Ask The Experts: Question for Tom Lehmann

Dear Sir,
I would like to ask two question:

  1. if I buy hot press for dough with diameter of 12 inch and try to make 10 inch pizza how can i get raised edge on crust ?
    2 I have tried to freeze finished pizza before baking so i can take it out from freezer and throw it in owen, and it is quite good, but how can i determine how long it is OK to be consumed

thank you

Dalibor Jurina
Croatia

Dalibor;
Unless you have a hot press designed to form a raised edge at the time of pressing (A-M Manufacturing, Little Toro Hot Press, <www.ammfg.com> . Keep in mind that this press, with a raised edge die will only press one size of pizza shell, the diameter that the die has been specified for. Hence, each size will require a different set of dies.
With your existing press, you might try to push the outer edge of the dough skin back in a little, making the edged a little thicker, this should allow them to rise a bit more, thus creating a more pronounced, raised edge.
Your frozen dough should be good to use over about a 15-day period of time. After that, the dough will begin to show signs of failure to rise.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

Dear Sir,
thank You for answer, and here is one more question:

You said: Your frozen dough should be good to use over about a 15-day period of time. After that, the dough will begin to show signs of failure to rise.

Is there any remedy to this problem because I would like to make some small business out of my hobby. I’m already in Ice cream production so some equipment I already have. If You know some solution to my problem, or where can i turn to I would be very grateful

Thanks again and sorry for trouble

Dalibor Jurina
Croatia

Dalibor;
In order to achieve a longer frozen shelf life your dough will need to be blast frozen either mechanically at -30 to -35F with 600 to 800 linear feet of air flow, or cryogenically at -60 to -65F. This should get you into the 6 to 8-week shelf life range, to go beyond this, you will need to work with ingredients (high protein flour and fresh, well maintained yeast, plus oxidants such as ascorbic acid, enzymatic oxidation, and possibly azodicarbonamide ADA). This should get you into the 10 to 12-week shelf life range, and with a high level of control over packaging, distribution, storage, and display/marketing of the frozen dough, you might be able to push into the 14 to 16-week shelf life range. While this may sound to be quite easy, it is really a very sizeable challange to accomplish, and expensive too if you are talking about doing any sizeable quantity of dough. With regard to equipment, aside from the freezer, you most important piece of equipment will be your dough mixer, it will need to be a horizontal mixer, with dual drive, from both ends of the agitator shaft, and it must have a direct expansion, refrigerated bowl, with a three arm agitator and a refrigerated breaker bar. If possible, the bowl ends should also be refrigerated. The mixer will need to be specifically built for mixing of frozen doughs. All of this is critical to the production of long shelf life frozen dough as finished dough temperature wil be targeted at 65F, with a variable tolerance of just +/- 1F. To keep mixing times within reason while mixing these cold doughs, you will need to use some type of reducing agent in the dough such as L-cysteine or glutathione/dead yeast. Failure to maintain these conditions, can lead to unexpected loss of dough performance, which in the case of frozen dough, could involve as much as two or more months of production, a sizeable loss. This is why producing long shelf life frozen dough is so expensive, and represents such a significant challange. By the way, going back to those finished dough temperatures, and doughs that are outside of the tolerance range must be discarded as they will pose a potential for future failure. My personal approach has always been to tell anyone interested in getting into long shelf life frozen dough production is that you MUST do everything by the numbers, with no compromises, if you can’t commit to doing that, then you should not get into this type of production as it will come back to haunt you and eventually put you out of business as you listen to your customers complain about poor dough performance, or watch the dough fail in the market place.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor