier option to our regular pizza crust?

A: I was recently on an assignment where that very same question was asked. I normally suggest a multigrain type crust. But in this case, we couldn’t get a multi-grain blend so we had to make our own from ingredients available at the local supermarket. To make our own multi-grain blend we purchased a bag of whole-wheat flour, old fashioned oatmeal, flax seeds and sunflower seeds. Using their regular thin crust dough formula, I replaced 25 percent of the flour with our home brewed multi-grain blend, consisting of 100 percent wholewheat flour, 17.6 percent oatmeal, 17.6 percent flax seeds and 17.6 percent sunflower seeds. This was combined in a bus tub where we added an equal weight of warm (90F) water and stirred the mix just to allow for hydration. It was set aside and allowed to hydrate for one hour. The hydrated multi-grain mix was added to the mixer along with the remainder of the dough ingredients. (Note: The dough water was reduced to 37 percent of the weight of white flour added. The hydrated multi-grain blend was added as an ingredient in this application).

The dough was mixed for 75 percent of the regular dough mixing time. It was then immediately taken to the bench for scaling and balling. We adjusted the scaling weights 15 percent heavier to allow for the multi-grain blend in the dough. From this point on, the dough was managed in the same manner as their regular pizza dough. The resulting pizza crusts had a wonderfully nutty flavor and slightly rough appearance that was well received by their customers. 

Tom Lehmann is a director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas.

By Tom Lehmann Photo by Josh Keown

One aspect of pizza dough production that just doesn’t go away is that of flavored or herb infused dough. A number of years ago, several of the big box chains offered herb-flavored doughs. Then a lot of the independents got into the act, too. The trend waxed and waned over the years, but this time it appears to have come with some baggage –– today, herb and flavored doughs have captured the attention of industrial suppliers who want to make the use of various herbs and flavoring materials easier and more flavorful than ever before. If successful, flavored doughs may take on a whole new personality and level of acceptance in the months to come.

When making flavored doughs we must keep in mind that both garlic and onion need to be used in moderation as they can soften or weaken the dough. It is suggested that the combined level for both of these ingredients not exceed 0.15 percent of the total flour weight in the dough. To find what this weight should be, use your calculator and enter the flour weight –– preferably in ounces –– and then press “x” followed by 0.15. Next, press the “%” key and read the answer in the display window. Remember, it will be expressed in the same weight measures that the flour was given in. For example, if you are using

25 pounds of flour, the calculation would look like this: 25 x 16 = 400-ounces of flour; 400 x 0.15 press the “%” key and read 0.6 ounces of combined onion and garlic powder. If a level greater than this is added, you will need to make adjustments to the way you handle and manage your dough to accommodate the increased softness and weakness. If you are already using an L-cysteine, or dead yeast-based dough softener, you should be able to replace all or a portion of it with the onion, and/or garlic powder, thus getting the flavor and dough softening all at the same time and (possibly saving you a few pennies in the process).

No such precautions need to be taken with any of the other ingredients commonly used to flavor the dough/crust such as oregano, basil, pepper, sun-dried tomato, Parmesan cheese, Romano cheese, olives, rosemary, red and green peppers, etc. Sun-dried tomato is the only one of these that comes to mind as needing any special handling or treatment prior to addition to the dough. These need to be presoaked in oil (preferably olive oil) for several hours or overnight. Failure to do so will result in the tomatoes having all of the textural properties of little pieces of leather in the dough. Any of the other herbs can be added just as they are. They will hydrate from the moisture in the dough and give off a wonderful flavor and aroma as a result of the baking process. All of those little pieces of red and green will also provide an interesting and somewhat rustic appearance to the dough that compliments its unique flavor.

There is another side to flavoring of doughs that we don’t hear about, or even see very often, but deserves mention. That is the use of traditional flavoring materials such as cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla or even butter or butter flavorings. Cinnamon is the one flavoring material that takes consideration because it can dramatically slow down or even stop the yeast activity when added directly to the dough. This is the reason why we see such things as cinnamon swirl bagels, and cinnamon swirl bread. In both of these cases, the cinnamon is added to the dough as opposed to being incorporated into it. This greatly nullifies the adverse effect of the cinnamon on the yeast. In a pizza dough we can blend the cinnamon with a butter flavored oil or plain salad oil and add it to the dough during the last 30-seconds of the mixing time. This will allow the cinnamon paste to be swirled through the dough, creating a cinnamon swirl crust that might be just the ticket for making a dessert pizza. Or, you might find that blending the cinnamon into a quantity of melted butter to make a thin paste consistency can be easily spread onto a regular dough skin and then topped with pieces of fresh fruit, or drained fruit cocktail.

On an even easier note you can simply take one of your regular thin- crust dough skins and brush it with water, then sprinkle on a combination of cinnamon and sugar (16-ounces of granulated sugar and 1½ to 2 ounces of cinnamon). Dock the dough well and bake until it is set and just begins to brown. Cut the baked crust into strips 1 to 1½-inches wide and about 3 inches long and serve with a simple powdered sugar-water dipping icing to which a little vanilla flavoring has been added for a very fast and easy dessert offering.

While we’re on the topic of dough for dessert pizza, the addition of vanilla flavoring to the dough is often overlooked, or in many cases never even heard of. Vanilla or a blended vanilla-butter flavor can be added to the dough to create a unique and rich tasting crust flavor for any of your dessert pizzas. No other dough changes are needed, just portion out the needed amount of flavoring and process the dough in your normal manner. Due to the vast differences in the concentration of vanilla flavors, it is recommended that you experiment with a reputable brand product to find the amount that works best in your specific application.

When using fresh or dried herbs in your dough, begin using them at 10 percent of the flour weight and go up from there to a maximum of about 25 percent. Depending upon the composition of the herb mix that you elect to use, you will probably find that the best flavor, aroma and appearance characteristics are had at around the 15 percent level. If cheese is the only material being added to the dough, the best levels seem to be around 8 to 12 percent of the flour weight. And if cheese is included in an herb blend, you will probably find that an addition level of 15 to 20 percent works well. When fresh herbs such as fresh basil, oregano, onion or garlic are used in the herb blend, it is not uncommon to see the blends being used at levels approaching the 25 percent level. Like everything else though, you will need to experiment to find what works best for you in your specific application.u

Tom Lehmann is a director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas.

Q: We get a lot of requests for a whole-wheat pizza, but all of our attempts to make one end up with dry, hard texture and poor flavor. What is the secret to making a good whole-wheat crust?

A: Like so many other things in life, once you know the secret, it really isn’t all that difficult. The thing to remember about whole-wheat flour is that it has two main components — white flour and bran/fiber. In rough numbers, 100 pounds of whole-wheat flour is comprised of 80 pounds of white flour and 20 pounds of bran. The white flour portion, for all practical purposes, is just like your regular white pizza flour, so it’s the bran portion that’s causing all the problems.

 

The white flour portion hydrates just like any other white flour, but the bran hydrates very slowly, and this is where the problem lies. When a whole-wheat dough is mixed in the normal manner (add water, flour and all other ingredients and begin mixing) the bran exhibits very little influence on the absorption properties of the dough while in the mixer, so the error is hydrating only the white flour portion and then, sometime later (about an hour) the bran portion begins to hydrate and absorb water. This is where things begin to get interesting. The dough now becomes very tight and dry feeling. It won’t press, can’t be tossed or slapped and, when passed through a sheeter, the rolls just shred the dough. Sound familiar? Pizzeria operators are not alone with this problem, bakers making whole-wheat breads and rolls face the same issues and address them in the same way that I’m going to propose.

The trick to making a decent whole-wheat dough and high-quality finished crust is getting enough water into the dough to satisfy the hydration needs of both the white flour portion and also the bran portion, but since the bran is so slow to hydrate, the resulting dough would be excessively soft and sticky after mixing, thus making any type of handling an impossibility. We could allow the dough to set in the mixing bowl for an hour to hydrate, but that poses two problems: one, it will tie up the mixing bowl and two, the dough will continue to ferment for that hour, thus making it more difficult to effectively cool after balling and boxing the dough and placing it in the cooler.

The best approach is to use what is called a “soaker.” A soaker, in this case, consists of nothing more than the whole-wheat flour and the total amount of dough water. A good absorption for most whole-wheat flour based doughs is 67 percent. Since the soaker doesn’t need to be mixed to any level of gluten development, it can be made in any suitably sized container. To make the soaker, first add the water, then add the whole-wheat flour and stir to thoroughly wet the flour, then set aside and allow the flour to hydrate for an hour or more.

For convenience, you can set the soaker ahead of time and store it in the cooler overnight for use on the following day. After hydration, the soaker will have the consistency of oatmeal. This is added to the mixing bowl along with the remainder of other dough ingredients and mixed just to the point of forming a well-defined dough ball in the mixer. You may need to experiment a little with the exact amount of water used in the soaker to get the correct finished dough consistency for your specific shop conditions and procedures.

When the dough is finished mixing, it should be slightly tacky. This is normal for a whole-wheat dough. The dough can then be taken to the bench for scaling and balling in the normal manner. It can then be used either as fresh dough or refrigerated for use on the following day. I’ve found that whole-wheat doughs do not keep very well much beyond about 36 hours in the cooler, so keep this in mind when making your inventory. To use the dough that has been managed through the cooler, remove a quantity of dough, keeping it covered to prevent drying, and allow it to temper at room temperature for one-and-a-half to two hours, then begin opening the dough balls up into pizza skins in your normal manner. This procedure will give you a finished crust during dine-in that is moderately crispy on the outside while soft and slightly chewy on the inside. My experience is that whole-wheat doughs lend themselves better to slightly thicker, thin crust styles as opposed to very thin crust styles, as well as thick and pan style crusts.

There are a few things to keep in mind when formulating whole-wheat flour dough:

Use butter to replace the usual olive oil or vegetable oil in the dough. This imparts a wonderfully rich flavor to the finished crust.

While not needed, if you opt to use sugar in your dough, try using either honey or non-diastatic (non-enzyme active) malt powder or syrup in the dough as this will provide for a very nice background flavor in the finished crust.

In addition to whole-wheat crusts, multi-grain crusts are also growing in popularity. Multi-grain doughs are made in a very similar manner to the whole-wheat dough in that they require the use of a soaker for best results. Typically, multi-grain doughs will contain 15- to 30-percent of a commercial multi-grain blend (available from any bakery ingredient supplier). The total dough absorption for a multi-grain dough will vary based on the type of multi-grain blend used, as well as the amount used. So some experimenting with total dough absorption may be needed to find what works best for you.

Here is a good way to get started. Lets assume you want to use 15 percent of a multi-grain blend (this is based on the weight of white flour you have in the dough). If you have 25 pounds of white flour, in this case you would be adding 15 percent, or 3.75 pounds of multi-grain mix. Place the multi-grain mix into a suitably sized container and add 75 percent of its weight in water (75 percent of 3.75 pounds in this case is 2.8 pounds). Blend the multi-grain mix into the water and set aside to hydrate as described for the whole-wheat soaker above. Then, add the hydrated multi-grain blend to the mixing bowl along with the white flour and remainder of dough ingredients. Add water to the dough at 45 percent of the weight of the white flour, mix the dough in your normal manner and assess the dough consistency after a few minutes of mixing (you will probably need to add a little additional water.)

 

Keep track of the amount of water used so you can add this to the amount of water initially added. When making future doughs you can now just add the full amount of water up front and mix the dough in your normal manner. As in the case with whole-wheat crusts, multi-grain crusts are enhanced by the addition of butter and honey or malt to the dough formulation. Unlike whole-wheat though, multi-grain doughs lend themselves well to making thin crust pizzas too. Pair these crusts up with vegetable and poultry toppings and you just might have what your health conscious customers are looking for in their next pizza.

Tom Lehmann is a director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas.

BY TOM LEHMANN PHOTO BY RICK DAUGHERTY & JOSH KEOWN

An interesting question came across my desk asking how the physical attributes of an artisan pizza would be affected by baking the same pizza in different types of ovens. Let’s take a look and see how a New York style thin crust pizza might vary when baked in the different types of ovens. Since this is a more traditional style of pizza, there won’t be any sugar, milk or eggs in the dough, just the basic ingredients –– flour, salt, yeast, oil and water –– and in this case, we could even say that the oil is an optional ingredient as it really won’t have much (if any) impact when used at normal levels of 1 to 3 percent of the flour weight.

Coal/wood fired oven. When making artisan pizzas, these ovens are typically operating at 600 to 800 F resulting in a baking time of right around 2 minutes or a little less. Because of the very short baking time there is little opportunity for the top of the pizza to dry off, so care must be exercised to limit the amount of vegetable toppings used. The high oven temperature will result in very good oven spring of the dough so it will have a nice, light and open structured edge on the crust, much like that of an English muffin. The bottom of the crust will be well browned with a fair amount of charring. The raised edge will be spotted with charred spots as well as browned or even charred bubbles. All of this adds to the character of the finished pizza flavor and texture. This might not be the best pizza for a buffet or delivery/carryout operation as the crust will not maintain its crisp for a very long time, but the flavor is great, so for dine-in, it is hard to beat, and the oven adds a lot of ambiance to the dining experience.

Deck oven. When baked in a deck oven at 550 to 600 F, our artisan pizza would require closer to 3½ to 4 minutes to bake (assuming a deck bake), and a lot of the physical characteristics of the baked pizza would be very similar, though possibly not quite as dominant, as those achieved from baking in the coal/wood fired oven. One of the main differences that I’ve seen in comparing these two types of ovens is that the coal/wood fired oven will typically exhibit top heat/baking properties over the average deck oven, so the char on the top of the crust is generally not as intense. The cell structure porosity, eating characteristics and flavor are all very comparable, though. Due to the longer baking time required in the deck oven, the bottom of the crust will typically have a somewhat thicker, browned area resulting in a finished crust/pizza that tends to maintain its crispiness for a slightly longer time, possibly making for a pizza better suited to a buffet or carryout/delivery operation. While some of these ovens are available with a brick front to give the oven a great rustic appearance, they generally don’t provide quite the ambiance of the coal/wood-fired ovens.

Conveyor ovens. Conveyor ovens (using air impingement technology) are the true work horse of today’s retail pizza industry. The most recent technology innovations in these ovens has improved the baking and operating efficiencies by a significant margin over older models, and when combined with advances in baking platforms (disks) we now have conveyor ovens fully capable of replicating many of the hearth baked pizza characteristics achieved previously only with a deck or coal/wood fired oven. With the new generation of air impingement ovens operating at temperatures between 475 and 515 F, with a baking time of approximately 4½ minutes, and using a baking disk specifically designed for the application, our artisan pizza can come from the oven with a fair amount of char on the bottom, but without the hard “pizza bone” outer edge characteristics commonly found on pizzas baked on different platforms.

Since the top bake is fully controlled on these ovens, we can achieve at least some char on the top of the crust too, giving the finished crust a lot of the visual characteristics, as well as essentially the same, open porous, internal crumb structure characteristics as pizzas baked in most deck ovens, and some coal/wood fired ovens. As an added benefit, the airflow to the top of the pizzas has a drying effect upon the pizza, providing for a drier pizza, especially when heavily topped with moisture-laden vegetables. These ovens are well suited to buffet as well as carryout/ delivery pizzas or any operation where oven ambiance is not a prime focus.

Multiple technology ovens. These ovens bake through the application of multiple baking technologies, such as air impingement, convection, conduction, radiation (infrared) and, to some extent, magnetic resonance (similar to micro waves). The idea behind the application of these combined heating technologies is to utilize their individual, unique heating properties to achieve a faster, more thorough bake. While some of these ovens have demonstrated their ability to bake our artisan pizza very similarly to a deck oven –– with a good, solid bottom bake, some char, and a well baked top –– others provide a solid bake, but without the unique char spots on the bottom and spotty charring on the top. The internal crumb characteristics are generally quite good and are characterized by an open, porous crumb structure and crispy bottom characteristics that hold up quite well, making them well-suited to buffet and carryout/delivery stores where oven ambiance is not of prime concern.

Our example of an artisan pizza, when baked in any of the above mentioned ovens which has been properly set up to achieve a hearth style bake, will provide a finished pizza with comparable internal quality characteristics such as an open, porous crumb structure, crispy eating properties when fresh from the oven, and an attractive overall appearing finished pizza. Where the differences primarily appear are in terms of the thickness of the bottom crust bake and the amount of bake char present on both the top and bottom of the crust, which can and will affect the flavor profile of the finished pizza as well as the artisan or rustic appearance of the pizza.

Tom Lehmann is a director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas

Carol Kroskey

The genesis of the flatbread called focaccia is lost in the dawn of history. Some food historians credit ancient Etruscans for having discovered how to form a dough into a flat round and bake it on a hot stone under a coating of hot ashes. Given that the Etruscans resided on the northwestern coast of what is now Italy, it’s not surprising that Italians have made focaccia a national bread.
“Focaccia” is derived from a Latin word meaning “hearth.” However, today’s focaccias often are made in pans, allowing their finished shape to be more controlled. Depending on the region, Italians have variations, including Florence’s schiacciata, a thin, dimpled sheet, and Sicily’s sfincione, a thicker version that doesn’t qualify as “flatbread.”
Although it’s hard to nail down exactly what focaccia is, it’s easy to define what it’s not: it’s not pizza. Focaccia starts with a richer dough incorporating a generous amount of olive oil. It uses a process more common to bread baking — it’s allowed to proof before baking. Focaccia is usually dimpled, then washed with olive oil before — and often after — it’s baked. Finally, unless you make a focaccia-based pizza, focaccia is never embellished with tomato sauce. Instead, other ingredients such — salt, garlic, sage, thyme, rosemary, basil, or oregano — lend it flavor.

Variety Show
Over the years, different regions of Italy developed focaccia specialties. The simplest version comes from western Liguria and calls for a dough made only with flour, water, yeast and extra-virgin olive oil. After proofing, the dough is shaped, or flattened, then dimpled with a spoon, or by oiled fingertips. Flavor comes from the additional coating of extra-virgin olive oil and coarse salt added before baking in a steam-filled oven.
A version developed in Italy’s mountains, where residents fled with flour, cheese and olive oil to avoid Saracen invaders, is a specialty in the city of Recco. Focaccia al formaggio consists of two thin layers of olive-oil-washed dough that encase shredded stracchino, pecorino, or other meltable cheese. Made in a larger size and cut into wedges, or formed from 3-inch squares for individual servings, this appetizer can tempt diners into ordering more and making a meal of it.
Another traditional Italian way to prepare focaccia calls a finely sliced onion to be added about 3 minutes before the end of baking for tempting aroma and delicious flavor.

Serving Size
Owner’s Roberto and Paulette Pizzo serve focaccia mostly as an appetizer at Doc’s Trattoria and Pizzeria in Lake Waramaug, Connecticut. Chef Michael Rossetti says, “We use our pizza dough, but we don’t stretch it. Instead, we form 8 ounces of dough into an oval, almost like sandwich bread, and let it rise on a sheet pan for an hour. Before we put it into the oven, we top it with cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil. Before baking, ‘plain’ focaccia gets a mixture of salt and pepper, and a dusting of herbs (rosemary is popular). We add more olive oil and flavorings when the focaccia comes out of the oven.

“For another focaccia, we add fresh basil and tomato slices about 3/4 of the way into baking. If customers ask for additional ingredients, such as olives or goat cheese, we can add them. Focaccia is pretty versatile, and we have four or five popular combinations.” On the pizza menu, focaccia is topped with olive oil, garlic, oregano and Romano cheese.

At Bambino’s Pizzeria in Colorado Springs, Colorado, owners Suzette and Kevin Megyeri serve complimentary focaccia so customers can “break bread” before their meal, similar to how Mexican restaurants offer chips and salsa.

After proofing, they dimple the dough with their fingers and add olive oil, roasted garlic and an herb mixture they developed. The Megyeris combine granulated garlic, kosher salt, black pepper, parsley and oregano for basic focaccias and for the 5 1/2-ounce sandwich size. But, Suzette notes, Bambino’s has all types of focaccias available; including those topped with sun-dried tomatoes or anchovies.

“We prefer a salty, garlicky taste,” she says. “We also serve a dipping sauce made by marinating chili peppers and lemon zest in extra-virgin olive oil.”

Dimpling is one common characteristic of focaccia, but Eric Duff, chef and catering specialist for Marino’s on 5th Avenue, New York, has a unique way of achieving it. “Instead of making the dimples with a spoon,” he explains, “we oil the dough, then add about 20 grape tomatoes.” About two or three minutes before it is finished, he removes the roasted tomatoes, which are used to make a sauce.

Duff prepares three different focaccia doughs (including a whole-wheat version), and makes a roll size for sandwiches, as well as rounds and squares. “We serve focaccias as appetizers and main dishes, and in sandwiches for an extra charge,” he says. “The regular focaccia dough has rosemary in it and on it, and our ‘pizza’ focaccia doesn’t, but both have more olive oil than our pizza dough. In fact, focaccia is more popular for pizza, even though we charge more.” To prevent focaccia bottoms from burning during baking, Duff double-pans them, using water in the bottom pan.

Marino’s focaccia-based appetizers include “brioche”, bruschetta, and garlic bread. “Brioche” are individual triangles of rosemary focaccia brushed with pesto. For bruschetta or garlic bread, Duff uses freshly baked focaccia, but allows it to dry a little on top of the oven to crisp the crust to support the toppings. For bruschetta, he slices focaccias in half, spreads on “focaccia sauce,” then adds a mixture of fresh tomatoes, eggplant, squash, and roasted peppers, and tops it with a little shredded fresh mozzarella. For garlic bread, Duff recommends olive oil, garlic, parsley, and a little paprika. “You don’t want to dry out the garlic focaccia,” he says, “and paprika helps to turn it a golden brown more quickly.”



Garlic and Olive Focaccia

6 ounces Yeast
1 pound, 8 ounces warm water (120 F)
11 pounds, 10 ounces bread flour
3 pounds, 12 ounces water (var.)
1 pound, 8 ounces whole eggs
1 pound, 6 ounces olive oil
5 ounces sugar
5 ounces salt
2 pounds, 2 ounces chopped garlic
2 pounds, 2 ounces chopped ripe olives

Stir yeast into warm water and let rest 4 to 5 minutes. Add the flour, water, eggs, olive oil and sugar, and mix into a well-developed dough. Add the salt, garlic and olives and mix only enough to disperse evenly in the dough.
Allow the dough to ferment to a full rise, punch down, and continue fermentation for about 1/3 the time it took to reach full rise. Scale into 12 ounce units and round.

Cover, and rest 10 to 20 minutes.
Sheet or press out into rounds or oval-shaped loaves. Proof, then, using a sharp knife, slash the top diagonally. Wash with a generous amount of olive oil, and sprinkle on coarse salt.
Bake at 400 F for 18 to 22 minutes, or until done.

Tom Lehmann

There is a malady called Celiac Disease and persons suffering from this disease have a very low tolerance to wheat proteins. This is not to be confused with persons having an allergic reaction to wheat proteins. In this latter case, even the most minute exposure to wheat proteins can result in a potentially life threatening allergic reaction. In the food industry there are very specific guidelines for dealing with ingredients, which are known as "allergens," so for the sake of this answering this question we will deal only with persons having Celiac Disease or some other intolerance to wheat protein. There are a number of companies offering products including finished products like breads and cookies and also dry mixes for persons with Celiac Disease. These companies can be found with a simple web search on the internet using the key works Celiac Disease or gluten free.
Making a product that is acceptable to a person with an intolerance to wheat protein is a little problematic in that the ingredients normally used are not available through our regular suppliers. Some of the ingredients that will be needed are available at your local supermarket, while others might need to be purchased through a health or specialty store or ingredient supplier to the food industry. One recipe that was passed on to me some time ago is as follows:

1-packet of instant dry yeast (IDY)
2/3 cup brown rice flour
2/3 cup tapioca flour
2 teaspoons olive oil
3 teaspoons xanthan gum
2 teaspoons salt
3 teaspoons soy flour
1 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
3/4 cup warm water
1/2 teaspoon vinegar
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
1 tablespoon unflavored gelatin powder

Procedure: Place all dry ingredients into a mixing bowl, and dry blend together for 30 seconds. Combine liquids and add to the dry blend. Using a flat beater, mix until the mass comes together and begins to form a dough-like consistency. Adjust the amount of water added to give a soft dough-like consistency. Turn dough out of mixing bowl onto a bench top dusted with rice flour. Portion out in the same amounts as you would your regular pizza dough. Be sure to keep your hands oiled with salad oil to keep the dough from sticking to them. Place the portioned dough into oiled pizza pans/trays and press out by hand to fit the dough into the pan. Par-bake the crust at 425 to 450 F until lightly browned. Remove from the oven and brush the top of the crust with olive oil and apply sauce, followed by the toppings of choice. Return the pizza to the oven to finish baking.

Here is another low-gluten dough formula that I developed here at the American Institute of Baking many years ago.
Raw, non-gelatinized, wheat starch: 1 pound
Xanthan gum: 1/3-ounce
Sucrose (table sugar) 2 1/3-ounces
Soy flour: 4-ounces
Salt: 1/3-ounce
Instant dry yeast: 1/2-ounce
Olive oil: 2-ounces
Water: (warm) 24-ounces

Procedure:
Add all of the dry ingredients to the mixing bowl and dry blend for several minutes. Then add the water and oil and mix with a flat beater (paddle) at low speed to thoroughly blend the ingredients into a thick paste. Leave the resulting batter in the bowl and cover to prevent drying. Allow the batter to ferment for 30 minutes, then mix again until smooth. Pour the batter into greased pans/trays until the batter just covers the bottom of the pan and par-bake at 450F for a thin crust. To make thick crusts pour about 1/4 inch of batter into the pan, and allow it to rise at room temperature for 30 minutes, then par-bake the same as for the thin crust shells. The par-baked shells can be refrigerated for use at a later time, or they can be immediately dressed and finished.

Support Slice of Hope

Pasquale "Pat" Bruno

You may have heard this story before (and surely from me at one time or another, either at International Pizza Expo or in the pages of this magazine), but it bears retelling. When pizza Margherita came along, it was a seminal moment in the history of the very business we are in. And here, one more time, is the story.

As the 19th century was coming to a close, pizza –– pizza baked in coal-fired ovens that reached temperatures upward of 750 F –– became as important to Naples as Sophia Loren was some 60 years later. Pizza was being sold from stalls and eaten on the street with great relish from midday until the wee hours of the morning.

Pizza ascended to another plateau in 1889, when King Umberto I made a visit to Naples. At his side was Queen Margherita, who immediately wanted to try this food she had heard so much about. The story goes that, of course, the queen wasn’t going to a humble pizzeria, so the pizza was brought to the palazzo where the royal couple was staying (probably the first record of a pizza delivery).

The pizza was delivered by Raffaele Esposito, owner of the famous pizzeria Pietro il Pizzaiolo. Esposito went with his wife, Donna Rosa, who was, in fact, the pizza maker. They brought enough ingredients to make three kinds of pizza, and after sampling all three, Queen Margherita selected as her favorite the pizza made with tomatoes, fresh bufala mozzarella and fresh basil. To this day the Margherita remains one of the most popular pizzas sold in the United States as well as Italy.

At first glance, with but three basic ingredients, putting together a fabulous pizza Margherita is simple.

Maybe.

What we are going for here is the perfect pizza Margherita. After all, we have over a hundred years of tradition to honor and respect. Here’s the question: Can you use one type of dough for the perfect pizza Margherita, no matter what kind of oven you have? Yes. I am not here to change your whole dough-making procedures for the sake of one style of pizza.

It’s true, however, that a pizza dough made with a softer flour, such as bread flour or 00 flour, has a better chance for perfection in most ovens (wood burning, particularly) than say, a harder (higher protein) flour. However, that’s assuming that the pizza is going to be eaten on the premises (not taken out, not delivered), because a pizza made with softer flour is at its best when served within minutes of coming out of the oven.

So now we need to look for a happy medium that covers all the bases, and that leads me to an unbleached all-purpose flour. In some applications, however, I choose to use a blend of flours: combining 70 percent low protein flour (bread flour or 00 flour) with 30 percent high-protein flour. I know the idea of blending flour is getting a bit out there, but when striving for perfection we have to go the extra mile.

Now about the tomatoes. Here’s the scoop. The tomatoes that go on a classic Margherita pizza should be plum (canned, crushed and drained) or fresh (skinned and pureed) or an unseasoned light, ground, all-purpose tomato. Regardless of which type of tomato you go with, put it on lightly –– just a smear, half of what you might ordinarily use.

When it comes to the cheese, you have two choices: Fresh bufala mozzarella DOP, or fresh mozzarella (fior de latte). Dice it, slice it, whatever works best for you. Again, use a light hand. The key is balance.

Remember to use fresh basil, and it is to go on the pizza only after it comes out of the oven. In fact, a classic pizza Margherita comes to the table (in most places) with but one leaf of fresh basil stuck in the very center. However, use your good judgment as to how much basil you will add. One pizza place in Chicago serves a chiffonade of fresh basil on a separate plate with a pizza Margherita, which allows the customer to put on as much or as little as they please.

That’s it. Nothing else, I repeat, nothing else, goes on a classic pizza Margherita.

Pizza Margherita
Test recipe for dough. Makes 2 13- to 14-inch pizza shells

1/4 ounce active dry yeast
1 cup warm water (105-110 F)
3½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour or 00 flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil

Blend the yeast with the water to combine. Add the flour, salt and olive oil. Mix to form a soft dough. Knead for 6-8 minutes. Divide the dough in half. Cover and let rise overnight in the cooler.

The next day take the dough out of the cooler and give it a minimum of 2 hours bench or proof time before making the pizza (do not punch it down). Stretch each piece of dough to about 13-inches in diameter.

Brush each shell with olive oil. Top each shell with about 6 ounces (3/4 cup) of tomato puree, followed by 5 ounces of fresh mozzarella, sliced thin or chopped coarse. Bake the pizza.

Shortly after the pizza comes out of the oven add the leaves of fresh basil. Serve.

Tom Lehmann

It seems like we are always looking for something more flavorful in pizza crusts and breadsticks. One answer to this search is sourdough. Sourdough has been in use much longer than yeast as we know it today. We know that some type of sourdough was used by ancient Egyptians to produce a type of flat bread more than 3,000 years ago, when sours were the only known means to leaven breads before yeast was propagated. When we think of a sourdough, we normally think of the flavor of a San Francisco sourdough bread, but the truth is, all sourdoughs do not produce a sour or tangy flavor. Some sourdoughs are more bland; in fact, the Italian bread, pannetone, has been made from a type of sourdough.
A sourdough’s flavor is dependent upon the type of microorganism growing in the culture. In some cases, such as that used for making pannetone, the idea is to have one of the various wild yeasts as the dominant microorganism in the culture. In other cases where a true sourness is the goal, the idea is to have the growth of certain bacteria, specifically strains of lactobacillus –– the same bacteria responsible for the flavors of yogurt, cheese and sour cream. There are so many different types of bacteria present, however, that it is hard to control just which one will become dominant. You have probably heard stories about someone losing their sourdough starter. No, they didn’t misplace it. Simply, the bacteria which had been the dominant strain and giving a desirable flavor was overcome by another type or strain of bacteria resulting in a different flavor in the finished product. To prevent this from happening bakers for years have been setting multiple sours based on a “mother sour” so the bacteria balance is preserved in more than one place.
This is likened to backing up your computer data files in more than one location, so in the event that one location is lost, it is still available in other secure locations.

So, just how do we go about starting a sour? In the past, it was common to just make a soupy blend of flour and water and leave it in an exposed open container. Wild yeasts and bacteria in the air would settle on it. It would then be covered and allowed to propagate for a couple of days. Then it was used to make a leavened product. If the flavor was good, it was placed into a cool area and replenished on a regular basis as a perpetuated sour. If the flavor was not what was hoped for, it was discarded and started over again. It was a matter of trial and error until an acceptable sour flavor was achieved. Today, this has all changed. Instead of trial and error, a blend of very specific/known bacteria and or yeasts is purchased and used to seed the starter. Very specific instructions are provided by the manufacturer of the inoculating material on how to set or prepare the starter, propagate it and feed the sour so as to retain it's viability and purity. Properly handled, a sour can be saved and used for many years, if not indefinitely.

If you want to try your hand at making your own sour, hare is a very basic procedure that can be followed:

Using your regular pizza flour, mix equal portions (by weight) of flour and water and set aside in a large, open bowl for 24 hours at room temperature (25C/77F). Next, add to this another blend of equal amounts of flour and water and transfer to a covered container (not aluminum) and allow to mature for another 24 hours. The resulting sour is now ready to use. A good sourdough formula can be made using the sour to replace 25 percent of the flour in a dough formula. Remember that the sour is 50 percent or 1/2 flour, so you will need to use twice as much sour as flour that you are replacing. For example, if your dough formula calls for 40 pounds of flour, you will use 30 pounds of flour and 20 pounds of sour. Then don't forget that there is all that water in the sour, too. In this case there are 10 pounds of water in the sour and that water needs to be subtracted from the water that you will add to the dough. If you don’t do this, you will end up making a pot of soup rather than a dough. To perpetuate your sour, you must now replenish it to build it back to the original amount. Since we used 20 pounds of sour we must replenish it with 20 pounds of new flour and water in equal parts. In this case it will be 10 pounds of flour and 10 pounds of water. The sour will be ready to use again in 24 hours. If the sour will not be used on the following day it must be refrigerated and cooled as quickly as possible. Once thoroughly cooled, the sour can be held under refrigeration for up to three days and used in the normal manner, but if it is held for more than three days the sour should be replenished once or twice before it is again used. To do this, remove half of the amount of sour that you plan to use, to this add the same weight of a 50/50 flour/water blend and allow to mature for 24 hours at room temperature. This is a single replenishing. If a double replenishing is to be given, just repeat this procedure for a second time and the replenished sour will be ready to use. It is a good idea to replenish the sour that you have stored in the cooler on a weekly basis to help retain its viability.


A good starting formula for a sourdough is as follows:

Strong pizza flour — 15 pounds
Sourdough starter — 10 pounds
Salt — 6 ounces
Oil — 7 ounces
Compressed yeast — 0.75 ounce
Water (70 F) — 4 pounds
Procedure: Combine all of the ingredients and mix just until the dough starts to become smooth in appearance (do not over mix). Take the dough directly to the bench and divide into desired weight pieces for thin crust, form into balls, cover to prevent drying, and set aside to rest until the dough balls can be formed into dough skins. Allow the formed dough skins to rest on trays or screens for about 20 minutes before dressing and baking. Sourdough crusts do not bake to a golden brown color, but instead will typically have a light, sandy finished color.

Pasquale "Pat" Bruno

How much do we know about stuffed crust pizza? I know that the idea of stuffing, say, cheese into a crust is not new. In fact, as I recall, a family in New York actually took out a patent on a stuffed crust pizza, and this dates back some 15 years or more.
There is also some wordplay going on relative to stuffed crust pizza. Version A — the standard (and made popular by a pizza chain or two) procedure — involves rolling out the crust, laying some cheese (string cheese, for example) along the inside edges, and then folding the dough over the cheese and sealing the edges. After this takes place, the basics are added in the usual way.
There is also a school of thought that brings in the idea of a stuffed crust pizza being more of a double crust pizza, similar to, say, a stuffed pizza (made famous in Chicago, circa 1970). I have no problem with this approach, since, in fact, the crust is stuffed, but simply in a different way.
What are we going for here? It is my opinion that Version A involves a lot of extra work, extra cost, and, in the long run, the idea of the cheese stuffed in the crust is not such a big deal to the customer. To put it another way, does the customer get a kick out of the extra cheese stuffed into the crust? Or, are they even aware that it is there?
Having said that, let's take a quick look at a basic stuffed crust pizza (Version A) and maybe play around with some production techniques, along with some ideas that might amp up customer interest in this product. Then I think it would be a good idea to explore another stuffed crust idea along the lines of a stuffed pizza that I have come across on my trips to Italy.
As stated earlier, the initial direction relative to stuffed crust has to do with cheese and cheese alone. I saw situations where operators tried to use shredded mozzarella to stuff the crust (laying the cheese along the edge of the crust as suggested above). That takes a lot of time, and it gets messy, the cheese ending up all over the prep table or work area. Then once the pizza gets baked, the cheese melts away to the point where you hardly know it is there. This is definitely not a good thing.
A more appropriate idea is to use string cheese or strips of mozzarella (cut from a block), and fold those into the crust. Production moves faster this way, and this approach leaves no mess behind. However, once again, the cheese melts away to the point where the idea of it all gets lost on the customer.
Enhancing the cheese in some way helps to draw customer attention. For example, I would sprinkle some dried oregano over the string cheese before folding the crust over it. Another approach I have used quite successfully involves using plastic squirt bottles filled with sauces and such.
For example, if I am doing a barbecued chicken pizza, I would squirt a ring of barbecue sauce alongside the cheese (in this instance I would suggest a smoked mozzarella) before folding the crust.
If I were doing a Mexican pizza I would squirt salsa alongside the cheese (the cheese in this situation being Chihuahua, Monterey Jack, cheddar).
In other words, adding a little something extra, a kick of flavor, will enhance the whole idea of a stuffed crust pizza. Try this out for size:


Three-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza

Makes 1 12-inch pizza

12 ounces of pizza dough stretched to 14-inches
8 ounces string cheese
1 tablespoon dried oregano
8 ounces pizza sauce
4 ounces shredded (or thinly-sliced) provolone
4 ounces shredded mozzarella

Stretch the dough onto the screen or pan.
Lay the pieces of string cheese (I use pieces that are 5 inches in length) around the crust, about 1/2-inch from the edge, so that they touch edge to edge.
Sprinkle the oregano over the string cheese.
Fold the crust over the cheese, and press and seal the edges all around. The pizza will now be about 12-inches in diameter.
Spread the sauce over the crust.
Spread the provolone and mozzarella over the sauce.
Bake the pizza.

Note: You can use whatever two- or three-cheese blend (a fine selection of cheese blends are available from suppliers) suits your needs.

No matter which way you go, keep in mind that you are adding extra cost to each pizza you make. Translate that cost to customer interest, awareness and satisfaction. If the equation comes out in your favor, then give it a test run around the culinary track and see what kind of speed you can generate. Otherwise, take a different approach.

Tom Lehmann

Take-and-bake pizza is growing in popularity, and I constantly get questions on how to make it without preparing special dough. At one time or another, you may have been asked to prepare a par-baked pizza for a customer. What you actually did was make an early version of a take-and-bake pizza. Years ago ,we used to call them par-baked pizzas, or if we got it from the supermarket, it might have been referred to as a deli pizza.

With the advent of dedicated take-and-bake pizza stores, plus the availability of take-and-bake /bake-to-rise pizzas in supermarket frozen-food display cases, the take-and-bake pizza has finally taken on an identity of its own. Today’s take-and-bake pizza is made on a raw, unbaked dough skin, which allows the dough to rise during baking in the consumer’s oven, imparting a more desirable appearance, eating texture and flavor to the freshly baked pizza.

While we can develop dough specific to making take-and-bake pizzas as the take-and-bake chains have done, can we also alter our regular pizza dough to allow it to be successfully employed in this growing segment? There are two basic approaches that we can take. Both call for modifications only to the dough management procedure, so we don’t need to worry about making changes to the dough formula itself.

The first procedure is probably the easiest to implement of the two. Let’s assume that the dough has been through your dough management procedure and has just come out of the cooler. You will need to experiment a little to determine the minimum time to allow the dough to sit at room temperature before opening and shaping it. Then, begin opening all of the dough balls needed for take-and-bake pizzas into pizza skins. Place the opened skins onto wire screens and store on a wire tree rack in the cooler. Try to get the skins into the cooler as quickly as possible after opening them. The object is to keep them as cold as possible.

As soon as you have a rack filled with skins, allow it to remain uncovered for an additional 30-minutes, then cover the rack with a suitable plastic bag to prevent drying. After the dough skins have been in the cooler for an hour, transfer them to a location convenient to the prep table so they are always near at hand when an order is received for a take-and-bake pizza. Keep in mind when making the dough skins that many home ovens may not accommodate pizzas much larger than 14- or 16-inch. Dock the dough skin and place it onto a piece of oven parchment paper, or one of the ovenable trays designed specifically for take-and-bake pizzas. If you use an ovenable tray, it is suggested that it be lightly oiled before placing the dough skin onto it. This will ensure a satisfactory release of the dough from the tray if the consumer holds the pizza in their refrigerator for a longer time than recommended. Brush the dough skin lightly with olive oil, or blended oil, then dress it to order with sauce and toppings as normal. The pizza is now ready to be wrapped and sent home with the consumer. Some stores will send the pizza home with just the wrap on it, while others like to place the wrapped pizza into a box for additional protection. In either case, be sure to mark the pizza “KEEP REFRIGERATED”, “DO NOT FREEZE” and add a use-by date, too. Provide complete baking instructions with the pizza for both gas and electric ovens, and it’s probably a good idea to also mark it with a “DO NOT MICROWAVE” label while you’re at it.

The second procedure is the least intrusive –– it requires the least amount of forethought or preparation to implement. The one drawback to this procedure, however, is that it tends to give the shortest shelf life and is least tolerant to any temperature abuse that the pizza might receive at the hands of the consumer. In this procedure, the dough is handled completely in your normal manner right up to the point where the dough is opened to form pizza skins. As soon as the skins are formed, they are placed on wire screens and stored in wire racks in the cooler. Be sure to leave the racks of dough uncovered in the cooler for at least 30 minutes to ensure adequate cooling of the dough skins, and then cover the racks of dough with a plastic bag to prevent drying. For a take-and-bake order, remove a dough skin from the rack and dock it well, then brush it lightly with olive oil or a blended oil, place it onto a sheet of oven parchment paper, or one of the ovenable trays designed specifically for take-and-bake applications. Be sure to lightly oil the tray before placing the dough skin into it, as this will ensure a satisfactory release of the crust from the tray in the event that the consumer holds the pizza in their refrigerator longer than the recommended time, and then dress it with sauce and the desired toppings. The packaging would be the same as stated above for the first procedure. The reason why this procedure doesn’t give a finished product with quite as much tolerance to consumer abuse is because of the potential for additional fermentation time that the dough can receive when handled in this manner. In the first procedure, the potential fermentation time has been reduced by as much as three hours, which can add substantially to the dough’s tolerance to consumer (storage time and temperature) abuse.

In some cases, complaints may be received from the consumers that the dough/crust doesn’t color up well during baking in their home ovens. If you should experience this, you will need to prepare special dough just for your take-and-bake pizzas. The only formula modification that you will need to make is to increase the level of sugar added to the dough to 5 percent of the total flour weight (flour weight x 5 then press the “%” key and read the amount of sugar to add in the display window of your calculator). The added sugar will contribute significantly towards obtaining a darker crust color in a consumer type oven.