Wampus
somebody shut me the fark up.
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2009
- Location
- Mooresvi...
So I've been making my own pizza dough for a couple of years now.
I found a pretty common recipe that I use and I like the taste of it, but I'd prefer it to be a little different texture.
I know part of my issue is my cooking method. I cook pies most of the time in the oven at as high a temp as I can get (500dF). I cook them on these 'air bake' cookie sheets that don't burn, but also don't brown the bottom of the crust very well. When I have taken the time to cook them on a stone on my kettle at a higher temp, they crisp up nicer on the bottom. I can deal with the 'un-crispiness' of the pies, but I'd like my dough to be a little bit lighter or 'fluffier'.
I thought I'd put up a thread.......you know what? Actually my WIFE suggested I put up a thread about it here to get opinions from others with more experience. Plus, if there's anyone else out there with a similar quest to refine their homemade pizza dough a little more to their liking, what the heck?
Brothers jassybadger and landarc have both helped me out here and there with dough already. This is my process that I've developed starting from a recipe book and then tweaking my technique. If you know dough and recognize something that I can tweak, please do.
So here's my pizza dough recipe:
7 cups AP flour
1 1/2-2 TBS salt, mixed in with dry flour
2 1/2 cups luke warm water (I usually use tap water)
4 1/2 tsp yeast (or 2 of the envelopes, but I buy the bigger jar of yeast)
1 TBS Turbinado sugar
4 TBS Extra Virgin Olive Oil
I stir the sugar, yeast and oil into the water with a whisk until everything is dissolved and then I let it sit so the yeast can proof a bit. I keep my yeast in the freezer to keep it fresh/dormant.
Once the bubbles show up in the wet ingredients, I pour it into the middle of my flour/salt, which has been spread out onto my counter top with a large well in the middle to hold the wet stuff. I work it together around the perimeter with a fork until enough flour has been worked in that I can start handling it with my hands without it sticking to me, then I in fold and knead it and incorporate as much of the flour as I can, which is almost all, if not all of it. I USUALLY only knead probably about 20 strokes or so, or a couple of minutes. I tighten it into a ball, put it in an oiled bowl, turned once to coat and let it rise for 1 - 1 1/2 hours in a barely warmed oven until it's risen, then I turn it out onto the floured counter, punch it down and portion it. I usually punch and knead it until all of the air is out of it. Out of this much dough, I get 6 pizzas.
Here's the one thing I do that I'm pretty sure isn't helping my situation, but I can't figure out how else to pull it off.
When I make my pizzas, I roll the dough on the counter to get it big enough. I usually try and get a 12" diameter pie out of 1/6th of this recipe. I've tried to hand form the dough, but can usually only manage to get about an 8" dia pie. I've even tried to figure out how to toss the dough and/or work it, holding it by the edge, pulling it with each hand laterally and letting the dough stretch down below my hands and turning it around and around. None of these 3 techniques seem to work without tearing a hole into the dough from getting it too thin or just not being able to work it evenly.
SO....I roll it out.
I put the dough onto the 'air bake' cookie sheets that have been covered with corn meal. This helps from sticking.
Then I bake at 500d until bubbling cheesy goodness. We have a double oven and we usually do 4 pizzas at once, 2 in each oven. My ovens have 4 positions for racks. I put the pies on the bottom and 2nd from the top racks and rotate and swap positions when the top pie starts to brown.
So, tonight, I made another batch of dough. I usually do at least a double batch. Tonight I did a quadruple batch. We cooked 4 of the pizzas for Friday night pizza & movies. The dough tasted great as usual, and it was a little better chewiness due to the fact that I took about 10-15 minutes to knead it before the rise. I kneaded it until my shoulders were burning. So, I think this helped chewiness.
As far as fluffiness.....I'm not sure.
I figure I'm either:
1. Trying to thin out the recipe too much. I could use 4 pies for this recipe instead of 6, but I've even tried that here and there, but it always just seems like more dense dough and not any lighter or airier.
2. I know there's a 2nd rise in baking bread and such. I've never thought of doing something like that for pizza dough. Does anyone do this?
3. I'm over punching my dough down? Should I just punch the air out and then divide and shape it gently so as to leave some air in the dough that will just rise more during baking?
Thoughts?
Thanks.
I found a pretty common recipe that I use and I like the taste of it, but I'd prefer it to be a little different texture.
I know part of my issue is my cooking method. I cook pies most of the time in the oven at as high a temp as I can get (500dF). I cook them on these 'air bake' cookie sheets that don't burn, but also don't brown the bottom of the crust very well. When I have taken the time to cook them on a stone on my kettle at a higher temp, they crisp up nicer on the bottom. I can deal with the 'un-crispiness' of the pies, but I'd like my dough to be a little bit lighter or 'fluffier'.
I thought I'd put up a thread.......you know what? Actually my WIFE suggested I put up a thread about it here to get opinions from others with more experience. Plus, if there's anyone else out there with a similar quest to refine their homemade pizza dough a little more to their liking, what the heck?
Brothers jassybadger and landarc have both helped me out here and there with dough already. This is my process that I've developed starting from a recipe book and then tweaking my technique. If you know dough and recognize something that I can tweak, please do.
So here's my pizza dough recipe:
7 cups AP flour
1 1/2-2 TBS salt, mixed in with dry flour
2 1/2 cups luke warm water (I usually use tap water)
4 1/2 tsp yeast (or 2 of the envelopes, but I buy the bigger jar of yeast)
1 TBS Turbinado sugar
4 TBS Extra Virgin Olive Oil
I stir the sugar, yeast and oil into the water with a whisk until everything is dissolved and then I let it sit so the yeast can proof a bit. I keep my yeast in the freezer to keep it fresh/dormant.
Once the bubbles show up in the wet ingredients, I pour it into the middle of my flour/salt, which has been spread out onto my counter top with a large well in the middle to hold the wet stuff. I work it together around the perimeter with a fork until enough flour has been worked in that I can start handling it with my hands without it sticking to me, then I in fold and knead it and incorporate as much of the flour as I can, which is almost all, if not all of it. I USUALLY only knead probably about 20 strokes or so, or a couple of minutes. I tighten it into a ball, put it in an oiled bowl, turned once to coat and let it rise for 1 - 1 1/2 hours in a barely warmed oven until it's risen, then I turn it out onto the floured counter, punch it down and portion it. I usually punch and knead it until all of the air is out of it. Out of this much dough, I get 6 pizzas.
Here's the one thing I do that I'm pretty sure isn't helping my situation, but I can't figure out how else to pull it off.
When I make my pizzas, I roll the dough on the counter to get it big enough. I usually try and get a 12" diameter pie out of 1/6th of this recipe. I've tried to hand form the dough, but can usually only manage to get about an 8" dia pie. I've even tried to figure out how to toss the dough and/or work it, holding it by the edge, pulling it with each hand laterally and letting the dough stretch down below my hands and turning it around and around. None of these 3 techniques seem to work without tearing a hole into the dough from getting it too thin or just not being able to work it evenly.
SO....I roll it out.
I put the dough onto the 'air bake' cookie sheets that have been covered with corn meal. This helps from sticking.
Then I bake at 500d until bubbling cheesy goodness. We have a double oven and we usually do 4 pizzas at once, 2 in each oven. My ovens have 4 positions for racks. I put the pies on the bottom and 2nd from the top racks and rotate and swap positions when the top pie starts to brown.
So, tonight, I made another batch of dough. I usually do at least a double batch. Tonight I did a quadruple batch. We cooked 4 of the pizzas for Friday night pizza & movies. The dough tasted great as usual, and it was a little better chewiness due to the fact that I took about 10-15 minutes to knead it before the rise. I kneaded it until my shoulders were burning. So, I think this helped chewiness.
As far as fluffiness.....I'm not sure.
I figure I'm either:
1. Trying to thin out the recipe too much. I could use 4 pies for this recipe instead of 6, but I've even tried that here and there, but it always just seems like more dense dough and not any lighter or airier.
2. I know there's a 2nd rise in baking bread and such. I've never thought of doing something like that for pizza dough. Does anyone do this?
3. I'm over punching my dough down? Should I just punch the air out and then divide and shape it gently so as to leave some air in the dough that will just rise more during baking?
Thoughts?
Thanks.
