Attn dough doctor, cracker crust issues

Hi Tom, thank you in advance for your advice. I’m having an issue with once my cracker crust dough is sheeted and placed on cardboard for service it is really shrinking markedly. We room temp ferment the dough for 24 hours and then make into “balls” then next day we sheet out onto rounds and then wrap say 15 or so and store in walk in for service, after a day or e en couple of hours they shrink badly. Any idea?

At the risk of showing how little I know about this… is there any way to compensate for that shrinkage?
If the shrinkage is consistent, any way to make a larger ____ to end up with the correct product/size!
Added moisture?

dough has ‘memory’, hence the shrinkage, I believe…I don’t see the reasoning to pre-make shells…keep your dough in dough boxes, at room temp, to temper, then form as needed…the skins ‘suffer’ when slapped out & recooled, IMHBCO…

You don’t slap out cracker crust dough. It has to be manually sheeted through a dough sheeter and it’s not a super quick process. My water is 35% and oil 9% salt and yeast 1.5%

Can I ask why you sheet and wrap them? I just leave them in the bulk ferment tub and grab a doughball when a pizza is ordered, flour it, and sheet/dock it then top it. Takes 20-25 seconds max.

What I think is happening is that the skins are overly tough due to the very low absorption being used. How much do you mix the dough? I have found that if the dough is mixed in much the same manner as a regular pizza dough shrinkage can be a problem. You might try this: Put water, salt , oil and yeast in the mixing bowl, immediately add the flour and begin mixing at low speed, the total mixing time should only be about 1.5 to 2-minutes. You DO NOT want to see a dough, instead you want to see a mix of flour and wet particles, much like you see when making a pie dough. After mixing, transfer the entire mass to a suitably sized container, cover and allow to ferment at room temperature as you are presently doing, then turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and cut into desired weight pieces, lightly form into “pucks” like hockey pucks, place on a lightly floured sheet pan, you can go two high if you place a sheet of parchment paper between the layers, slide into a plastic bag and allow to ferment at room temperature until the dough pucks can be sheeted into pizza skins, of place into the cooler for use on the following day. If this doesn’t work, your only other alternative is to use some PZ-44 or Dead Yeast/Red Star RS-190 as a reducing agent in the dough to relax the dough memory characteristics.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

we only mix for 90 seconds and it looks exactly as you describe, we use all trumps flour if that means anything

i like to be set up to do volume, when busy season hits it pays to get the pies in the oven really fast. don’t have room for the sheeter on the line.

RG;
I can’t ever remember using anything that high in protein content to make that cracker crust, I normally use what might be best described as a strong bread flour with about 12% protein content, actually you can also get away using something like an all-purpose flour too and then you won’t need to go to the added expense of adding a dough relaxer.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

Thanks, I thought so too but it’s what I’ve used since open but I get worried about changing recipe when people love it so much.

Here’s what I would do, make a dough with a lower protein content flour (maybe a half size batch) bake off a few pizzas and give out some free slices. When you give out the slices explain that you are testing something different and that you would appreciate their comments on the pizza, then when their order is delivered to the table ask the wait staff to simply ask of the customer(s) “what did you think of the sample slice?” The response should give you some direction.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor