By Tom Lehmann
Photo by Rick Daugherty

How do I know when my pizza dough is properly mixed?

A: Most pizza doughs as we know them are under mixed in regard to full gluten development. The only real exception is commercially made frozen pizza dough which is almost universally mixed to full gluten development. For the retail operator, though, a dough that is mixed just to the point of becoming smooth and satiny in appearance in the mixing bowl is sufficient. This level of development allows for continued biochemical gluten development as the dough is managed through the cooler for three or more days while ensuring a thorough dispersion of ingredients and adequate hydration of the flour for decent handling properties when the dough goes to the bench for scaling and rounding.

Using a spiral or planetary type of mixer, this usually means mixing the dough for 8 to 10 minutes at medium speed, or 15 to 20 minutes at low speed. When a vertical cutter mixer (VCM) design is used, the mixing time required to achieve this level of gluten development will be between 60 and 90 seconds, with 70 seconds being about the average mixing time. Mixing times longer than this are just unnecessarily hard on your mixer, especially if you are one of the majority, using a planetary mixer. Shorter mixing times may be ok, but they are normally prone to handling difficulties such as stickiness and tearing at the bench when the dough is being scaled and rounded.

What function does oil/olive oil (fat) serve in the dough formulation?

A: Oil serves a number of functions in the dough. It can provide a flavor such as is the case with olive oil, sesame oil, or even lard or butter, for that matter, the fat can help to retain those wonderful flavors created during the baking of the pizza, adding to the overall flavor profile of the baked pizza. It provides lubricity to the dough allowing it to be opened into a pizza skin somewhat easier without tearing. This same lubricity also helps the dough to expand during the early part of baking to give a nicely raised edge to the pizza. Along these same lines, the fat coats the cells within the dough allowing them to better hold the gas produced during fermentation, which in turn is at least partially responsible for the desirable open crumb structure common to so many thin crust pizzas. Fat of any kind in the dough will help to retard the migration of moisture/water from the topping ingredients down into the dough/crust to provide for a crispier eating characteristic in the finished pizza. Fats, in general, are known as tenderizers to product formulators and their use in product formulation provides for a more tender/less chewy eating characteristic in the finished pizza. As you can see, fat is a multifunctional ingredient when it comes to pizza making.

What type of oven should I use to bake my pizzas?

A: It never ceases to amaze that so many ovens are purchased for all the wrong reasons. My personal advice to newbies just getting into the pizza business is to make your oven selection the last thing you do with regard to your equipment package. The reason for this is because there are so many factors that must be considered when choosing an oven, for example;
1) What is your store concept? Will it be a grab and run, DELCO, a slice operation, dine in? Will it provide your customers with a more or less formal dining experience?
2) What about the product concept? Will you be positioning your pizza as the most loaded pizza in a 50-mile radius, or will the pizza be more of a “gourmet” or classical/artisan presentation with just a few, but very elegant and/or flavorful ingredients? Several years ago I assisted a shop owner decide upon a new oven. Their product concept was one of high customer perceived value, meaning that their most popular pizzas were heavily loaded with all kinds of vegetable toppings. The ovens that they were using did not provide the capability to evaporate the moisture released from all those vegetable toppings during baking, so a change in oven technology provided them with a much drier finished pizza that was better received by their customers.
3) What about your product mix? How many other products will you be selling that will need to be baked or heated in the oven?
4) Will you have an open or closed kitchen area? You can get away with a conveyor oven in a closed kitchen where fine or casual dining is the norm, but what a waste it would be to hide a wood fired oven in a closed kitchen store.
5) Location and codes may also dictate what type of oven you can have. For example, some malls may not permit a wood fired oven, I know of one pizzeria that had to work around a code that would not allow them to have a wood fired oven installed within a frame structure.
6) And then there are questions regarding utilities such as gas and electric and wood or anthracite/coal. These questions revolve around availability and cost. There is an issue of space. Do you have the necessary space in your location for the oven you have selected? Keep in mind that some types of ovens may require more operator/tender space than others.
7) Be sure to consider the noise, heat, and hood requirements of the oven too as there can be some rather significant differences between brands and oven types.
8) Don’t forget to consider the baking capacity of your selected oven. Depending upon your store concept, one properly sized oven or two ovens of a different type may be needed to keep up with your production demands.
9) And lastly, aside from the toppings, find out how well suited your oven of choice is to baking the type of pizza that you want to make. For example, some artisan pizzerias use a very high absorption dough that requires the oven to operate at well above 600F to produce the desired finished product characteristics. Is the oven you’re looking at capable of this?

You may have noticed that I haven’t even mention price. This has to be one of the deciding factors, but don’t let it be the only one, sometimes a few extra dollars spent can have far reaching returns on the success of your business. Warranties, service, and parts availability are all considerations too that should influence your final selection and ultimate purchase.

And I bet you thought choosing an oven was going to be one of the first things you did in putting together the equipment package for your new store, it might be your single most expensive purchase, so be sure to give it the ample thought and consideration.

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

By Tom Lehmann
Photos by Josh Keown and Rick Daugherty

I was recently looking through a catalog that I got at the last Pizza Expo and I saw both wood and metal peels being offered by the different companies. Do you have a preference in one over the other?

A: My preference is to use a wood peel as a prep peel — the peel used to dress the dough and take to the oven. The wood construction typically affords better dough release than the metal peels. The last thing you want to do is to slide a dressed skin into the oven and withdraw an empty pizza skin because it stuck to the peel and slid all the toppings into your oven. This is not to say that the dough will not stick to a wood peel — without dusting flour, the pizza skin can stick quite nicely. It is important to use some dusting flour even with a wood peel, but since wood is a better insulator than metal (aluminum), there is a reduced tendency for the dough to stick to the wood peel (condensation can form under the dough on a metal peel if the dough is warm and the peel blade is cold). I think the metal peel is best reserved for use as an oven peel where it stands up to the everyday “grind” of peel to oven deck/hearth much better than the wood peel does.

With all of this said, do keep in mind that in some localities, the use of wood peels are looked down upon by the local food safety people due to their inability to be properly cleaned and sanitized. This may leave us with only one option, the metal peel, or possibly a peel made from some type of manufactured, composite material that can be easily washed and sanitized without issue. More recently, I’ve had an inspector point to the worn edge of a wood peel and declare that those wood splinters are getting into the pizzas. Right or wrong, we’re in no position to argue with such wisdom, so be sure to give your peel selection more than just a passing thought or you might end up wasting your money on something you can’t use.

We use wood pizza peels to prep our pizzas on and we are required to wash and sanitize them daily. We notice that the peels tend to warp. What can we do to prevent this?

A: While wood peels are not made to be washed, they can be quickly washed and sanitized with a minimum of damage, primarily warping. It is best to start out with a new peel. Wipe it with mineral oil several times to impregnate and seal the wood. This will create a barrier against moisture migration into the peel when washed.

To wash the peel, dip it into the soapy water and scrub gently to remove any debris, then rinse and dip in the sanitizing solution. Next, be sure to wipe the peel as dry as possible with a clean towel, then set aside and allow it to dry thoroughly. This should be followed by another application of mineral oil to reseal the wood. Done carefully, and daily, you can keep problems to a minimum. I have a wood peel that is made from a material that looks a lot like Pakka Wood, a resin wood that is cured under high pressure and heat to form a homogenous wood that is highly stable and moisture resistant. These peels have all of the advantages of a wood peel but without any of the issues.



What is your preference for the top of a prep table where we will be hand stretching the dough?

A: That’s easy: just about anything but wood. Dough has a tendency to cling to wood bench tops. This is why bakers like it so much; but for pizza making, we want a top that will allow the dough to slide around easily without sticking or needing an extraordinary amount of dusting flour to prevent it from sticking. I’ve found that for top-end table-tops, marble, or man-made quartz, is hard to beat — but it comes at a price. Lower in cost, and almost equally as effective, is just plain old stainless steel. It has all the appeal of a homely fence post, but it works well and the price is right. Your food safety inspectors will look favorably upon it, too. A lot of your decision as to what to use will boil down to your store concept, and what you want to convey to your customers who might be watching you open your dough into pizza skins as they wait for their pizza to be made before them.

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

By Tom Lehmann
Photo by Josh Keown

I’ve seen any number of different ways in which the dough ingredients are staged/ added into the mixing bowl. Is there really a difference, or is it a case of just whatever you are taught to use?

A: I think some ingredient staging procedures can actually cause harm to the dough while others may not harm the dough. But they can be more labor intensive, thus detracting from other things we have to do in the shop. Here are some examples:

1. Adding the water to the mixing bowl followed by the salt and sugar, and then mixing for several minutes to dissolve the salt and sugar. This serves no useful purpose, as the salt and sugar will completely disperse as the mixing commences. It just adds additional time onto the total prep time for your dough.
2. Adding the compressed yeast to the water in the mixing bowl and then mixing for several minutes to thoroughly suspend the yeast in the water. Again, this serves no useful purpose. It only adds additional time to make dough. The compressed yeast will be thoroughly dispersed throughout the dough if you simply crumble it onto the flour just before you begin mixing.
3. Adding the salt, sugar and oil to the water in the mixing bowl and then mixing for several minutes also has no useful purpose. In this case again, the salt and sugar will be thoroughly incorporated into the dough without the need to put them into the water. And in this case, as soon as you stop the mixer to add the flour, the oil will immediately separate from the water, float to the top and soak into a portion of the flour rendering it impossible to develop gluten when the dough is mixed.
4. Adding instant dry yeast (IDY) to the water in the mixing bowl and mixing until the IDY is completely suspended in the water. In addition to adding time to your dough preparation, this can also have an adverse impact upon the functionality of the IDY as it should not be hydrated in water colder or warmer than 95 F. Doing so can result in a release of glutathione from the yeast. Glutathione is an amino acid present in all yeast, but it can be washed out of dry yeast by hydrating it at the wrong temperature. Because glutathione is also a reducing agent much like L-cysteine (think dead yeast), it can cause an unexpected softening or weakening of the dough, especially if it will be held in the cooler for several days. If you must pre-hydrate IDY, do it in a small quantity of water at 95 F, stir well to suspend, then allow to hydrate for five minutes before adding it to the dough, either in the water or into the dry flour.
5. Adding active dry yeast (ADY) to the water in the mixing bowl along with the salt, sugar and possibly the oil, then mixing at low speed to suspend the yeast. This is not a recommended practice for a couple of reasons. First, the water temperature in which the ADY is hydrated should be between 100 and 105 F. If the water is colder than this there is a probability that some glutathione will be leached out from the dry yeast cells, resulting in less than optimal yeast activity, plus an added bonus of a potentially softer, more extensible dough than planned. Since you may see the softer dough condition while the dough is still in the mixer, you might reduce the absorption of following doughs to correct this (erroneously thinking that the dough absorption was too high). You might also add a little additional flour to the dough to help dry it up. In both cases, you will only compound your dough problems, as your dough may still not perform well over several days in the cooler despite your “corrective” action. In the event that the water temperature in the mixing bowl was adjusted to the recommended ADY rehydration temperature of 100 to 105 F, your resulting finished dough temperature will probably be much higher than desired, resulting in a rapidly fermenting dough that is difficult to manage in the cooler. This can lead to a reduction in the yeast level to a point where the dough can now be managed without it “blowing”, but the yeast level is now so low that finished pizza crusts may not have the desired raised edge (or, in some cases, there might not be sufficient yeast to raise the center of the pizza, resulting in a collapsed center or an extremely soggy center).
6. The weather influences the amount of water (absorption) added to the dough. This is a totally false observation, but we still see it, so what is really happening is that when the oil is added to the water (a common procedure) the oil separates from the water as soon as the mixer is stopped, allowing for the flour addition. Now we get a situation where a portion of the flour absorbs the oil and not the water. That portion of the flour will not create gluten as the dough is mixed, thus creating a dough that may appear to be softer than normal, leading to the addition of more flour to the mixing bowl to correct the condition (when in fact, the amount of flour was just fine). The best way to eliminate this problem is to use what we refer to as the delayed oil addition mixing method. By this mixing method, the oil is not added to the dough until it has had a chance to mix for about two minutes with the water. This allows the flour to more fully hydrate before the oil is added, thus significantly reducing the problems resulting from the oil soaking into the flour. Once you begin using this mixing method you may find the weather really doesn’t have the impact upon the dough absorption that you once thought it had.

As you can see, the way the ingredients are staged, or added into the mixing bowl, really can have an impact upon the finished dough/crust quality. u

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

By Tom Lehmann
Photo by Josh Keown

Q: We are having a problem with our dough growing in the cooler.



A: There are a number of things that can result in the dough “blowing” in the cooler. The first cause could be excessive amounts of yeast in the dough. Most pizza doughs perform best when the yeast level is at or near 1 percent compressed yeast –– this equates to .5 percent active dry yeast, or 0.375 percent instant active dry yeast.

You might also check your dough’s finished temperature. If you are using a refrigerated dough management procedure –– which allows you to use the dough over a three day period of time from the cooler –– a good target, finished dough temperature is in the 80 F to 85 F range if using a walk-in cooler, or 70 F to 75 F if you’re using a reach-in cooler. If your finished dough temperature is higher than this, it becomes difficult to effectively cool the dough to a point where the rate of fermentation can be sufficiently lowered to allow for holding the dough for any extended period of time.

The finished dough temperature is controlled by the temperature of the water that you add to the dough. In some locations, your tap water temperature may be sufficiently cold to give you a finished dough temperature within the targeted temperature range, but if this isn’t possible, then you will need to use colder water. The easiest way to get colder water is by storing it in the cooler, at least overnight. This should effectively get your water temperature down to the 40 to 45 F range. You can then replace a portion or all of the dough water with the refrigerated water to achieve the desired finished dough temperature you’re looking for.

In some cases, such as stores with only a reach-in cooler, this won’t be possible, so the correct course of action to get colder water is to add ice to your water. When adding ice, be sure to replace the water on a pound for pound basis for ice. Don’t use a volumetric measure for the ice as it has a significantly different density than water. I recommend that you begin by replacing one pound of water with one pound of ice. Be sure to use flaked ice rather than cube ice as the cube ice, which will not melt sufficiently fast to work in this application. Keep increasing/adjusting the amount of ice added until the finished dough temperature falls within the desired temperature range.

Another thing that can cause the dough to blow is failure to take the dough directly to the cooler after scaling, balling and boxing. For some, it is a common practice to allow the dough to set out at room temperature for a period of time before we begin scaling and balling it. This practice can lead to the dough fermenting, and changing in density (becoming less dense) before the dough actually goes to the cooler. The less dense dough is significantly more difficult to cool uniformly. It is a better insulator and, as such, it may never cool to a point where it will be sufficiently stable in the cooler to allow it to be held for any period of time without blowing. Normally, when the dough blows under these circumstances, the reaction is to reduce the yeast level to a point where the dough doesn’t blow, but this now introduces a whole new problem –– in many cases, the dough now has a yeast level so low that it cannot support the weight of the topping ingredients during baking, and it may collapse, or not rise sufficiently to give the desired, light, airy internal crumb structure. In all too many cases, a gum line develops just under the sauce that will be next to impossible to resolve until we get the yeast level back up to where it needs to be. But, then the dough blows again. Now you can see why reducing the yeast level is not the correct action to take when the dough blows.

Failure to cross stack the dough boxes can also lead to blowing the dough. When first placed into the cooler, the dough boxes should be placed in a cross stacked pattern to allow the warmer air to escape from the dough boxes. This results in a significant improvement in the efficiency of cooling the dough balls. In cases where a walk-in cooler isn’t available and only a reach-in is used, there isn’t room in the cabinet to cross stack the dough boxes, but they can be placed into the cooler with the ends off set, resulting in open, exposed ends on each box, allowing for the escape of the warm air from the boxes.

Even with cross-stacking, you must allow enough time for the dough to be cooled before you seal the boxes closed.

We have found that if the dough balls weigh 16 ounces or less, the dough boxes should be allowed to remain cross-stacked for at least two hours. If the dough balls are between 17 and 24 ounces, they should remain cross stacked for at least 2½ hours. Because the dough still hasn’t come down in temperature to that of your cooler within these times, it is important to be consistent with the cross stack time employed. For example, if your dough ball weight is 10 ounces, and you’re using a cross stack time of two hours, that’s fine, but be sure to use that cross stack time consistently. Keep in mind, though, that these are only recommendations. Since all coolers are not created equally, you may need to adjust the cross stack times from those given above, and this is perfectly acceptable — just be sure to be consistent and always use the same cross stack time that you’ve found correct for your dough ball weight.

Another factor to consider occurs during the dough-making process. Due to traffic in and out of the cooler during the busier parts of the day, our coolers typically work harder, and operate at a slightly higher temperature than they do during the late night hours after the store is closed, or when business slacks off a bit. For this reason, I don’t recommend making the dough during the day, or even during the early evening hours. Instead, I recommend making dough a couple hours prior to closing, when the cooler will be operating more efficiently. By the time you’re ready to go home, you can down stack the dough boxes just before turning the lights off. While we’re on the topic of coolers, if you don’t already have them, consider installing plastic strip curtains over the door. Tests have shown that they will improve the operating efficiency of your cooler by as much as 15 percent.❖

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

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.

By Tom Lehmann
Photos by Josh Keown

I’ve heard that there is a way to calculate the amount of dough needed to make any size of pizza. Can you explain how this is done? A: What you are referring to is the use of our old friend “pi” to calculate the surface area of a circle, and then using that number to develop a dough density number. It may sound confusing, but it really isn’t. Here is the way it’s done.

Let’s say you want to make 12-, 14-, and 16-inch diameter pizzas, and you need to know what the correct dough weight will be for each size. The first thing to do is to pick a size you want to work with (any size at all will work). We’ll assume we opted to work with the 12-inch size. The first thing to do is to make our dough, then scale and ball some dough balls using different scaling weights for the dough balls. The idea here is to make pizzas from the different dough ball weights, and then, based on the characteristics of the finished pizza, select the dough ball weight that gives us the pizza that we want with regard to crust appearance, texture and thickness. Make a note of that weight. For this example, we will say that 11 ounces of dough gives us what we were looking for.

We’re now going to find the dough density number that is all-important in determining the dough weights for the other sizes. Begin by calculating the surface area of the size of pizza you elected to find the dough weight for. In this case, it is a 12-inch pizza. The formula for finding the surface area of a circle is pi x R squared. Pi equals 3.14, and R is half of the diameter. To square it we simply multiply it times itself.

Here is what the math looks like:


3.14 x 6 x 6 (or 36) = 113.04 square inches

To calculate the dough density number, we will need to divide the dough weight by the number of square inches. So, now we have 11 ounces divided by 113.04 = 0.0973106 ounces of dough per square inch of surface area on our 12-inch pizza. This number is referred to as the “dough density number.”

Our next step is to calculate the number of square inches of surface area in each of the other sizes we want to make. In this case we want to make 14- and 16-inch pizzas in addition to the 12-inch pizza.

The surface area of a 14-inch pizza is 3.14 x 49 (7 x 7 = 49) = 153.86 square inches of surface area. All we need to do now is to multiply the surface area of the 14-inch pizza by the dough density number (0.0973106) to find the dough scaling weight for the 14-inch pizza — 153.86 x 0.0973106 = 14.972208 ounces of dough. Round that off to 15 ounces of dough needed to make the 14-inch pizza crust.

For the 16-inch pizza we multiply 3.14 X 64 (8 x 8 = 64) = 200.96 square inches of surface area. Multiply this times the dough density factor to get the dough weight required to make our 16-inch crusts. 200.96 X 0.0973106 = 19.555538 ounces of dough. Round that off to 19.5 ounces of dough needed to make the 16-inch pizza crust.

In summary, the following dough weights will be needed to make our 12-, 14-, and 16-inch pizza crusts: 12-inch (11-ounces); 14-inch (15-ounces): and 16-inch (19.5-ounces).

In addition to being used to calculate dough weights for different size pizzas, this same calculation can be used to find the weights for both sauce and cheese, too.
In these applications, all you need to do is to substitute the dough weight with the sauce or cheese weight found to make the best pizza for you. This will provide you with a specific sauce or cheese weight, which can then be used in exactly the same manner to calculate the amount of sauce or cheese required for any other size pizza you wish to make. As an example, going back to that 12-inch pizza, let’s say we really like the pizza when it has 5 ounces of sauce on it. We already know that a 12-inch pizza has a surface area of 113.04 square inches, so we divide five-ounces by 113.04 = 0.0442321 ounces of sauce per square inch of surface area. Our sauce density number is 0.0442321. We know that the 14-inch pizza has a surface area of 153.86 square inches. So all we need to do is to multiply 153.86 times the sauce density number to find the correct amount of sauce to use on our 14-inch pizza. 153.86 x 0.0442321 = 6.80-ounces of sauce should be used on our 14-inch pizza.

For the 16-inch pizza, we know that it has 200.96 square inches of surface area. So all we need to do is multiply this times the sauce density factor — 200.96 x 0.0442321 = 8.88 ounces of sauce should be used on our 16-inch pizza.

To calculate the amount of cheese to use, again, we will use the 12-inch pizza and experiment with applying different amounts of cheese until we find the amount that works best for us. Then divide this amount by the surface area of our test pizza (a 12-inch, which has 113.04-inches of surface area). Lets say that we found six ounces of cheese to work well in our application. six-ounces divided by 113.04 = 0.0530785-ounce of cheese per square inch of surface area. Our cheese density number is 0.0530785.

A 14-inch pizza has 153.86 square inches of surface area. Multiply this times the cheese density number to find the amount of cheese to add on our 14-inch pizza — 153.86 x 0.0530785 = 8.16-ounces of cheese should be used on our 14-inch pizza.

A 16-inch pizza has 200.96 square inches of surface area. Multiply this times the cheese density number to find the amount of cheese to add on our 16-inch pizza — 200.96 x 0.0530785 = 10.66-ounces of cheese should be used on our 16-inch pizza.

By calculating your dough, sauce and cheese weights for each of your pizza sizes, you will find that your pizzas will bake in a more similar manner, regardless of size, this is especially true if you are baking in any of the conveyor ovens, in which the baking time is fixed, and you want to be able to bake all of your pizza sizes at similar baking times. Typically, this allows us to bake pizzas with one to three toppings on one conveyor, regardless of size, and those pizzas with four or more toppings on another conveyor, again, regardless
of size.

If you use a deck or conveyor oven, you will find that your pizzas will bake with greater predictability, and your cost control over your different size ranges will be enhanced, and that can’t hurt in today’s economy.

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

By Tom Lehmann
Photos by Josh Keown

My pizza dough gets too soft to hand toss after only two days in the cooler. What do I do?

A: In reviewing your dough formula and management procedure, I see that your dough formula contains nearly 10 percent oil in addition to 60 percent water. This is much more oil than the two to four percent that is normally used. Keep in mind that both water and oil contribute to the soft and extensible handling properties of the dough. It’s most likely that this is where the problem is. To correct the problem, I would suggest reducing the water content to a level where the combined water and oil do not exceed 56 to 60 percent of the flour weight. Since you like the texture of the finished crust, I would make the adjustment to the amount of water rather than the oil.

Also, keep in mind that the flour needs to hydrate the water in order to form “gluten”. With the high level of oil that you’re using it is entirely possible that a good deal of the flour is absorbing oil rather than water if the oil is not added in a delayed manner. To do this, do not add the oil until the ingredients have had a chance to mix together at a low speed for a couple of minutes. When you cannot see any dry flour in the mixing bowl, the oil can be added and blended in by mixing for an additional minute at low speed, then, the dough can be mixed in your normal manner. This should give you more consistent dough performance, especially after a couple of days in the cooler.

When we met at the last Pizza Expo in Las Vegas, you mentioned that there was an ingredient that we could use to reduce the snap-back of our dough, making hand stretching a lot easier for us. I’ve misplaced my notes. Can you please tell me what that ingredient is again?

A: The ingredient that I made reference to is PZ-44. This ingredient is what we call a “reducing agent.” When used in a dough, it will cause the dough to become softer and more extensible (less elastic). What this means is that it will not exhibit the snap-back characteristics during hand, or machine forming. When adding any type of reducing agent to your dough, care must be taken to prevent using it in an excessive amount.

Since reducing agents work very fast, their effects can be readily seen while the dough is being mixed. Be aware that your mixing time will most likely be shorter than normal. And also, keep in mind that these materials don’t stop working in the cooler, so your dough may become overly soft if stored in the cooler for more than two days. When used correctly, these ingredients can be great assets, especially if you shape your dough skins using a dough press. When a dough press is used, it is common to see the dough shrink back as the pressure is released from the press head. Judicious use of a reducing agent can reduce or eliminate this shrinkage, resulting in consistently sized pizza skins.

We have had a number of requests for a seafood-topped pizza. Do you have any suggestions for a starting point?

A: Seafood pizzas are one of my all time favorites. Start with your regular dough skins and brush lightly with olive oil. apply a thin layer of Alfredo sauce, then sprinkle with diced fresh garlic, coarse ground white pepper, and dried dill weed. Apply some thin sliced onion and pieces of roasted red peppers, and your choice of seafood.

My personal preference is whole raw shrimp (21 to 25 or higher count), sliced raw fish (salmon or orange roughy works well, but any firm flesh fish can also be used) and finish with a light sprinkle of mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Bake just as you would any of your regular pizzas. This is a fun pizza to make as you can use whatever seafood is available. I’ve used grouper for the fish and clams, lobster and even conch for the seafood topping.

Do you have any suggestions for making a breakfast pizza?

A: I’ve always been puzzled by the fact that pizzerias are not open for breakfast trade. The box hamburger stores are all open, and now the box sandwich stores are getting their piece of the breakfast trade too, so why not pizza? Individual-sized breakfast pizzas as well as breakfast size calzones might be just the ticket for a fast, “grab and go” breakfast to feed hungry commuters with little time to wait in long lines.

A great breakfast pizza can be made using an individual size dough skin (5- to 8-inch diameter). Begin by brushing the dough with melted butter, or blend of half butter and half canola oil, add slices of fresh tomato, or tomato filets rather than a traditional sauce, then add breakfast sausage to replace your Italian sausage. For vegetables, use sliced mushrooms, onion, red and green peppers for color, add a sprinkling of crispy bacon pieces, and finish with a light application of half mozzarella and half cheddar cheese. These pizzas hold well under a heat lamp on a heated tray for speedy service.

The other approach that I’ve had great success with is to make a breakfast calzone. I like to keep these on a smaller, individual size format, beginning with a dough skin about 8 inches in diameter. Brush the outer edge of the dough skin with water, then add pre-cooked scrambled egg, sautéed onion, green peppers, mushrooms, pre-cooked bacon pieces, and precooked breakfast sausage. Add a couple pieces of fresh sliced tomato, a little ricotta, mozzarella and cheddar cheese, then fold and crimp tightly closed. Cut a vent hole into the top of the calzone, brush with melted butter, or commercial butter oil, and bake to a golden brown color.

These calzones hold very well under a heat lamp, or better yet, slip them into parchment paper pouches (this makes them easier to eat on the run), and hold under a heat lamp. Now, all you need to do is to grab a calzone, drop it into a bag with a cup of coffee, add a napkin or two, and you have the start for a fast, ready-to-go commuter breakfast.

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

By Tom Lehmann

What will happen if I mix my dough less than the normal time?
A: If you mix your dough in the 15- to 20-minute range, you probably won’t see much change in either the dough or the finished pizza. Where you will begin to see a change in both the dough and the finished pizza is when the mixing time (using a planetary mixer) falls into the 7 minute or less range. If you mix dough for less than 5 minutes, and are using instant dry yeast (IDY), you should pre-hydrate the IDY in 95 F water, and then add it to the remainder of the dough water in the mixing bowl. If you are using compressed yeast, you should suspend it in the dough water prior to adding the flour and any other ingredients.

There are two ways to stage the dough ingredients in the bowl. The first is to put the flour in the bowl, followed by the other dry ingredients, and then add the water and oil and mix. The second is to add the water to the bowl first, and then add the flour, followed by the rest of the dry ingredients, and lastly the oil. The first method typically results in rather poor flour hydration with short mixing times. For that reason, when short mixing times are employed, it is recommended that the second method be used as it results in a more consistent dough with less mixing time required.

With less mixing time there is less gluten development and, as a result, the dough tends to be stickier when handled soon after mixing, such as when taking the dough to the bench for scaling and balling. Because of this, the dough will tend to pick up more dusting flour in the process, and take on more of the appearance characteristics of a “rustic” dough and finished crust. The main reason for under mixing a dough is to achieve a more open, porous internal crumb structure in the finished crust. This type of internal crumb structure is conducive to achieving a light, tender eating characteristic, while promoting a crispy bottom crust characteristic.

In some cases, the mixing time is reduced to only a matter of seconds. We have used 45 to 75 seconds of mixing time to achieve a unique cracker-like finished crust. When these extremely short mixing times are used, the result doesn’t look anything like a normal dough. Instead, it looks more like that of a baking powder biscuit dough, with a sizeable amount of dry flour present. This dough must be manually pressed together at the time of scaling just to get the pieces to cling together, it is then roughly formed into a ball –– still with a lot of dry flour present –– and placed into a plastic dough box where the dough will be allowed to hydrate while it is stored in the cooler for the next 18 to 48 hours, prior to use. As you might imagine, this dough is very particulate, and it just falls apart at the suggestion of forming it by hand, so it must be formed into skins by using a dough sheeter/roller. Once this is done, it must be trimmed to size, as it cannot be stretched to a circle. The resulting crust has a very dry, cracker-like texture that is perfect for use in a pizza buffet type of operation.

By all means, experiment with different mixing times for your dough. It is just another tool that we have to work with to modify the finished crust characteristics.

I’m trying to decide between a deck oven or an air impingement/conveyor oven. How do I know which is right for my operation?

A: Many people look at an oven only as a means to bake their pizzas, but it is actually a lot more than just that. Consider your store concept. Will you be a delivery/carry-out delco or will you be more focused on dine-in? A delco pizza can benefit from being baked in an air impingement oven, as the high airflow does an excellent job of removing any water released by the vegetable toppings, resulting in a potentially drier pizza for the customer. Air impingement ovens are also ideal for pizzas with lots of toppings, as they can remove the moisture released from all of those vegetables.

On the other hand, if you have a more traditional, dine-in concept and you want to entertain your customers by allowing them to watch your prep people toss pizza skins, a deck oven might be the oven of choice. If your concept is upscale dine-in, perhaps a wood-fired –– or one of the look-alike deck ovens –– might be right for you.

If you have a by-the-slice concept, you could go with either a deck oven or an air impingement oven. A deck oven works well for a traditional slice operation where ready-made slices are placed into the oven for reheating while the drink order is filled and the order paid. The air impingement oven is a vital link in a concept where each slice is topped with fresh ingredients and finished to order in about 3 minutes. Think of it as an upscale slice operation where the same air impingement oven is used to par-bake the skins from which the slices are cut, and to finish baking the slices to order.

There are a multitude of other reasons for choosing one type of oven over another, but space does not permit me to cover all of those. These are the main considerations when selecting the best oven type for your store, and hopefully they will help you in making the right decision on one of your most important –– and expensive –– pieces of equipment.

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

By Tom Lehmann

Q: In looking at different methods of dough management, some call for allowing the dough balls to rest at room temperature for an hour or more, while others say to take the dough directly to the cooler without any room temperature rest period. Does it really make a difference?

A: Yes, it does make a difference. When dough balls are allowed to rest at room temperature before going into the cooler they begin to ferment, becoming less dense. As a result, the dough becomes a better insulator, so when the dough goes into the cooler it is now more difficult to cool uniformly. In some cases, especially with larger/heavier weight dough balls, the dough may never cool down sufficiently to control the rate of fermentation so the dough “blows” in the cooler, resulting in a total loss.

Another problem with allowing the dough to rest at room temperature prior to going into the cooler has to do with the temperature of the dough as well as the actual time the dough is allowed to remain at room temperature. For example, if the dough is a couple degrees warmer than desired, or targeted, the dough will ferment more, making for an even less dense dough. If you forget to take the dough to the cooler at the prescribed time, this can also result in over fermentation. When combined with the perfect storm of a dough that is a little warmer than desired, and a warmer than usual shop temperature, the stage is set for blown dough as the order of the day.

By taking the dough directly from the mixer to the bench for scaling and balling, and then straight to the cooler, the effects of dough temperature (or more correctly stated, the effects of a missed target dough temperature) are minimized. And because we are doing everything right away, there is less chance to forget to take the dough to the cooler. Additionally, shop temperature will have essentially no impact upon the dough as the dough will not be exposed to it long enough to impact it. The net result of taking the dough directly to the cooler is that the dough will be denser, and have a more uniform density, making it easier to cool uniformly, and predictably, resulting in better handling dough, and improved dough performance over the refrigerated life of the dough.

As a side note, I’ve seen a number of cases where the operator thought he had the solution to his blown dough problem by simply reducing the yeast level in the dough to the point where the dough would no longer blow. This worked, but it created a whole new problem at the same time. With the lower yeast level, the dough would no longer rise as it used to, and the weight of the topping ingredients compressed the center of the pizza, reducing its ability to bake properly. The finished pizza was now characterized by a soft, soggy bottom crust, and worst of all, a gum line that just wouldn’t go away. As you can see, reducing the yeast level is not the best solution to this problem. The only real solution is to adjust/correct the dough temperature, rest time and possibly the room temperature, or simply take the dough directly to the cooler before any of these factors can impact the dough.



Q: What is the best way to thaw frozen dough that we are purchasing from our supplier?

A: If the manufacturer doesn’t provide instructions for slacking out/thawing their dough, remove the dough balls from the bulk package, and place onto a lightly oiled sheet pan or dough box. Oil the top of the dough balls and cover to prevent drying. If you only have a reach in cooler, oil the frozen dough ball and drop it into a plastic bread bag, then twist the open end closed and tuck it under the dough ball as you place it on a sheet pan or shelf in the cooler. Allow the dough balls to thaw overnight in the cooler and then remove a quantity of dough balls from the cooler and allow them to temper at room temperature for 90 to 120 minutes before starting to open them into pizza skins. Once you have allowed the dough balls to temper, they should be good to use for about a two-hour period of time. Any unused dough balls can be opened and placed onto screens or disks and stored in the cooler for use later in the day.

Q: How important is the temperature of the water that active dry yeast (ADY) is activated in?

A: Active dry yeast –— as well as instant dry yeast (IDY) —– are actually quite robust and will tolerate quite a bit of temperature abuse both in storage as well as during hydration. If you want to achieve optimum performance from the yeast as well as doughs that will handle and perform consistently, especially with extended periods of refrigerated storage, dry yeasts should be rehydrated, or added to the dough by the manner prescribed by the manufacturer.

For ADY, this means putting the yeast into a small quantity of warm (100F) water, and stirring it to suspend it in the water, then allowing it to hydrate for 10 minutes. In the case of IDY, it can be added directly to the dough, either by blending it into the dry flour, or by adding it to the dough after a minute of mixing. Just make sure the dough will be mixed for at least five additional minutes after the IDY has been added.

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

By Tom Lehmann
Photo by Josh Keown

Our mixer finally crashed and we got a 40-quart vertical cutter mixer (VCM) to replace it. How does this mixer compare against our old 80-quart mixer?

A: The first thing to know about the VCM is that it has a much higher mixing speed. The two-speed models mix at 1750 RPM at low speed and at 3500 RPM at high speed. Single-speed models mix only at 1750 RPM. In most cases, only the 1750 RPM speed is used for dough mixing. This high speed mixing means that the mixing times will be a lot shorter, typically in the 70- to 90-second range, and due to the high speed mixing, dough heating may be a problem.

To address the dough temperature issue, we suggest that you have a five-gallon bucket of ice water at hand, and between doughs, fill the mixing bowl with the ice water, then pour it back into the bucket when you’re ready to add the ingredients for your next dough. The short mixing time can pose a problem for those using instant dry yeast (IDY), as the mixing time is not sufficiently long enough to fully hydrate the yeast or properly incorporate it into the dough. For this reason, IDY should be hydrated in 95 F water for
10 minutes prior to addition to the dough (I like to add it directly to the dough water after hydration).

If you are using active dry yeast (ADY), you have to hydrate it anyway, so there won’t be any change for your normal handling procedure. If you use fresh, compressed yeast, we suggest adding the yeast to the dough water in the mixing bowl, then running the mixer for a couple seconds to fully suspend the yeast throughout the dough water. The remainder of dough ingredients can then be added.

VCMs come with two different mixing attachments. One is flat, looking something like an airplane propeller, while the other one is curved, and sharp on the leading edges. The flat mixing attachment is the correct one to use when mixing dough, while the sharp, curved one is correct for cutting or chopping applications. To assess the correct mixing time when going from a planetary mixer to a VCM, mix the dough just long enough to achieve a smooth appearing skin on the dough. Unlike with other dough mixers, it is easy to over mix a pizza dough in a VCM, so proceed cautiously, making adjustments in mixing time in increments of not more than five or 10 seconds. By following these basic guidelines, the VCM should work well for you.


What is your opinion of spiral dough mixers?

A: I think spiral mixers are the greatest things since sliced pizza. They are highly efficient and mix the dough well with essentially the same total mixing times as a typical planetary mixer when using second speed. In addition, they will mix doughs from full-size (whatever is appropriate for the mixer) to as small as 25 percent of full capacity.

Because of this, I always suggest to buyers that they purchase a mixer a little larger than what they think they need. The mixer will then have the needed capacity to meet future growth demands. These can mix a relatively large amount of dough with a fairly small power draw, making them highly efficient. They also have a footprint that isn’t much larger than most 80-quart planetary mixers, so they are not difficult to fit into most shops. The larger mixers will typically have a removable bowl on wheels, allowing the bowl to be moved around the shop. However, most of the smaller size spiral mixers don’t have this feature, so the dough will need to be removed from the mixer and manually transported to the work area for cutting and balling.

Most shops using spiral mixers address this issue by simply installing the mixer as close as possible to the cutting bench, as this allows them to easily cut dough from the bowl and toss it onto the bench for cutting as needed. A handy feature that I would like to see more often on spiral mixers of all sizes is a removable drain plug in the bowl.

To clean a spiral mixer, we typically pour some hot water into the bowl and then cover it with a sheet of plastic, allowing the bowl to be steamed, thus softening any dough residue in the bowl. After steaming for about
15 minutes, the bowl can be scrubbed using a nylon bristle pot brush. The bowl is then rinsed and sanitized. A drain plug makes cleaning the mixer a bit easier by allowing the wash water, rinse water and sanitizer to be simply drained from the bowl by placing a bucket under the drain plug and removing the plug. Without a drain plug, you will need to bail the water out of the bowl like bailing a sinking boat.

So why don’t we see more spiral mixers used in pizzerias? It’s probably because they don’t have any provision for changing the agitator; hence, you can’t mix sauce in them. They also don’t have an attachment hub, so you can’t install an attachment for chopping, grinding or slicing to the mixer. But if you’re looking to update your dough mixer, and you can keep your old planetary mixer to do the sauce and cutting chores, a spiral mixer might be just the ticket.

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

BY TOM LEHMANN
PHOTOS BY RICK DAUGHERTY

Q: I’ve heard of a thing called “dough factor.” Can you explain this to me?

A: Dough factor –– also known as “dough loading” –– is used to calculate the amount of dough needed to increase or decrease a pizza’s size while keeping everything in correct balance in regard to dough, sauce and cheese weights. In our case, we can also think of it as ounces of dough, cheese or sauce per square inch of surface area. It can be used to manipulate the size of both thin- and thick-crust pizzas. To begin, make any size pizza you’re comfortable working with, and adjust the amount of dough used to give you what you feel is a perfect pizza crust for your specific application. Now do the same thing with the amount of sauce and cheese used on the pizza. This might take a few trials, but the effort will be well worth it as you begin developing the different sizes of pizza you want to offer. Let’s assume you used a 12-inch round format to develop this perfect pizza. Using the formula to find the surface area of a circle (pi x R squared), we will use pi as 3.14 and R is equal to ½ of the diameter, so for our 12-inch diameter pizza the math will look like this: 3.14 X 36 = 113.04 (we’ll call it 113 square inches). If we used 10 ounces of dough to get our perfect crust, we will divide 10 ounces by 113 to get 0.0884955 ounces of dough per square inch. Let’s just call it .088 ounces per square inch. For the sauce loading we will do the same thing, only using the sauce weight instead of the dough weight. Let’s say we used 7½ ounces of cheese on our perfect pizza. We now divide the sauce weight by 113 to get our “cheese factor” or loading per square inch. Here is what that math will look like: 7½ divided by 113 = .663716 (call it 0.066 ounces of cheese per square inch). For the sauce we just plug in the sauce weight, which in this case, let’s say was 3½ ounces, and divide it by 113. So we get 3½ divided by 113 = .0309734 (call it .031 ounces of sauce per square inch).

Based on this, we come up with the following factors: Dough: 0.088 Sauce: 0.031 Cheese: 0.066 To use these factors, we must not decide what size pizzas we want to make and instead determine the surface area for each. Let’s say we want to make a 16-inch pizza. Remember the formula pi X R squared. So, 3.14 X 64 = 200.96 (call it 201-square inches), and all we need to do now is to simply multiply each of our three factors by 201 to get the weights for the dough, sauce and cheese to make our 16-inch pizza. Dough: 201 x 0.088 = 17.688 (call it 17.75 ounces of dough needed). Sauce: 201 x 0.031 = 6.231 (call it 6.25 ounces of sauce needed). Cheese: 201 x 0.066 = 13.266 (call it 13.25 ounces) If you want to make a special square or rectangular shaped pizza you would do the same thing, but to find the surface area you would simply multiply the length times the width of the pan. For example, a 16-inch x 16-inch square pan would have 16 x 16 = 256 square inches as opposed to 201 square inches for the same size round pan. By using this method to calculate the dough, sauce and cheese weights needed for each of your pizza sizes, you will find that each of your pizza sizes will exhibit a similar bake time (to some extent dependent upon the weight and number of “other” toppings) regardless of the size/diameter.

Q: How does the dough mixing time affect the finished crust?

A: Due to the number of different types of flour used to make pizza dough, there is no hard and fast answer to your question. But, as a general rule, the longer you mix a pizza dough, the finished crumb structure or porosity will become more bread-like, which may ultimately result in a tougher, more chewy crust with an inherent loss of crispiness.
The rule when mixing pizza dough is to just mix it enough to develop a smooth, satiny appearance to the dough. Once it has achieved this stage of gluten development, it can be taken to the bench for scaling and rounding/balling without undue stickiness. At this level of gluten development –– which is really quite minimal –– the dough will handle well at the bench and produce a finished crust with a desirably open, porous crumb structure imparting maximum potential for tender eating and firm, crispy textural characteristics.

The only time when it is desirable, if not mandatory, to mix pizza dough to full or near complete gluten development is when the dough will be used to make commercial frozen pizza dough (and long frozen shelf life characteristics of 12 to 20 weeks are targeted). But for any retail frozen pizza dough, which will be frozen in a static freezer at temperatures of 0 to -10 F and where a maximum of three weeks frozen shelf life is the extreme target, regular dough mixing times and procedures for achieving limited gluten development should be used.

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

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. Some of the more common reasons for sticky dough and the appropriate solutions are as follows:

Excessive Dough Absorption: This results in a decidedly wet, tacky feel. The only real corrective action is to reduce the amount of water added to the dough. I generally recommend making these corrections in increments of two percent (based on the weight of flour in the dough).

Under-mixed Dough: This has a sticky feel. Any dough that has not been mixed long enough to develop a smooth skin on it during the mixing stage will likely be somewhat sticky. Some people don’t find this to be a problem because they use a lot of dusting flour as a part of their crust’s signature.

Excessive Use of Malt: This can result in a sticky dough that just doesn’t seem to be corrected by any changes to the dough absorption or mixing time. The only corrective action is to reduce the amount of malt syrup added to the dough, or to change over to a non-diastatic (enzyme free) malt syrup. What is happening here is that the amylase enzyme in the malt syrup is breaking down part of the starch in the flour and converting it to fermentable sugars for metabolism by the yeast. Wen these starches are hydrolyzed, the water that they are holding is released into the dough and that, combined with the newly formed sugars, creates a decidedly sticky dough feel.

Every few years we hear about wheat that has sprouted while it is still in the field awaiting harvest. When the wheat sprouts, the enzymatic activity increases in a hurry, and when this wheat finds its way into your flour, it will result in a higher than normal enzyme activity in the flour. Here in the U.S. this is seldom a problem as the flour millers are diligent in keeping this from happening. But for readers in other countries, you may not be as fortunate. In this case, just be sure to put a light coating of oil on the dough before you remove it from the mixer. This should help to alleviate some of the stickiness.

Insufficient Salt Content: This creates dough stickiness that can easily be corrected by increasing the salt level to at least 1.75 percent of the weight of flour used in the formula.

Incorrect Hydration of Active Dry Yeast: When this is the case, some of the glutathione from the ADY is leached out. ADY should always be hydrated in warm water (105-110 F). If the ADY is hydrated in cold water, the glutathione that is leached out of the yeast can easily cause a soft, slightly sticky dough condition. In this case, it should also be noted that the dough performance will probably be less than ideal due to the impaired yeast condition. This can also happen with instant dry yeast that is hydrated in cold water.

In the end, if you find yourself in a sticky situation, just remember that application of oil to the dough is probably the single most effective action to take, regardless of the cause of the stickiness.

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.

A: The first thing to know about the VCM is that it has a much higher mixing speed. The two-speed models mix at 1750 RPM at low speed and at 3500 RPM at high speed. Single-speed models mix only at 1750 RPM. In most cases, only the 1750 RPM speed is used for dough mixing. This high speed mixing means that the mixing times will be a lot shorter, typically in the 70- to 90-second range, and due to the high speed mixing, dough heating may be a problem.

To address the dough temperature issue, we suggest that you have a five-gallon bucket of ice water at hand, and between doughs, fill the mixing bowl with the ice water, then pour it back into the bucket when you’re ready to add the ingredients for your next dough. The short mixing time can pose a problem for those using instant dry yeast (IDY) as the mixing time is not sufficiently long enough to fully hydrate the yeast or properly incorporate it into the dough. For this reason, IDY should be hydrated in 95 F water for 10 minutes prior to addition to the dough (I like to add it directly to the dough water after hydration).

If you are using active dry yeast (ADY), you have to hydrate it anyway, so there won’t be any change for your normal handling procedure. If you use fresh, compressed yeast, we suggest adding the yeast to the dough water in the mixing bowl, then running the mixer for a couple seconds to fully suspend the yeast throughout the dough water. The remainder of dough ingredients can then be added.

VCMs come with two different mixing attachments. One is flat, looking something like an airplane propeller, while the other one is curved and sharp on the leading edges. The flat mixing attachment is the correct one to use when mixing dough, while the sharp, curved one is correct for cutting or chopping applications. To assess the correct mixing time when going from a planetary mixer to a VCM, mix the dough just long enough to achieve a smooth appearing skin on the dough. Unlike with other dough mixers, it is very easy to over-mix a pizza dough in a VCM, so proceed cautiously, making adjustments in mixing time in increments of no more than 5 or 10 seconds. By following these basic guidelines, the VCM should work well for you.

A: Some of my favorite ways to “spice-up” old favorites are as follows:

Marinate pieces of skinless chicken breast in lemon, lime or coconut juice. Add one of these along with a few pieces of drained or frozen/thawed peach slices to a pizza. Add a few pieces of pecan nuts to the top of the pizza to increase the “wow” factor. Or, if you used the coconut juice marinated chicken, try adding a little shredded coconut to the top of the pizza instead of the pecans.

Offer a simple shrimp pizza using a white sauce (Alfredo) on the dough skin to replace your regular pizza sauce. Marinate baby shrimp in lemon or lime juice. Begin by brushing a little olive oil over the dough. Add some diced garlic, followed by the white sauce. Sprinkle the top of the pizza with dried dill weed, and add the marinated shrimp. Follow this by adding some red and green pepper slices, and a little red onion. Top with a light application of Mozzarella cheese (about 4 ounces for a 12-inch pie), and finish by adding 1 ounce of shredded Parmesan cheese. Bake the same as your regular pizzas.

Offer a slightly upscale version of your meat pizza using a 50/50 blend of your pizza sauce with a tangy BBQ sauce, garnish with red onion rings, and a sprinkling of smoked Provolone and Parmesan cheese.

These are some of the things that I like to do to add something a little different. Use your imagination to come up with your own special treatment of one or more of your house favorites!

A: I think spiral mixers are the greatest things since sliced pizza. They are highly efficient, mixing the dough very well, and with essentially the same total mixing times as a typical planetary mixer when using second speed. In addition, they will mix doughs from full size (whatever is appropriate for the mixer) to as small as 25 percent of full capacity.

Because of this, I always suggest to potential buyers that they purchase a mixer a little larger than what they think they need; then, the mixer will have the needed capacity to meet future growth demands. Due to the design of spiral mixers, they can mix a relatively large amount of dough with a fairly small power draw, making them highly efficient. They also have a foot print that isn’t much larger than most 80-quart planetary mixers, so they are not difficult to fit into most shops. The larger size mixers will typically have a removeable bowl on wheels, allowing the bowl to be moved around the shop.Most of the smaller size spiral mixers don’t have this feature, so the dough will need to be removed from the mixer and manually transported to the work area for cutting and balling.

Most shops using spiral mixers address this issue by simply installing the mixer as close as possible to the cutting bench, as this allows them to easily cut dough from the bowl and toss it onto the bench for cutting as needed. A handy feature that I would like to see more often on spiral mixers of all sizes is a removeable drain plug in the bowl. To clean a spiral mixer, we typically pour some hot water into the bowl and cover it with a sheet of plastic, allowing the bowl to be steamed, thus softening any dough residue in the bowl. After steaming for about 15 minutes, the bowl can be scrubbed out using a nylon bristle pot brush. The bowl is then rinsed and sanitized. A drain plug makes cleaning the mixer a bit easier by allowing the wash water, rinse water and sanitizer to be simply drained from the bowl by placing a bucket under the drain plug, and removing the plug. Without a drain plug, you will need to bail the water out of the bowl like bailing a sinking boat.

So, why don’t we see more spiral mixers used in pizzerias? It’s probably because they don’t have any provision for changing the agitator. Hence, you can’t mix sauce in them. And they don’t have an attachment hub, so you can’t install an attachment for chopping, grinding or slicing (a.k.a. pelican head) to the mixer. But, if you’re looking to update your dough mixer, and you can keep your old planetary mixer to do the sauce and cutting chores, a spiral mixer might be just the ticket.

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.

BY TOM LEHMANN
PHOTOS BY JOSH KEOWN

Why are pizza dough recipes/formulas expressed in percentages rather than in amounts?

The easiest way to express a dough formula is in what is referred to as baker’s percent. The amount of each ingredient is expressed as a percent of the total flour weight used in the dough formulation. This allows for easy checking to make sure all ingredients are in correct balance regardless of batch size, and it also allows you to adjust the batch/dough size up or down while keeping all ingredients in correct balance. To find the correct weight for each ingredient you must first decide how much flour you want to use. The total flour weight is always equal to 100 percent. Here is a typical dough formula in baker’s percent:

Flour: 100 percent
Salt: 1.75 percent
Sugar: 1.5 percent
Instant Dry Yeast: 0.375 percent
Oil: 2 percent Water: 58 percent

Let’s say we want to use 35 pounds of flour. To find the amount of each ingredient, using your handy calculator enter the flour weight X the ingredient percent and press the “%” key, then read the ingredient weight in the display window. Remember, the ingredient weight will be in the same weight units that the flour weight is expressed in. To manipulate the size of your dough, simply plug in the new flour weight and repeat the above calculator entries. It really is that easy.

If you already know the ingredient weights and you want to put the formula into baker’s percent, start out by putting 100 percent next to the flour weight. Flour is always equal to 100 percent. Then divide each ingredient weight by the flour weight and multiply by 100 to get the baker’s percent for each of the ingredients.

Here are a couple of neat things that you can use baker’s percent for:

If you add up all of the percentages, in the example formula above, we get 163.625 percent. Divide this by 100 and you get 1.63625 (call it 1.63). How much dough will this formula make? To answer that question just multiply the flour weight by 1.63. If we are using 35 pounds of flour we will get 1.63 x 35 = 57.05 (call it 57 pounds) of dough. If I were to increase the dough weight to 40 pounds we would get 1.63 x 40 = 65.2 (call it 65 pounds) of dough. u If you have an order for 30 large pizzas tomorrow, and your dough weight for each large pizza is 17½ ounces, how much dough would you need to make just for this order? Here is how you do it:
30 x 17.5-ounces = 525-ounces of dough will be needed. Divide the total dough weight (525 ounces) by 1.63 to find the total flour weight needed to make a dough weighing 525-ounces. 525 divided by 1.63 = 322.08 (call it 321ounces/20 pounds) of flour would be needed to make the dough for this order.

As you can see, baker’s percent can be a pretty handy tool to work with.

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

By Tom Lehmann
Photos by Josh Keown

Here we are, October and National Pizza Month. It’s time to celebrate! For some operators the summer has been slow, but now that kids are back in school, pizza is back on the menu again for social and school functions, and home meals for families on the go. This is the month to begin promoting your pizzas for what they really are. Pizza represents a great meal value just as it is, but when combined with a side order of breadsticks and a little dipping sauce, it can make for a great dinner. And if you have a picky eater, don’t worry because pizza is one of those foods that you can tailor to everyone’s likes or dislikes. Just think about how many orders you’ve had for pizzas made with half pepperoni and half sausage.

To promote pizza this month, think about bun­dling your pizza with some of your other sides to create a meal presentation, such as with any large pizza, receive a free order of breadsticks, or sub­stitute a simple dessert item for the breadsticks, like a free 10-inch dessert pizza or cinnamon breadsticks with the purchase of any large pizza. Promoted as a mealtime special, you just might put ideas into your customer’s minds.

October is also the “kick off” time for many of the televised fall sporting events so it might be harder to pull some people away from their TV sets, especially on that typically slow Monday night. If this is the case, we need to think about a Monday night game special; for example, after 7 p.m., order any large pizza and receive a free two-liter bottle of soft drink. This works well when tied in with local teams that are playing, or you might even think about promoting a post-game special (es­pecially if you have dine in) after a local school sporting event.

October can also be a good time to celebrate National Pizza Month with a few special pizzas of your own creation. One of my own personal favorites at this time of the year is what I like to call my T-rex Pizza. This is nothing more than a four-eat pizza garnished with onion slices and fresh tomato, or tomato filets. If you don’t already have them in inventory, consider bringing in some steak strips for use on this pizza –– they’re really visual and make it scream meat!

Questions of the Month

Q: Is it possible to make a take-and­bake pizza using my regular pizza dough?

A: Yes it is. In fact, most operators don’t use anything special for their take-and-bake pizza. We do recommend that you follow these sugges­tions when using your dough for take and bake pizza as it will give your dough the ability to withstand the time and temperature abuse your pizzas could potentially be exposed to once taken home by the consumer. If you manage your dough through the cooler, use it only after the first day of refrigerated storage. After removing the dough from the cooler, experi­ment to determine how soon you can begin opening the dough into pizza skins by your forming method. This is important as it allows you to keep the dough as cool as possible right up to the point of sale. Once the dough is opened into a pizza skin, place several skins on a wire screen using a piece of parchment paper and a light coating of spray oil between each skin to prevent them from sticking together. store the pre-opened skins in your cooler or under your prep table for ease of ac­cess. when an order is place for a take-and-bake pizza, just remove a skin from the stack and place it onto a cardboard pizza circle with a piece of parchment paper between the dough and the circle. Or, if you wish, you can use one of the several ovenable trays available for this application, then dress the skin to the order.

Note: If you didn’t lightly spray or brush the skins with oil when stacking them, it is suggested that you lightly brush the dough surface with oil prior to application of the sauce as this will help to prevent migration of moisture from the sauce into the dough while it is being held in the customer’s refrigerator, resulting in an unwanted gum line in the finished pizza. As soon as the pizza is dressed, wrap it in stretch film and place it into a box for ease of handling while it is being transported home by the consumer. Make sure you provide all required information with the pizza, including baking directions, a state­ment to bake the pizza soon after getting it home, and above all, don’t forget those most important words “KeeP reFrIgerATeD.”

Q: Does it make a difference if I add flour or water to my mixing bowl first?

A: yes it does. If you add the flour first, the mixing time is typically much longer than it is when you add the water first, and this translates into more wear and tear on your mixer. with most pizza doughs containing 52- to 58-percent absorption/water (based on the total flour weight) the mixing time is in the range of 10 to 12 minutes with the water added first; however, when the flour is added first, the mixing time, to get the same level of development, will average five to eight minutes longer. I’ve also noticed that with those who do add the water first, they also like to add the salt and sugar –– and sometimes the yeast –– into the water, and mix this for a couple of minutes. This really isn’t necessary, and it can save you a few minutes off of your total dough mixing time if you just add the water, then the flour and drop the salt and sugar on top of the flour.

Q: To settle an argument I’m having with a couple of my employees, can you tell me how long it takes a skilled person to cut, scale and ball a dough based on 50 pounds of flour?

A: To some extent, this will depend upon the scaling weight of the dough pieces. Using a scaling weight of 14 ounces, we have demonstrated to a group of students that two people can cut, scale and round a dough, based on 50 pounds of flour (about 83½ pounds of dough) in just over 12 minutes. This is averaging about eight pieces per minute, and I might add that we don’t do this all the time. Just think how much faster it could be done by a well-trained hardworking experienced crew of pizza professionals.

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

By Tom Lehmann
Photos by Rick Daugherty

For many operators, dough is the major challenge to making great pizza. This month we will address some of the things that operators can do to produce consistent quality dough. Like so many other things in life, pizza dough performance can be typified by the old motto of “GI-GO” or “garbage in, garbage out.” Your dough will only be as good as the consistency that went into making and managing it.
Let’s start with the way the ingredients are prepared for use in making the dough. If they are volumetrically portioned, there is an inher-ent level of inaccuracy from dough to dough, but if the ingredients are weighted, the amount used from dough to dough will always be the same, hence we will have a more consistent dough providing a higher level of performance from dough to dough and from day to day.

Now that we have our dough ingredients scaled accurately, we can focus our attention on the finished dough temperature. I have said repeatedly that control of the finished dough temperature is the key to successful dough management. While there is no one specific temperature that is right for every operation, we have found that a good dough temperature to target is 70 to 75 F when the dough is to be stored in a reach-in cooler, and 80 to 85 F when a walk-in cooler is used. The finished dough temperature is controlled by the temperature of the water that is added to the dough. To find the correct water temperature for your dough, here is a simple formula: 

3 times the desired dough temperature minus the sum of the room temperature, flour temperature and the friction factor of the mixer.

The friction factor can be calculated, for the friction factor value. If you are using a VCM (vertical cutter mixer) type of mixer, you won’t be too far off by using 60 for your friction factor value. Once we have our water temperature to give us our desired finished dough temperature, we can now work temperature of the water that is added but that’s another article, so for now, let’s on assembling the dough to the dough. To find the correct water temperature for your dough, here is a assume you’re using a planetary type mixer with a bowl and hook.

With this ingredients in the mixing bowl. The first ingredient to go in should be the simple formula: mixing arrangement, you can plug in 45 water, followed by the salt and sugar (if used). Next, add the flour and the yeast. If you are using IDY (instant dry yeast) it can be added dry directly to the flour, if you’re using ADY (active dry yeast) be sure to pre-hydrate/acti-vate it in 100 F water for 10 minutes before adding it to the flour. If you use compressed yeast, just crumble it right on top of the flour (contrary to popular belief, there is no reason to put it into the water and suspend it). The dough is now ready to be mixed. Begin mixing at a low speed just until all of the flour has been hydrated. This will take about two minutes or a little less. Next, add the oil or shortening and mix at low speed for another minute and then continue mixing in your normal manner. At the conclusion of mixing, measure the finished dough temperature and record it in a mixer’s logbook.

When the dough is properly mixed, and at the correct temperature, it should be taken directly to the bench for scaling and balling. Immediately place the dough balls into plastic dough boxes, or other dough storage containers. Wipe the dough balls lightly with oil and take directly to the cooler. Cross stack the dough boxes (if used) to facilitate cooling. The cross stack time will depend upon the weight of the dough balls, but in general the following can be applied:

8 to 12 ounces = 90 minutes
13 to 18 ounces = 150 minutes
19 to 24 ounces = 180 minutes

After cross stacking, the dough boxes are down stacked and nested to prevent drying. If you use plastic bags or place the dough balls on a sheet pan for storage, you should lightly oil the dough balls as you place them into the bags. Or if using sheet pans, oil the top of the dough balls after placement on the sheet pan, and cover with stretch wrap of a plastic bag. There is no need to cross stack or down stack. You can now kiss the dough good night.


The dough can be stored in the cooler for up to three days. To use the dough, remove about a three-hour supply of dough from the cooler, but do not uncover it. Allow the dough to temper at room temperature for about two-and-a-half hours and begin opening the dough balls into pizza skins as needed. The dough balls will be good to use for about three more hours after you begin opening them into skins. You may dock the dough skins with a dough docker if you wish, but it generally isn’t necessary as bubbling should be minimal. Any dough balls not needed within the three-hour window can be pre-opened and placed on a pizza screen and stored on a wire tree rack in the cooler (be sure to cover after 30 minutes in the cooler) for use later in the day. To use these pre-opened skins, just remove them from the cooler, leaving them covered, and allow then to temper at room temperature for about 30-minutes, and then use as you would any other pizza skin.

The procedure above does not allow for the dough to set out at room temperature between mixing and going into the cooler for any more time than what is necessary to cut/scale and ball it. This provides for a denser dough going into the cooler which is actually easier to efficiently cool than dough that is beginning to ferment because it was allowed to sit out at room temperature at some point prior to going into the cooler. This is an important aspect to this dough management procedure as it provides for uniform and consistent cooling of the dough — which allows it to be held for up to several days in the cooler and still provide good dough performance and finished crust quality characteristic.


You may have also noted that at the dough mixer, the oil was not added along with the water. When this hap- pens, the oil will float to the top and come into direct contact with the flour, thus allowing for some of the flour to become oil soaked. Since oil soaked flour does not allow for the development of gluten (the stuff that holds the dough together and provides for the stretch), we tend to get differences in the dough that can be seen in the mixing bowl. This has lead to the conclusion that the weather has an influence on the amount of water the dough needs. This could not be any further from the truth. In- stead, what is being seen is just a lack of dough strength due to less gluten being developed, so more flour is added to the dough, thus upsetting the balance of the dough formula. By adding the oil later as described, the flour is allowed to fully hydrate with the water so the full gluten potential is developed from the flour.

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

By Tom Lehmann
Photos by Josh Keown

Q: What are the advantages to showing a dough recipe/formula in baker’s percent?

A: The advantages are that it allows you to determine, at a glance, if the dough is in correct balance. It also allows you to manipulate the size of a dough recipe with 100-percent certainty that all of the ingredients are used at the correct amount. Lastly, if you are managing your dough ball inventory against a fixed quantity, it means that you can easily determine exactly how much flour will be needed to make a dough batch of any specific size. Here are some examples of what I mean for each of these.

It can be difficult to determine if 3 cups of salt is the correct amount to use for a dough that is based on 25 pounds of flour weight … but if you change this to baker’s percent by dividing the ingredient weight by the total flour weight and multiply by 100, you will readily see that 3 cups of salt (28.8 ounces, or 1.8 pounds) is 7.2 percent of the total flour weight, which is way too much salt considering that the normal level of salt might be around 2 percent and the maximum around 3 percent. As for manipulating the size of a dough batch using baker’s percent, this is also very easy. For example, here is a typical pizza dough formula shown in baker’s percent:

Flour: 100 percent
Salt: 1.75 percent
Sugar: 1.5 percent
Instant dry yeast: 0.375 percent
Olive oil: 2 percent
Water: 58 percent

If you want to base the dough size on 40 pounds of flour, just plug in 40 pounds (or 640 ounces) next to the flour since the total flour weight is always equal to 100 percent. To find the amount of each ingredient needed to complete the dough, use your calculator and enter the weight of the flour, then press “x” and enter the percent of the ingredient that you want the weight for followed by the “%” key.

This is what the entries will look like. Salt: 640 x 1.75 (press the “%” key) and read 11.2 ounces in the display window.

Sugar: 640 x 1.5 (press the “%” key) and read 9.6 ounces in the display window.

Instant dry yeast: 640 x 0.375 (press the “%” key) and read 2.4 ounces in the display window.

Olive oil: 640 x 2 (press the “%” key) and read 12.8 ounces in the display window.

Water: 25 x 58 (press the “%” key) and read 14.5 pounds in the display window.

Your total dough weight, based on 40 pounds of flour will be 65.45 pounds.

Note: For most of the smaller ingredients it will be easier to show the flour weight in ounces, while larger ingredients, like the water, are best am manufacturing calculated with the flour weight shown in pounds. Remember, the calculated weight of the ingredient will always be in the same weight unit that the flour is shown in.

Baker’s percent can also be used to help manage your dough ball inventory. This is done either through dough ball projections or a fixed dough ball inventory that you will need to rebuild daily. In either case you will need to calculate how much dough will be needed to make a specific number of dough balls.

As an example, let’s say you need to make 55 dough balls at 17 ounces each and 107 dough balls at 14 ounces each. To make these, you will need a total of (55 x 17 + 107 x 14 = 2,433 ounces — or 152 pounds –– of dough). If you take the sum of the baker’s percent in your dough formula and divide it by 100, you will have a factor that you can use to determine how much flour you will need to use to make this number of dough balls. Using the above sample dough formula, the sum of the baker’s percent is 163.625. When divided by 100 it becomes 1.63625. All we need to do now is to divide the total dough weight by 1.63625 and we get 92.895 pounds of flour that will be needed to make the dough balls. Now all you need to do is to divide 92.895 by the pounds of flour you use to make a dough and you will know how many doughs you will need to make.

Using our above example dough formula, let’s say you use 40 pounds of flour to make your doughs: 92.895 divided by 40 = 2.32 batches of dough needed to make this number of dough balls. Here is where the real fun begins. So we don’t have any surplus of dough balls beyond what we need to rebuild the inventory, we can make two full size batches and one that is 3/10ths of our regular size. Here is how we make that 3/10ths size dough:

Multiply the full size dough weight by 0.3 to find the new dough weight (0.3 x 65.45 = 19.635 pounds of dough). Remember, by dividing the dough weight by the total baker’s percent divided by 100 we can find the flour weight needed to make this dough (begin by rounding the dough weight off to the next nearest pound — 20 pounds). 20 pounds divided by 1.63625 = 12.22 pounds of flour will be needed to make the dough.

It is suggested that the flour weight be rounded to the next nearest pound to allow for any dough loss resulting from scaling error when portioning the dough for the dough balls. With a flour weight of 13-pounds, again using the above dough formula the amounts of ingredients needed to make the dough will be as follows:

Flour: 100 percent = 13 pounds/208 ounces.

Salt: 1.75 percent = (208 ounces x 1.75 press the “%” key) and read 3.64-ounces.

Sugar: 1.5 percent = (208 ounces x 1.5 press the “%” key) and read 3.12 ounces.

Instant dry yeast: 0.375 percent (208 ounces x 0.375 press the “%” key) and read 0.78 ounce.

Olive oil: 2 percent (208 ounces x 2 press the “%” key) and read 4.16 ounces.

Water: 58 percent (13 pounds x 58 press the “%” key) and read 7.54 pounds

Adding up the weights of the ingredients we get a total calculated dough weight of 21.27 pounds (very close to our targeted 20 pounds). Ain’t math great?

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

By Tom Lehmann
Photos by Josh Keown

Q: We are making a thick-crust pizza but it doesn’t maintain any crispiness after we put it into the box. What can we do to make a crispier pizza?

A: One of the most commonly encountered causes for a thick crust pizza to lack or loose crispiness is lack of sufficient bake. Sure, you can “bake” a thick-crust pizza in five minutes, or a little more, and it will probably work well for you in a dine-in application, but when the pizza goes into
a box, it is a whole different game played by a different set of rules. Nothing much good happens to a pizza when it is placed into a box, and it is even worse when that box is placed into an insulated delivery bag for 20 minutes or more. This is where the longer baking time at a lower temperature comes into play. Due to the number of different oven options available, as well as the number of different baking profiles (air impingement ovens), I can’t give any specific baking directions, except to say that utilizing a longer bake time at a lower temperature will give you a thick-crust pizza that will hold up better to the rigors of delivery and carryout. Keep in mind, too, that when using an air impingement oven, you may need to alter the top finger profile to allow you to bake the pizza longer for a crispier eating characteristic without over baking the top of the pizza.

Q: We are opening a new store that will be primarily delivery and carryout. What are some of the things that we could do to our pizzas to provide our customers with the best possible product?

A: There are a number of things that can be done to enhance delivered or carryout pizza. while addressing these issues won’t assure you of the best del/co pizza ever made, it will give you the peace of mind that you are doing all you can, with what you have, to provide your customers with the best quality pizza available from your store.

• Try to limit the amount of vegetable toppings used, as they can be responsible for releasing water onto the pizza, resulting in a wet, soggy pizza. If you must use a lot of vegetable toppings, an oven that provides good top heat that will help to evaporate moisture from the top of the oven can be beneficial.
• Set your oven up to provide a longer bake as this will both help to allow for evaporation of moisture from the top of the pizza and to develop
• a thicker, crispier bottom crust characteristic that can tolerate the rigors of delivery and carryout without becoming overly soft too soon after the pizza is placed in the box.
• Allow the pizza to set on a wire rack or screen immediately after baking for a minute or so, allowing the pizza to “steam-off”beforecuttingandboxingit.
• Utilize one of the mats designed to hold the pizza up off of the bottom of the box and provide for some airflow under the pizza to prevent or slow down the steaming of the bottom crust.
• While this might sound a bit silly, make sure your pizza boxes have steam vents, and that the vents are opened.

Q: Is it true that there is a difference in crust flavor when yeast from different manufacturers is used?

A: No, it is not true. The yeast manufacturers go to great lengths to make sure their product is compatible with that of their competition in all aspects. There have been cases where an “improved” yeast is developed and commercialized, but in those cases the new yeast is given a new or different name.
I’ve had some operators swear that when they used fresh yeast (aka compressed yeast) they saw differences in both flavor and fermentation activity between brands, but when further investigated we found the differences to be due to the age of the yeast, not specific to the manufacturer. To this, I might add that there was one major yeast manufacturer, who for years was thought to have the most active yeast of any of the major manufacturers. So being curious as we are in research, we tested the different brands of yeast against the proclaimed superior product using the latest industry accepted procedures. what we found was that there was no significant difference in fermentation capability between the different brands tested,but why were people saying that they saw a difference? Surely they couldn’t all be wrong.

What we ultimately discovered was that the said to be superior yeast was packaged in 17-ounce, one-pound bricks. That’s right, 17 ounces to one of their bricks, while everyone else used the accepted weight of 16 ounces to the pound. but didn’t that cost them in the end, just giving away so much extra yeast? No, not really because it explained why this particular yeast manufacturer had an advertising budget that could be covered by a schoolboy’s lunch money. A pretty neat trick I would say!

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

By Tom Lehmann

For some of us achieving a crispy crust pizza is like chasing down that legendary Golden Fleece, but it really doesn’t have to be such a massive undertaking. Below are some tips to get you on your way.

Tip No. 1: The protein content of the flour can influence the potential crispiness of the finished crust. We have found that flour with a protein content of at least 12 percent is necessary to achieve maximum crispiness. Since most “pizza flours” contain anywhere from 12 to 14 percent protein content, most of us should be okay in this regard. But if you happen to be using an all-purpose or H&R type flour, the lack of protein in the flour might be limiting the potential crispiness of your crust.

Tip No. 2: Fermentation has a great influence on crispiness due to the softening affect that it has on the dough. The softer, more relaxed, dough consistency allows for improved expansion properties of the dough during baking, resulting in a more open, porous internal structure within the crust. This open structure effectively inhibits heat transfer through the crust, allowing the surface of the crust to reach a higher temperature during baking, thus creating a crispier finished crust.

Tip No. 3: The amount of water added to the dough can have a significant effect on the crispiness of the finished crust, but not in the way as many of you may think. It’s actually the addition of more water to the dough that helps to create the conditions for a crispier finished crust. The water will make the dough somewhat softer, allowing it to more freely expand during those critical first few seconds of baking. This creates the desirable, open crumb structure that effectively blocks some of the heat transfer through the dough and allows for a better bottom bake (ultimately leading to a crispier finished crust).

Tip No. 4: Incorrect finished dough temperature can wreak havoc on your efforts. If the dough temperature is too high, we may find that the dough exhibits a pronounced tendency to “blow” during storage.

Tip No. 5: Incorrect dough management procedures can also effect crust crispiness for reasons similar to those cited in Tip No. 4 above. For example, if the dough is allowed to ferment at room temperature for any significant amount of time prior to taking it to the cooler after mixing, the dough will begin to ferment, making it less dense, more open and porous. In essence, the dough becomes more difficult to cool down in the cooler, leading to over-proofed dough balls in the box.

A similar problem can develop if we bypass the important cross-stacking step when putting the dough up in the cooler. The cross stacking of the dough boxes allows heat to freely escape from the dough, resulting in effective and consistent cooling of the dough. If the dough boxes are not cross-stacked, the heat is trapped within the dough boxes. Since yeast is a living organism, it produces heat (heat of metabolism) as it metabolizes nutrients and ferments. This too will result in dough balls that are either grown together, blown, or just wet and sticky on the following days.

Assuming we’re baking in the right type of oven, on the right type and color of pan or disk (if used), and the baking time and temperature are within reason, these tips might provide just the ticket to getting the crispy crust we’ve been looking for. You might note that many of the tips seem to have a common denominator — that is to allow the dough to rise slightly (oven spring) during the first few seconds of baking, which helps to establish an open, porous crumb structure within the dough/crust, thus preventing excessive heat transfer through the dough. This allows for more of the bottom bake to go into baking and drying the bottom of the dough, ultimately resulting in a crispier finished crust.

Don’t worry about the top of the pizza not getting sufficiently done when you block some of the heat from the bottom of the oven. The top heat of the oven will handle the top of the pizza just fine. But if you should find a problem, it is easily corrected by either increasing the oven temperature or extending the baking time slightly.

By Tom Lehmann

Some people have accused me of making my dough formulas too complex and difficult to make because I insist upon giving the ingredient amounts in percentages. Actually, they're given in what is called "baker’s percent". I must admit, I'm guilty as charged, but before you condemn me, allow me to plead my case for using baker’s percent.
With baker’s percent, all ingredient amounts are expressed as a percentage of the total weight of the wheat flour contained in the formula/recipe, and the total flour weight is always given as 100 percent. For example, if a dough formula contains both white (pizza flour) and a whole-wheat flour, the total weight of the two flours will equal the total flour weight. Or, if a formula contains vital wheat gluten, the gluten weight will be added to the weight of the flour to arrive at the total flour weight. Do not include any other types of flour, such as soy flour, or corn flour, in the total flour weight.
Now for the fun part. Let’s say we want to determine the ingredient amounts to use for the following dough formula:
Flour 100 percent
Salt 1.75 percent
Sugar 2 percent
Olive oil 3 percent
Instant dry yeast 0.35 percent
Water 60 percent
The first thing to do is to ask yourself how much flour do I want to use? Or better put, how much flour will my mixer handle? Let’s say we have a mixer than can safely mix doughs based on up to 50-pounds of flour in the mixer. So we elect to use 50 pounds of flour, which is equal to 100 percent. Now we will turn to our handy calculator for a little assistance. To determine the amount of salt to use, press in 50 X 1.75, and then press the “percent” key. You will be able to read the amount of salt to add in the display window. In this case it will be 0.875 pounds of salt. If you need to convert this to ounces, just multiply it by 16 (the number of ounces in a pound) 0.875 X 16 = 14 ounces.
For the next ingredient, sugar at 2 percent will look like this: 50 X 2, press the percent key, and you’ll see the answer is 1 pound of sugar. Olive oil at 3 percent will be 50 X 3, then press the percent key and you’ll have 1.5 pounds of olive oil. Instant dry yeast at 0.35 percent will be 50 X 0.35, then press the percent key and you’ll have 0.175 pounds of instant dry yeast (0.175 X 16 = 2.8-ounces). Water at 60 percent will be 50 X 60, then press the percent key. You’ll have 30 pounds of water.
If you want to express a formula in baker's percent. All you need to do is divide the weight of each ingredient by the total weight of the flour and multiply by 100. Let me show you an example of how it's done. Here is a typical dough formula for a honey-wheat pizza dough:

35 pounds White flour
15 pounds Whole-wheat flour
14 ounces Salt
3 pounds Honey
2 pounds Butter flavored oil
4 ounces Instant dry yeast
30 pounds Water

Remember, we're going to divide the weight of each ingredient by the total weight of the wheat flour(s) and multiply by 100. In this formula the total weight of the wheat flour is 50 pounds, but it is comprised of both white and whole-wheat flour and we must show the proportions of each as a percent.
• White flour (35 pounds) divided by 50 (total flour weight) = 0.7 X 100 = 70 percent
• Whole-wheat flour (15pounds) divided by 50 (total flour weight) = 0.3 X 100 = 30 percent
• Salt (14 ounces). In this case you should show the weight as a decimal part of a pound (14 divided by 16 = 0.875 pound) 0.875 divided by 50 = 0.175 X 100 = 1.75 percent;
• Honey (3-pounds) divided by 50 = 0.006 X 100 = 6 percent;
• Butter flavored oil (2 pounds) divided by 50 = 0.004 X 100 = 4 percent
• Instant dry yeast (4 ounces). Here again we must change ounces to a decimal part of a pound (4 divided by 16 = 0.25-pound) 0.25 divided by 50 = 0.005 X100 = 0.5 percent
• Water (30-pounds) divided by 50 = 0.6 X 100 = 60 percent.

As you can see, baker’s percent will only work with weight measures, it will not work with volumetric measures (cups, teaspoons, tablespoons, etc.). There are some really great advantages to working with your formulas in baker's percent. For instance, you can tell, at a glance, if the formula is in proper balance (correct proportions), you can also easily increase or decrease the size of the dough without the need to "fiddle" with ingredient amounts, and you can easily size your dough to fit any mixer capacity.
If your dough is presently given in volumetric measures, it doesn't take too much to convert it to baker’s percent, but you will need to have a good scale available for weighing your ingredients. Begin by portioning out each ingredient as you normally do, but put each ingredient into its own separate container. When all of the ingredients have been portioned, weigh each container with the ingredient, then empty the ingredient into the mixing bowl and weigh the empty container. Subtract the "tare" weight of the container form the ingredient weight for the true ingredient weight. Do this for each ingredient that you portioned out. Now prepare a dough from the portioned ingredients and ask yourself if this is "my normal " dough. If the answer is yes, repeat the portioning and weighing procedure for two more doughs. If each one produces your normal dough take — the average weight for the three weights of each ingredient (add up each of the three weights and divide by three) — you will now have your formula shown with the correct ingredient weights and all that is left to do is to write down 100 percent next to the flour weight (remember flour is always 100 percent). Then divide the weight of each ingredient by the weight of the flour and multiply by 100. Do this for each of the ingredients and you have your formula in baker’s percent and you can manipulate it up or down in size without making any other changes to the ingredients.
Now that you have heard my side of the story, and you now know how to work a formula given in baker’s percent and understand the advantages of doing so, I trust that you will go easy on me the next time you see a formula given in baker’s percent.

By Tom Lehmann

Question: Should I cook or not cook my pizza sauce?

Answer: Okay, this doesn’t address dough, but it is a common question nevertheless. I can’t tell you not to cook your sauce, but I can give you some reasons why I personally wouldn’t want to cook my sauce.

1) Cooking the sauce does release flavors, but those flavors are released before the pizza is even made, and those flavors are lost to the air (sure makes the kitchen smell good though).

2) Once you heat the sauce to cook it, you’ve got to cool it back down to 40 F or lower for storage. Your local health department will apply the four-hour rule, so clock will begin ticking once the temperature of the cooked sauce drops below 160 F and it won’t stop until it reaches 40 F. This can be problematic with large batches of sauce, and it also puts an additional strain on the cooling capacity of your cooler.


3) Anytime you cook a sauce, you run the possibility of scorching it and ruining the flavor of the whole batch. Once this happens you don’t have many options except to toss it out and make another batch.

By Tom Lehmann

While yeast is a simple, single cell organism, what it does in a dough is rather complex. In addition to the yeast feeding on available carbohydrates, producing acids, carbon dioxide and alcohol as byproducts, the yeast also provides a source of enzymes such as amylolytic and proteolytic that break-down starches and proteins respectively.
Initially, when the dough is first placed into the cooler, fermentation continues along at a happy pace until the dough temperature begins to drop. As the temperature of the dough approaches 45 F, the rate of fermentation drops off dramatically. By the time the dough temperature has come down to box temperature (36 to 38 F), essentially no further fermentation is taking place. The dough is continuing to change as long as it is stored in the cooler. Those acids that were formed during the time the dough was fermenting are still present, and will slowly act on the flour proteins to weaken them, making the dough softer and more extensible. Ditto for the enzymes. The proteolytic (protease) enzymes will slowly hydrolyze the flour proteins, also contributing to a softer, more extensible dough. The amylolytic (amylase) enzymes are slowly converting starches to sugars (dextrins) for the yeast to feed upon. But since the yeast isn't actively feeding due to the depressed temperature of the dough, there can be an excess of these sugars, resulting in a sticky dough characteristic. These conditions continue throughout the refrigerated life of the dough.
In a normal pizza dough, with about 1.5 percent yeast (as compressed yeast), these conditions do not reach an intolerable level until about the 4th (or possibly even the 5th) day of refrigerated storage. At this point, we usually find the dough has become excessively soft, it collapses at the slightest provocation, and is rather sticky to the touch. When we bake the formed dough piece, the resulting crust may lack the necessary strength to exhibit rise in the center of the pizza and the edges might also fail to rise, resulting in what is affectionately known as a "knife edge." Overall, the crust might look more like a pancake than a pizza crust. This degradation of the dough will continue, until at some point the dough will be too soft and weak to do anything with and must be discarded.

By Tom Lehmann

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. Next, calculate the surface area using Pi X R squared as our formula for finding the surface area. Let’s say our size selection includes 10-inch, 12-inch and 16-inch pizzas. Here’s the math;
10-inch: 3.14 X 25 = 78.5 square inches
12-inch: 3.14 X 36 = 113.04 square inches
16-inch: 3.14 X 64 = 200.96 square inches.
Begin experimenting with different dough weights to find out what dough weight gives you the pizza that you want to have. If you want a good starting point, go with 1-ounce of dough per inch of diameter for any size up to 16 inches. Add or subtract dough weight until you are satisfied with the finished pizza. Now we’re ready to break out the calculator again. Divide the dough weight by the surface area of the pan, disk, or screen you made your pizza(s) on. This will give you the dough loading per square inch of pan surface. Let’s say you were making a thin crust pizza, and you found that 10 ounces of dough gave you the 12-inch pizza you were looking for. Here’s the math;
10 ounces divided by 113.04 = 0.0884642 ounce of dough per square inch of pan surface area. To calculate the amount of dough needed for each of your other sizes, all you need to do is to multiply this number (0.0884642) by the surface area of each of your other pan sizes.
Here’s the math;
10-inch: 78.5 square inches X 0.0884642 = 6.9444-ounces (7-ounces)
16-inch: 200.96 square inches X 0.0884642 = 17.777-ounces (17.75-ounces).
You can use this for calculating any size and type of pizza. The main advantage of using this procedure is that now all of your pizzas will have a similar amount of dough under them, only the size (diameter) will vary. This means that if you are using an air impingement oven or some other type of conveyor oven, all of your pizzas, with similar toppings, will have a similar baking time regardless of size (within reason). This will make setting up your conveyor oven(s) a lot easier.

By Tom Lehmann

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 10-inch pizza skin. Now you enter into the game of stretching it out only to have it snap back again. Don't go looking for another dough forming method just yet, for all is not lost. What you are experiencing is just a common case of snap-back, otherwise known as “dough memory.”
Excessive dough memory can result from a number of things. The most common cause is excessive flour strength for the dough management procedure. It’s true that historically high protein flour was the order of the day for making pizza. But with the dough management procedures that we use today offering excellent control over dough fermentation and allowing us to hold the dough for three days or more under proper refrigeration, those super high-protein flours are all but a thing of the past. Instead, we opt for flour types with protein levels of 12.2 to 13.5 percent. But every once in a while someone starts out using a super high-protein flour with a refrigerated dough management procedure and ends up complaining about excessive snap-back, or they might take it upon themselves to formulate their dough with too much salt. In this case, the excessive salt level can and will impede fermentation to the point where the dough is not properly fermented to fully mellow or condition the gluten for shaping into pizza skins. Along these same lines, anything that might slow down the yeast activity or fermentation rate of the dough can have a similar effect. Some of these things are: mixing the salt, sugar and yeast together in the dough water (not recommended); hydrating active dry yeast in water that is either too warm or too cold; finished dough with a temperature that is too low (cold), or just plain insufficient yeast level.


So now that we know what causes the problem, how do we go about correcting it? The obvious solutions are to use a lower protein content flour, something more like a common bread flour rather than a pizza flour will do wonders for both correcting snap-back and reducing the dough cost. Using the correct amount of yeast and using it properly is important, as is monitoring and controlling the finished dough temperature to keep it between 80 to 85 F.
But what if none of these actions work for you, or for whatever reason they can't be implemented? This is where we consider “additive ingredients.” These are highly specialized ingredients designed to address very specific problems. Here, we want to use what are commonly called “dough relaxers.” These are ingredients that function by modifying the flour protein to weaken the protein or to give it a more relaxed or stretchable characteristic. These include L-Cysteine Hydrochloride, glutathione, protease enzymes, and –– more familiar –– garlic and onion powder.
Although L-Cysteine and glutathione may sound intimidating, these are quite natural, being nothing more than amino acids (also known as protein building blocks). Think of them as ingredients making up a protein. Then there is the protease enzyme, a natural enzyme present with the yeast. It works by breaking down, or hydrolyzing, proteins to give the dough a more relaxed characteristic. Many people don't realize that both onion and garlic are also effective reducing agents in yeast-leavened doughs. By just adding some onion and/or garlic powder to the dough you can effectively reduce some of the undesirable memory characteristics of a dough. If the problem is really troublesome, you might need to bring out the "big guns" in the form of L-Cysteine or Glutathione.
These materials are so potent that the amounts used are only measured in parts per million parts of flour weight (one part per million, "ppm", is equal to one pound per one million pounds of flour), and they are fully capable of liquefying a dough if used at excessive levels. To facilitate the use of L-Cysteine, it is typically blended into a carrier such as whey, flour or starch, so it is in a highly diluted concentration that makes scaling of the ingredient much easier and a lot more accurate. Commercial products using L-Cysteine are readily available with PZ-44 being well-recognized in the pizza industry. Glutathione is very similar to L-Cysteine in both function and use levels. It is derived from yeast. As such, "dead yeast," as it is commonly called, is a common dough relaxer used in the pizza industry.
Protease enzymes are also very effective dough relaxers and also have the ability to completely liquefy a dough like L-Cysteine and Glutathione, but they are unique in their function in that they actually hydrolyze or destroy the protein rather than just modify it to achieve a relaxed dough condition. Protease enzymes also continue working in the dough all the way up until the time that the dough is baked in the oven, and the rate of reaction can be influenced by the temperature of the dough at the time of mixing. These characteristics tend to make protease enzymes difficult to control in most aspects of retail pizza production, hence they are seldom used except for rare cases where they might be included as part of an "additive ingredient package".
Onion and garlic (normally used as a powder) are effective dough relaxers that work in a manner similar to that of L-Cysteine and Glutathione but they have a limited reducing affect making it almost impossible to overdose or liquefy a dough. These ingredients can be added in the form of your regular onion or garlic powder, or if you don't want to have the accompanying characteristic flavor and aroma you can purchase a deodorized form.
Snap-back or excessive dough memory need not be a problem or source of aggravation once you understand what causes it and what steps can be taken to control it. Hopefully, this article has given some insight into the causes and measures that can be taken to correct this common problem.

By Tom Lehmann

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. It’s a nightmare come true, and panicking is usually the first reaction. But you can tell customers you’re closed (at least you shouldn’t) when lunchtime rolls around, because that doesn’t pay the bills.

So, what do you do? You enter the world of emergency dough.
Every shop should have an emergency dough formula and procedure tucked away for these not-so-special moments. I like to make my emergency dough from my regular dough formula because I’m already familiar with it. Still, we need to make a few changes to our dough formula to allow it to be made quickly and be ready for making pizza skins in not much more than two hours.

I have found that increasing the yeast content to double the normal level helps to speed things up a bit. Increasing the finished dough temperature to something in the 90 to 95 F range really helps to get the dough on line within the two-hour time limit as well. The quickest way to do this is to just increase the temperature of the water that you are adding to the dough by 15 F (assuming you are presently targeting a finished dough temperature of 80 to 85 F). If you are not targeting your finished dough temperature in that range, give it your best estimation for water temperature to get your dough to come from the mixer within 90 to 95 F.

I also like to have a bag of reducing agent, such as PZ-44, on hand for these occasions. By including a reducing agent in the emergency dough formulation you will have a greater assurance that the dough will handle well without excessive snap-back during the forming procedure.

Lastly, adding a small amount of regular household vinegar (white vinegar/50 grain strength) will help to restore at least some of the flavor to the finished crust that you are going to lose due to the lack of fermentation. When adding vinegar, add it at one percent of the flour weight and reduce the water weight by the same amount. This will help to keep your dough formula in proper balance.
When mixing an emergency dough, keep in mind that the total mixing time will be about 75 percent of the mixing time used for your regular dough. This means if you normally mix your dough for 12 minutes, you will be looking at a total mixing time of about 9 minutes for your emergency dough.

Immediately after mixing, scale the dough into desired weight pieces and form into balls. Wipe the dough balls with salad oil and place into dough boxes or your regular dough containers. Cover the dough containers to prevent drying and allow the dough to remain at room temperature for approximately two hours before you use it. Once you begin using the dough it will remain good to use for approximately 90 minutes.

After that it will become too gassy to continue using and will need to be discarded.
One trick I use with an emergency dough is to watch the way it handles. As soon as I think it is approaching the end of its life, I will shift into high gear and begin forming dough skins that I can put onto screens and place on a wire rack in the cooler. By doing this I don’t need to discard as much of the dough, and I'm building an inventory of dough skins that will be ready to use with a minimum of preparation when I get slammed later in the day. When using these refrigerated dough skins, be sure to pull them from the cooler about 20 minutes before you anticipate needing them. This will allow them to warm slightly, which makes for a better overall bake with less bubbling. While we’re on the topic of bubbling, be sure to dock all of the emergency dough skins just before dressing them to help control bubbling.

You will need to make additional emergency doughs during the day until you can get back into your regular dough again (which will probably be on the following day). When you are making emergency dough during the day, you will probably find that you need to make a batch every 75 to 90 minutes to provide a continual supply of fresh dough. If you are like most shops and experience a slow period during the afternoon, you will probably be able to get away with using your refrigerated dough skins during this time, but you will need to gear back up for the busy evening hours.

Also, when making your emergency dough keep in mind that you can, and should, add back as much of your unused scrap dough as possible. Even if the dough is gassy, you can add it back to your new dough without any problems. Just don't overload the capacity of your mixer when doing so.
Emergency dough is like an insurance policy. You hope you will never need to use it, but when the time comes, you're mighty glad you've got it to fall back on.

By Tom Lehmann

Like a fine wine, rum, bourbon or scotch whiskey, pizza dough is one of those things that just seem to get better when they’re allowed to age a little. There are times when aging, or allowing the dough to ferment, just isn’t an option — such as when you come into your shop one morning after a storm and you are greeted by the overpowering smell of a brewery. A quick trip to your cooler reveals the source of the smell as you discover your dough pushing out of the dough boxes and onto the floor. Your cooler was knocked out by an electrical surge during the storm, and now you’ve got to come up with some usable pizza dough before you open in just three hours, or you won’t be making any pizzas. This is the classical example where an emergency dough comes into play. This dough is based on your regular dough formula that you’re already familiar with (this is not the time to be tinkering with a dough formula).

So we just increase the water temperature by 15F, double the yeast level and mix the dough in your normal manner. After mixing, we take the dough directly to the bench for scaling and forming into balls, the dough balls are placed into dough boxes and lightly oiled as we normally would, but instead of taking the boxes of dough to the cooler (remember, it may not be working yet) we set the boxes aside to ferment at room temperature.

After the dough has fermented for 90 to 120-minutes, it will be ready to begin using. Be sure to dock the dough with your favorite dough docker, and keep a bubble popper near at hand. No, this dough won’t live up to the reputation of your time honored, secret family heirloom dough, but it will allow you to keep the doors open when you might not have otherwise had any dough to work with.

Emergency doughs typically have a useful life of about two hours after you begin using them, so you will need to be prepared to make more of them as necessary during the day. A pain in the neck? Sure, but it beats the alternative. Due to the lack of fermentation on our emergency dough, finished crusts will not have the same great flavor that our regular crusts have.

During the holding period in the cooler, the dough is being fermented (ever so slowly) and the gluten/flour proteins are being modified by the byproducts of yeast fermentation, namely carbon dioxide, alcohol and acids, as well as exposure to the enzymes contained in the yeast, which all work to degrade the proteins as well as develop the gluten. The effects on the gluten are what give the conditioned dough its great handling properties after a day or two in the cooler, and it is the overall degradation of the proteins that contribute to the development of the great flavor of our crust during the baking process.

Work that we have conducted over the years has shown that, for practical purposes, a well-formulated dough that is properly managed, can have a refrigerated shelf life of three days. This is not to say that the dough cannot be held under refrigeration for more than three days, but only that the dough will give consistent, quality performance for a three day period. For example, if we were to mix the dough today, it would typically be ready to use tomorrow (day 1) and on the following two days.

But what if we wanted to use the dough instead on days 3, 4, and 5 after mixing? We can accomplish this by lowering the finished dough temperature to the 65 to 70 F range. At this temperature, the dough will ferment at an even slower rate during storage in the cooler. However, the dough, in all probability, will not perform up to standard until the first day of use (which is day three … but it will then be good to use over the following two days). If you were to use the dough before day 3, you would find that the dough was excessively tight, exhibited undesirable “memory” characteristics, lacked flavor, and might even give you the opportunity to practice your bubble popping skills.

These results were based on the use of a typical, high gluten, pizza flour with a protein content of 13.2 to 13.7 percent. In many cases we have used a lower protein content flour, 12 to 12.7 percent protein content, and we find that the dough loses about one day in optimum shelf life. This means that we can mix the dough and use it quite successfully over the next two days, but things might become a little “iffy” by the third day.

Part of the dough management process that is difficult for most stores to control is the temperature of their cooler. Due to traffic in and out of the cooler, the temperature tends to rise over the course of the day, before dropping back to the set point again during the night when the store is closed. To help compensate for this, it is important to educate your employees of the importance of keeping the cooler door closed at all times, this includes when they enter to remove something. You might also want to consider installing plastic strip curtains on the inside of the cooler door opening. These have been proven to improve the operating efficiency of the cooler by as much as 15 percent, so I think they’re worth the low investment cost — plus they will go a long way in helping to keep your cooler at a more constant temperature over the course of the day.

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

By Tom Lehmann

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 crust is generally said to be more "doughy" than just gummy. This characteristic is also accompanied by a strong “yeasty” taste and aroma in the baked crust.

A second cause might be due to the soaking of moisture from the sauce into the dough before baking. This can result from a pre-sauced pizza. What happens is that the water is absorbed into the dough immediately beneath the sauce, creating a sticky, gummy layer. With the addition of the cheese and other toppings, it is all but impossible to bake out this portion of the crust, which results in the classic "gum line" often reported just beneath the sauce layer.

A third cause might be due to the release of water from the vegetable toppings. This usually happens as the pizza is being baked. The underlying cause can be due to an excessive amount of vegetable topping, or possibly, the use of improperly frozen vegetable toppings. In either case, the toppings can release a significant amount of water during baking.

The solution here is to reduce the quantity of vegetable topping used, and to make sure any frozen toppings haven't been subjected to thaw conditions prior to application to the pizza. In some cases, the use of impingement baking can help to alleviate the problem, too. The highly focused/directed air of the impingement oven can increase the evaporative loss of the water as it is released from the toppings, so less of it finds its way to the crust.

Finally, there are some specialized ingredients available designed to help absorb the water as it’s released from the toppings, thus preventing its being absorbed into the crust.

Tom Lehmann

Oil or shortening, in general, seem to be those ingredients used in pizza crust production that many know little (if anything) about — except that they are an integral ingredient. What oil actually does, to most people, is somewhat of a mystery. Lets see if we can uncloak that mystery and unveil the reasons why oil or shortening is used in pizza crust production.
For this article, I will define oil as a liquid form of fat and shortening as any other form of fat. Oils can come from any of a number of sources, but it will always be in a liquid form and contain 100 percent fat. As a liquid it will be in a pourable form. Shortening can also be made from any number of plant or animal sources, but it will always be in a semi-solid, or plastic, state. Unlike oil, it may contain some water, as is the case with margarines and butter, which are roughly 20 percent water by weight. So, when replacing oil with shortening, one would use an equal amount of shortening as oil, but if replacing oil with butter or margarine, one would need to use 20 percent (1/5) more butter/margarine than oil to retain the same overall fat content.
There are some types of shortening and margarine (and yes, even butter) that are specially treated (hydrogenated) to give it a very solid characteristic. These are known as “fat flakes”. Fat flakes are designed to retain their integrity (size/shape) when mixed into a dough so when the dough is heated during the baking process the fat flakes melt and the fat is absorbed into the surrounding dough. This helps to create a more open, porous internal cell structure desirable in some instances, such as when dough is processed using high-speed automated equipment in a wholesale or commissary environment.
Fat can contribute flavor to the finished crust in either of two ways. It can provide a unique flavor based upon its source, such as olive oil, sesame oil, butter or lard. It can also act to entrap or hold flavors, too. In this case, the fat will take on the flavors released during the baking of the pizza, giving the finished pizza a more balanced flavor profile. All types of fat exhibit this unique characteristic.
Fats also improve or enhance the perceived richness of the finished crust. As a general rule, things just taste better when they are made with some form of fat at an appropriate level. They also serve to lubricate the dough structure and seal the cell walls within the dough so they are better able to retain the leavening gas and water vapor during the baking process, resulting in better baked height (oven spring). In crusts that are formed by one of the pressing methods, oil at levels of 3 percent of the flour weight and higher is needed to provide lubrication to the dough. This allows it to be pressed out from a round or squat shaped dough piece to a flat circular shape in just a fraction of a second.
All types of fats are known as “tenderizers,” as they provide a more tender eating characteristic to the finished crust. This can be important if you are a carryout or delivery business. We all know that pizza crusts lose their desirable crispy characteristic and take on a more tough and chewy characteristic during the delivery or take home time. The use of fat at levels of 5 percent of the flour weight and higher will help to reduce some of this toughness and give the crust a more tender eating characteristic. Yes, it will also give a softer crust characteristic at the same time, but who said that a delivered pizza had anything but a soft crust characteristic? Would you rather have a delivered pizza with a soft crust or a tough, chewy crust?
Fat flakes are interesting with a multi functional purpose. They are designed to retain their integrity within the dough and melt during baking as means of creating holes and voids in the baked crust. Some of the new generation of fat flakes are referred to as hydrated fat flakes because they will contain 12 to 15 percent water. This water content is important to the functionality of the flakes. As the fat melts and is absorbed into the surrounding dough, the water is vaporized and creates a much more pronounced and desirable void in the still forming dough structure. To achieve these characteristics fat flakes are used at levels of 10 to 15% of the total dough weight. If you have ever seen a microwave-able pizza or calzone and noticed the open, porous structure of the crust, it is a good bet that fat flakes played an integral role in achieving that structure.
In our industry, we typically use olive oil in our pizzas — but at a significant cost. If you want to reduce the cost of the olive oil, yet still retain the flavor characteristics, you can blend olive oil with salad oil at the rate of 1-part olive oil to 4-parts vegetable oil (my personal preference is to use canola oil due to its universally bland flavor). You can buy readymade blends. If the flavor aspect of the oil isn't of great importance you can take your pick from many of the different salad/vegetable oils available, as they will all perform in a similar manner.
You can select the type of fat used in the dough formulation to compliment the type of pizza that you are making, too. For example, if you are making an Asian-style pizza, the use of sesame oil might provide the crust with just the right flavor profile or, if you are making a pizza with a Latin American flair, you might consider using lard as the source of fat in your crust for the unique flavor that it imparts to the finished crust. Since lard is a widely used fat type in much of Latin America, its flavor would be readily recognized and right at home in this specific application.
While many of us would like to reduce the amount of fat in our diet, the fact still remains that fat is both functional and good tasting in pizza crusts. So, we should take great care so as not to reduce the amount of fat added to our dough formulas to the point where it will adversely affect finished quality. Remember, even at levels of 3 to 5 percent of the flour weight the amount of fat in a pizza crust isn't considered excessive when you look at the amount of fat contributed by the meat and cheese toppings. So if you are trying to control the amount of fat in your pizzas it might be better to look at the cheese and meat toppings rather than your crust for fat reduction avenues.

By Tom Lehmann

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. What is the best material to use as a peel release agent?

A good many things are used to help release the dough from the prep-peel to allow for event free transfer of the dressed dough skin. Some of the materials that are used are regular pizza flour, semolina flour, rye meal, corn meal and wheat bran. I've had experience in working with each of these and I can attest to the fact that they all work to some degree, but some definitely work better than others.

To begin, regular pizza flour can and does work well, but keep in mind that if there are any delays between placing the formed dough skin on the peel and peeling the dressed dough skin into the oven, you might discover one of its major faults: The dough can give off enough moisture to begin hydrating the flour, causing it to act more like glue between the dough and peel than a release agent. It is really interesting to see the lengths that people will go to get the dressed dough skin off of the peel. It can be a slow and tedious process, and it only works about a third of the time, so it's hardly worth the effort.
Semolina flour is somewhat coarser than regular pizza flour. As such, it is significantly more difficult (slower) to hydrate. This characteristic makes it a better candidate for use as a peel release. There is less of a tendency for the semolina flour to hydrate and get sticky/tacky, and the larger particle size actually provides for more of a ball bearing affect under the dough skin, making it easier to slide off of the peel. Due to the slower hydrating properties and larger particle size, more of the semolina flour comes off of the dough skin when it is peeled into the oven, thus reducing the incidence of burnt flour on the bottom of the crust.

Rye meal is another good peel release agent. Rye meal is essentially the same as "whole-wheat flour", except it is made with rye rather than wheat. The rye flour has a naturally higher water absorption capacity than wheat flour, and it has a larger particle size than regular pizza flour. Additionally, it also contains the bran (outer skin) portion of the rye berry to further slow the absorption properties. Combined, these properties make for a pretty good peel release agent, even when there is a delay in getting the dressed dough skin to the oven in a timely manner.
Corn meal is a long time favorite as a peel release agent. It has slow hydration properties that allow the dough skin to be dressed in advance of baking without experiencing problems with the dough sticking to the peel. Corn meal can be had in fine, medium or coarse granulation. Typically, the fine and medium granulations are used as a peel release agent. The coarse particle size just gets too hard and gritty during the baking process to work in this application. Due to uniformity in size and shape, corn meal acts as an excellent peel release agent. It is also unique in that a good deal of the corn meal that is attached to the bottom of the dough skin when it is peeled into the oven does not adhere as the crust is baked. Additionally, corn meal takes on a "crackly" eating texture when it is baked.

Wheat bran also works quite well as a peel release agent, but it can char and take on a very objectionable bitter flavor if it adheres to the crust for too long, so it’s best to shy away from this option.
The best choice, I have found, is to blend three parts fine-ground corn meal and one part semolina flour.
Just keep in mind that these peel release agents are just that. They are intended to facilitate the smooth release of the dough from the peel. Every effort should be made to minimize the amount of release material added to the peel since surplus material can remain with the finished pizza to affect the flavor of the finished crust. Also, residual release material must be regularly cleaned from the oven in order to maintain the flavor and baking properties of your pizzas. Excessive debris on the oven deck can act as an insulator between the oven deck surface and your pizzas, thus reducing the oven's baking efficiency. Besides, if you get too much debris built up in your deck oven, it could create a fire hazard inside of the oven.

By Tom Lehmann

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. The first is the use of sugar or some other browning agent in the dough, such as milk or eggs. When any of these materials are added to a dough that will be baked at high temperature, you get premature browning of the crust. You could bake it longer, but the color would be excessively dark, and that wouldn’t be acceptable from an appearance standpoint. If you wanted to retain the formula, without removing the sugar, eggs or milk, you would have to reduce the oven temperature to allow for a longer baking time, which would provide for a crispier crust that would better retain its crispy characteristic.

The second problem could be the baking temperature. Even if your dough formula doesn’t contain any of the aforementioned browning agents, baking at an excessively high temperature can result in a very thin layer of crispiness on the bottom of the crust. As soon as the pizza comes out of the oven moisture begins to migrate from the moist interior of the crust to the dry, crispy portion, thus causing it to become less crispy and more chewy.

The third problem could be the flour used in the dough. It is well recognized that the higher the protein content of the flour, the greater the potential for crispiness — but this comes at a price, because it also provides for a greater potential for chewiness, too. So, in this case, if the finished crust has sufficient crispiness, but is just too tough or chewy, the selection of a slightly lower protein flour might be just the ticket to providing the less chewy crust characteristic. When making a change in protein content it’s a good idea to make a one-percent change in protein content whenever possible. This should provide sufficient change for you to assess the affect.

So, how do you know what flour to choose for the one-percent change in protein content? Your best bet is to contact the flour manufacturer/flour miller and ask to speak to someone in their flour technical services division. Tell them what the bag name of the flour you are presently using is and ask them for their recommendation.

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?

Because our pizza crust will always have roughly the same thickness across its entire size, it really doesn’t matter what size we make our pizzas from a dough standpoint. When it comes to baking that pizza, though, it’s an entirely different matter. Most pizzerias will use the same dough to make a variety of different sized pizzas, but they will all be baked for different times, and sometimes even at different temperatures. The reason for this is because the larger pizzas will sink more heat from the oven than a smaller pizza. This is most graphically seen when we put a single pizza into a conventional deck oven and it takes about eight minutes to bake. But then, when we put 10 of those same-size pizzas into the oven, the baking time goes out to maybe something closer to 12 or 14 minutes. We even see this same thing happening in the air impingement ovens, where a 10-inch thin crust pizza might bake in four minutes, and a 14-inch pizza made from the same dough might require nearly 10 minutes.

Due to its smaller mass, the 10-inch pizza is heating up much faster than the 14-inch pizza, so more of the heat becomes available to further raise the temperature of the smaller pizza to a point where it becomes over-baked with the longer baking time of the 14-inch pizza. The converse is also true, where the larger pizza would be under-baked if it were baked under the same conditions as the smaller, 10-inch pizza. To bake some of those really large, party size pizzas, the only thing that you will need to do is to determine the correct baking time and temperature for your particular oven.

As a side note: If you were to prepare an endless ribbon of dough and sauce and top it continuously as you fed it into any of the conveyor ovens, the oven cavity would be continually exposed to the same amount of material to be baked (pizza). The oven could be set-up and continually operated in this manner, without needing to make any further time or temperature adjustments, just so long as the oven cavity is completely full. Application of this principle also explains the reason why conveyor ovens will bake more pizzas per hour than most deck ovens. Of course, you’ve got to keep the conveyor oven completely full to get that maximum production figure out of it, but that’s what they are designed to do.

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.

By Big Dave Ostrander

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. Some of the more common reasons for sticky dough and the appropriate solutions are as follows:

Excessive Dough Absorption: This results in a decidedly wet, tacky feel. The only real corrective action is to reduce the amount of water added to the dough. I generally recommend making these corrections in increments of two percent (based on the weight of flour in the dough).

Under-mixed Dough: This has a sticky feel. Any dough that has not been mixed long enough to develop a smooth skin on it during the mixing stage will likely be somewhat sticky. Some people don’t find this to be a problem because they use a lot of dusting flour as a part of their crust’s signature.

Excessive Use of Malt: This can result in a sticky dough that just doesn’t seem to be corrected by any changes to the dough absorption or mixing time. The only corrective action is to reduce the amount of malt syrup added to the dough, or to change over to a non-diastatic (enzyme free) malt syrup. What is happening here is that the amylase enzyme in the malt syrup is breaking down part of the starch in the flour and converting it to fermentable sugars for metabolism by the yeast. Wen these starches are hydrolyzed, the water that they are holding is released into the dough and that, combined with the newly formed sugars, creates a decidedly sticky dough feel.

Every few years we hear about wheat that has sprouted while it is still in the field awaiting harvest. When the wheat sprouts, the enzymatic activity increases in a hurry, and when this wheat finds its way into your flour, it will result in a higher than normal enzyme activity in the flour. Here in the U.S. this is seldom a problem as the flour millers are diligent in keeping this from happening. But for readers in other countries, you may not be as fortunate. In this case, just be sure to put a light coating of oil on the dough before you remove it from the mixer. This should help to alleviate some of the stickiness.

Insufficient Salt Content: This creates dough stickiness that can easily be corrected by increasing the salt level to at least 1.75 percent of the weight of flour used in the formula.

Incorrect Hydration of Active Dry Yeast: When this is the case, some of the glutathione from the ADY is leached out. ADY should always be hydrated in warm water (105-110 F). If the ADY is hydrated in cold water, the glutathione that is leached out of the yeast can easily cause a soft, slightly sticky dough condition. In this case, it should also be noted that the dough performance will probably be less than ideal due to the impaired yeast condition. This can also happen with instant dry yeast that is hydrated in cold water.

Tom Lehmann

I'm interested in making a sugar-free crust. What are your suggestions for a sugar substitution?
Well, before we go replacing the sugar, we've got to understand just what its functions in a pizza dough are. It can be used just to provide a nutrient for the yeast to feed upon. This can be important if you are holding your dough for up to three or four days in the cooler. Then there is its effect upon crust color. Sugar will contribute to the browning characteristics of the dough, allowing the dough to develop a darker baked color. And lastly, sugar can contribute to a sweet tasting finished crust. This is just a matter of taste preference.
Going back to those functions, pick out the one that best describes why you are using sugar in your dough formula.
If you need the sugar to provide a nutrient for the yeast to feed upon, you can eliminate the sugar and replace it with a small quantity of "amylase enzyme." These are special enzymes that convert a portion of the starch in the flour to naturally occurring sugars for the yeast to feed upon. It works great. Just be sure to follow the manufacturer directions for the amount to use. Look to a local bakery supply distributor for this product.
If your reason for adding sugar was to influence the crust color, you can generally get very similar results by adding a high protein material, such as defatted soy flour. By adding 5 to 8 percent of a defatted soy flour to the dough, you can get the same crust color effect as 3 to 5 percent sugar would have given you.
And lastly, if you're adding the sugar for its sweetening effect, to produce a sweet tasting finished crust, you just might have to dig a little deeper into your bag of tricks. There are a number of artificial (non-nutritive) sweeteners available that are designed to work well in a variety of baked food applications. They can effectively impart sweetness to the finished crust.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you can add things such as honey, molasses, fruit juice, whey, butter, fructose, or any other similar products. Why? Because they all contain a very significant amount of sugar — the very thing we're trying to take out of our formula.

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.

By Tom Lehmann

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 the food on the lunch buffet, the temperature of the freezer, even the temperature of the room is generally known and regularly monitored, but temperatures as they relate to the dough are seldom, if ever, taken. If you are one of those who do take the temperature of anything that will allow you to stick a thermometer into it, I applaud you. Otherwise, read on.

Dough is made with yeast, and yeast is a living organism (just like us). And just like us, it responds to its environment in a predictable manner. In general, higher temperatures accelerate yeast activity and lower temperatures depress it.
If you use active dry yeast you must rehydrate and activate it before adding it to the mixing bowl. This is done using warm water at 100 to 105F. If the temperature is outside of this range damage can be done to the yeast. This will adversely affect the performance of the dough. The same can be said for instant dry yeast. While not generally rehydrated, in some instances it is necessary to rehydrate it prior to use — such as when the vertical cutter mixer is used and very short mixing times are employed (75 to 120 seconds). With active dry yeast the recommended water temperature for rehydrating the yeast is 95F. It is well recognized that if this water temperature is off by only 5F, measurable damage to the yeast will be sustained. This just can't be good for dough consistency. The best way to guarantee that the water is at the correct temperature for rehydrating the yeast is to use a thermometer to measure the water temperature before adding the yeast to it.

Then there is the finished dough temperature. This sets the stage for the way the dough will perform during our dough management period (and to a great extent it will also influence the way the dough handles during forming and even the way it bakes up). There are a lot of things hinging on the finished dough temperature that are all very important to us, so is it any wonder that this could possibly be the single most important temperature there is to measure?
When we add the ingredients to the mixing bowl each ingredient has its own temperature, then when the dough is mixed, friction is developed between the moving dough and the sided of the mixing bowl. This friction raises the dough temperature during mixing.

The temperature of the room also influences the finished temperature of the dough. To control the temperature of the dough we typically adjust the temperature of the water that is added to the dough. In most cases a finished dough temperature of 80 to 85F is desirable. So the question that now begs to be asked is how do I know what the water temperature needs to be to give me the desired finished dough temperature?
There is a simple formula that can be followed to give you that "magic" number. Here it is: 3 X desired finished dough temperature minus the sum of the flour temperature, room temperature and friction factor. There is a formula for figuring the friction factor too, but space does not permit me to go into those details at this time so we will use the number "30" for our friction factor. Here is a typical working example of the formula: We want our finished dough temperature to be 80F. The room temperature is 75F, the flour temperature is 72F. Our formula at work: 3 X 80 = 240. Next, subtract the sum of 75 + 72 + 30, which is 177. This gives us 63 (240 minus 177). The correct water temperature to add to this dough would be 63F. If you need to make any further adjustments to the water temperature to get the finished dough temperature right where you want it, adjust the water temperature in 5F increments either higher or lower and you will be able to steer the finished dough temperature to where you want it.

The finished dough temperature is so important because it sets the stage for the way the dough will perform during the forming and baking stages. If the dough temperature is too high you may experience problems with either wet doughs due to sweating or blown doughs due to excessive fermentation. If the finished dough temperature is too low the dough may not receive sufficient fermentation within the time allocated and the dough will be difficult to shape (not to mention the problems you can then experience with excessive dough memory or snap-back). If you are making pan style pizzas the dough temperature is doubly important since it can impact the length of time needed for the dough to rise (proof) to a specific height in the pan. An old trick worth mentioning here is to use one of the hot presses to form the dough skins for pan style pizzas.

The heat imparted to the dough piece during the forming operation helps to significantly reduce the time needed for the dough to rise in the pan. In some cases we have been able to eliminate the need for a final proofer (temperature and humidity controlled cabinet) when hot pressing pan style pizzas and instead just place the pans of heated dough onto a vertical pan/tray rack and cover it with a rack cover or bag and get acceptable dough proofing.
As you can see, temperatures are important as it pertains to our doughs. It's a good idea to record the room temperature, flour temperature, and the water temperature for every dough that we make.

This will allow you to, at a glance, determine the room and flour temperatures and see what water temperature was previously used to achieve the target dough temperature. If you watch, record, and maintain your dough temperature you will be well on your way to producing more consistent performing doughs and more consistent, high quality finished pizzas.

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 you please explain this to me?

The temperature of the dough is vitally important because it sets the stage for everything else that will happen to the dough thereafter. It is the temperature of the dough that controls fermentation, how fast it will proceed, and how long it will continue for. For example, higher dough temperatures allow for faster fermentation rates, as the dough ferments faster, it consumes more nutrient (sugar) and generates more acid (acetic. lactic and propionic). The ultimate lack of nutrient and excess of acid work to significantly slow or halt yeast activity after several hours in a typical pizza dough formula. Cooler dough temperatures will slow the rate of fermentation, decreasing acid formation and nutrient metabolism, allowing for a longer sustained fermentation period for the dough. Also, from a mechanical point, doughs having a lower temperature are easier and faster to cool when taken to the cooler. Doughs that are too warm, may be difficult to cool efficiently resulting in over fermented, or “blown” doughs. So, as you can see, if the dough temperature is not controlled, your entire dough management procedure can become unraveled overnight, resulting in lost doughs, or at best, inconsistent dough performance or finished product quality characteristics.


How important is it to have the water temperature right at the recommended 100 F to 105 F for activating my active dry yeast?

The water temperature used to activate any type of dry yeast is really pretty important if you have a concern over yeast performance, and I think we all have an interest in that. In al cases, active dry yeast must be hydrated before it can be added to the dough, and in some cases, instant dry yeast must also be hydrated. Take note that the correct water temperature to use when hydrating IDY is 95 F. If the water temperature is too hot the yeast cells can be heat/thermal damaged, but if the water is too cold, you stand the risk of allowing some of the plasma material contained within the yeast cell(s) to leach out during the hydration process. This material, when removed from the cell, can result in the development of an unusually soft or in some cases sticky dough consistency, and extensive damage to the yeast cells from which the material was removed. All in all, good things do not happen when dry yeast is allowed to hydrate in water at a temperature other than that which is recommended by the manufacturer.
Also, while we’re on the topic of hydrating dry yeast, keep in mind that when the directions say to hydrate the yeast in water at say, 100 to 105 F, only a small quantity of the total water needs to be at that temperature, only about five times the weight of the yeast. The rest of the water should be at a temperature that will give you a finished dough within the desired or targeted, temperature range.

By Tom Lehmann

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 protein (very strong) flour is used to make the dough. Pizza crusts made with a high-protein flour of 13 percent or more can have a wonderfully light and crispy eating characteristic when the pizza is fresh and hot out of the oven, but upon standing for much more than 10 minutes it can become tough. This can happen on a buffet serving line, or in a box and/or insulated bag while the pizza is being transported to a customer’s home. The development of toughness is a result of moisture migration from the hot, moist toppings into the dry, crispy crust portion of the pizza. This is the reason we have those neat “ripple sheets” that you can set the pizza on in the box. The idea here is to hold the pizza off of the bottom of the box, thus allowing channels for the moisture to escape from the bottom of the pizza. We have found over the years that pizzas made from a slightly lower protein flour (in the 12 percent protein content range works will be just as crispy as pizzas made with a higher protein flour, but they will not become as tough and chewy over time.

Another cause of a tough and chewy crust is the development of a gum line in the pizza. The pizza can be baked so it looks great, and it will even have a good crisp to it, but when you take a close look at the inside of the pizza you might see a gray line just below the sauce. This is a gum line. The gum line represents a portion of the crust that has not been fully baked. As a result it has a greater moisture content than the rest of the crumb portion of the crust. After baking, moisture quickly moves out of this gum line and into the lower moisture areas (think crispy areas) where it does its dastardly deed of creating toughness and chewiness. If this is the cause of your problem, you will need to take steps to correct the gum line. This can include baking a little longer at a slightly lower oven temperature, not pre-saucing the dough skins, not thinning the sauce quite so much (try to get your sauce to about 12 to 13 percent solids), or you might be able to correct things by just applying a very thin coating of oil to the surface of the dough skin before saucing it.

We use fresh, compressed yeast. Does it make any difference how we add the yeast to the dough?

Yes, it does. A common way to incorporate the yeast into pizza dough is to add it into the water containing the salt and sugar. This is not a recommended practice as it can lead to damaged yeast, resulting in inconsistent yeast performance. This happens as a result of the potentially higher osmotic pressure of the salt/sugar solution. What this means is that the salt and sugar, under certain circumstances, could pull moisture — including essential enzymes and amino acids — out of the live yeast calls. This can lead to soft dough conditions, as well as less-than-ideal fermentation characteristics. To avoid this, we simply recommend that the salt and sugar never be allowed to come into direct contact with each other, even when in a solution. This is recommended for all kinds of yeast, not just compressed yeast.

We see that a good number of operators are in the habit of putting the yeast into the water and stirring it until the yeast is “dissolved.” But, frankly, I’ve got better things to do with my time, so we can dispense with stirring the yeast in the water. Just crumble it a little and add it right on top of the flour and it will get mixed into the dough just fine. I promise.
With all of this said, there is one small exception that you do need to be aware of. When using a vertical cutter mixer (VCM), the dough mixing times are so short that it can be difficult to get the yeast thoroughly dispersed throughout the dough without a little help. This help comes in the form of adding the yeast as a suspension. Put the yeast into a bowl containing a portion of the dough water, then add the yeast. Next, use a hand whisk to stir the yeast until it is completely suspended, then add it right on top of the flour in the mixing bowl. This won’t be a problem if you happen to use active dry yeast (ADY) since it must be pre-hydrated in a small portion of warm water anyways. But if you are using instant dry yeast (IDY) you are going to have to pre-hydrate this one too. Do this by putting the IDY into about five times its weight of 95F water and stir using a wire whisk until the yeast is fully hydrated and suspended in the water, then pour it onto the flour in the mixing bowl. Be sure to reduce the amount of water added to the bowl by the same amount of 95F water used to hydrate the yeast so that your dough formula remains in balance.