I’m totally brand new to pizza business. Never worked in one in the past so my recipes I’m trying are from many different sources. ( Internet, friends, associates). I’ve been having issues of huge blistering and consistency with my dough. Originally, I was using a recipe with 66% hydration and 3-4% oil, .75-1% instant yeast (also tried active yeast). Salt and sugar 2%. Mixing time total around 11min. Cooking around 5min & temp anywhere between 485-515. Even after docking, I would get nuclear explosions on top. Now I tried going the other way with 55% hydration , no oil, .5% yeast, even tried no sugar, only salt. I finally didn’t see any big bubbles but the dough was not as tasty.
I really would like my pizza to be made around 5 min or less. Can any of you who use conveyors shed some light about your dough mixing time and water & oil levels.
Also, shout out to PizzaPirate for being an upstanding gentleman for all the tips you’ve provided.
It would be helpful to know the procedures you are following with your dough. Step by step process will give us an idea where you need to make your changes.
Is this dough ran through a sheeter, or hand stretched?
[B]A couple more questions to be asked are:
- What is your dough management procedure, this is everything you do with/to the dough between the end of mixing and when you begin using it.
- What is the temperature of the dough after mixing?
- Tell us something about your oven, we are assuming it is an air impingement over? Did you buy it new or used? What is the make, model and manufactured date? There are significant differences between some of the air impingement ovens and this will help us determine what you have.
- What is your baking platform? Screens, disks, pans, etc.?
- Regarding your baking platform, what color is it?
- If your oven is an air impingement oven, do you know what your top and bottom finger profiles are?
I know these are a lot of questions and you may not have the answers to all of them, but whatever you can answer will help us to help you in the most efficient manner.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor[/B]
- procedure a) dough mixing time 17min, 89deg finished temp. Let rest 5 min, cut and balled into dough box. Used 12.5 lbs flour -55%hydration, salt .75%, . 05% Inst. yeast. No oil, no sugar. - used 2days later, on perforated cutter pan pstk(Lloyd’s). Sheeted once lev6 opened rest by hand (still working on hand tossing part).
Using new Xlt 2440 -factory finger settings. (I really like the ovens just a bit loud from my small space). Using 4.45 min bake time, 500deg temp. Results: color and rise where ok, first time I didn’t get any big blisters from past recipes( using 66% hydration, 2.7% oil). Also dough thoroughly cooked! Past recipe dough was more wet and oily so could not get crispy cooked bottom , but the taste not to mine or anyone elses liking something missing. ( maybe some sugar and oil?
Procedure B) dough mix 14min- 85deg finished temp. 56%hydration , 1% salt, .5% sugar, .05% inst. yeast, 1% oil. This time after I cut and balled dough. I sheeted them out to pans , bagged and placed in walkin. Used next day. Let rest until cooking. Results again no major bubbles( docked of course) but no rise whatsoever. Now was this due to the sheeting, increase salt level and low yeast level not activating properly? Not sure. Also cooked thoroughly , color was good but lacked any flavor.
Previous recipe I would incorporate much more of each ingredient, flavor was better but would get big blisters as well as softer crust bottom. When I increased belt speed and oven temp to cook crust more , I would then run into burning the cheese etc.
I think I might shed a little light on the problem.
Your yeast level is much too low at 0.05%. A better/recommended yeast level for IDY would be 0.25 to 0.375%. This low yeast level would not provide sufficient fermentation to the dough and that would promote bubbling. A big part of the flavor issue could also stem from the lack of fermentation, but the low (1%) salt level isn’t helping the flavor either. I suggest increasing the salt level to 1.75 or 2%. Finally, make sure that the dough has warmed to at least 50F after removing it from the fridge before opening it into a pizza skin.
Note: With these formula changes, I suggest reducing the finished/mixed dough temperature to something closer to 80F. To do this reduce the temperature of the water that you add to the dough by about 10F.
Let me know how these changes work for you.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
Thanks Tom, I’ll try these suggestions out. In relation to dough temp and mixing time, I’m starting at speed one for several min , then changing to speed 2 for 10 to 12 more min. How does this effect gluten and dough strength. I believe fermentation also strengthens the dough, so trying to achieve a good 2 day dough for use, would increasing yeast slightly and decreasing mixing time be similar to decreasing yeast and increasing mixing time?
I’ve also read some people actually mix only at speed one so as to not warm dough so much in order to get several days longer fermentation in walkin, hence better flavor.
I have tried longer mixing time with around 55% hydration, the dough was definitely elastic but drier. Next day cooking resulted in a faster cooking time then say a more hydrated and oiled dough but taste wasn’t the same with longer fermented dough.
The truth of the matter is that unless you are going to use the dough right away, such as is the case with an emergency dough, your pizza dough really should not be mixed any longer than actually needed to achieve a smooth appearing dough and this is more for improved dough handling properties during scaling and balling than anything else. You can make perfectly good/great pizza from dough that was mixed just enough to achieve uniform dispersion of ingredients throughout the dough mass, the rest of the gluten development is achieved through biochemical gluten development over the next 24 to 72-hours. This is how dough was made before Mr. Hobart invented his creation. About 20-years ago I was in Romania and visited a very large bakery making round breads, actually basket bread as we like to call it, all of the doughs were just stirred with a piece of wood that looked something like a baseball bat, two men stirred each dough for about 5-minutes and then moved on to the next dough (each dough was based on approximately 46-Kg. of flour, there were 60 of those mixers (mixing bowls) in that bakery. When the gluten is developer biochemically the gluten is very well developed and very extensible, making the dough very easy to work with but when it is developed mechanically the dough is VERY tough and difficult to work with until the dough has had an opportunity to ferment for several hours, thus allowing the gluten to relax for easier forming.
Fermentation of the dough = flavor.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
you tube,Bruno Difabio,great lesson and recipe on new york style dough making,i mix 9 minutes, weigh, cut and roll (about 80 degree dough temp) at 9:00 pm, split stack for better cooling,good to use next day,conveyor oven,get lots of compliments on crust,bubbles , we pop and backfill with cutter, cheese pizzas we use more cheese…dough keeps for 3 days if not hot in kitchen or walkin left open, 1st speed to mix until flour is absorbed then 2 speed (60 qt hobart) i try for a somewhat wet dough but not sticky,easier to stretch,adjust by eye and feel,a dry dough on a busy night is tough !!!
I think I’ve seen Bruno video at least 100 times. Well I just made a batch with 8 min mix time, dough came out at 80-81 degree temp. Used 55% hydration and cut down on the sugar just to see if any difference in yeast activity. I’ll be baking those in a few days.
Also, John’s point about more cheese on cheese pizza got me thinking about 1) weight of sauce and toppings and 2) the weight of dough ball. Now assuming I properly docked the dough and aiming for a complete “bake out”, how important is the dough weight in relation to time and temp? Would that play any role as far as blistering or is dough weight mainly for thickness of pizza? Then again, the more I think about that’s why there are different recipes for different style of pizzas. Seems like the ingredients and process of making pizza dough probably out weight any other factor.
This may be something as simple as you balling technique causing this
Thinking back a bit, I had some major blister issue when I was teaching my guys how to scale/ball dough properly, one guys dough always had huge blisters that would blow the toppings off the pie, he was not using enough pressure while balling the dough, once we got that fixed the problem went away.
Yes I will definitely try that! I really haven’t had any pro teach me so YouTube has been sort of my mentor! Lol . I thought by applying less pressure I wouldn’t let gas escape causing a flat dough. I guess if the yeast is activated properly , it’s going to do its thing.
For my dough, my process goes against, or exact opposite what should be done,
I use a mix of ice and water no matter ambient temps are, my mixing bowl is kep in the cooler, and my dough is well under 60 degrees right out of the mixer, it does not get a rest or let to warm, and we stretch right out of a 34 degree cooler.
I started this process in the heat of summer, I used to use 50 degree water at 62% hydration, and after a batch or two acted like pancake batter in the mixer, I went extreme cold on mixing and it’s working for me
Wow! With a dough that cold and being stretched right out of the cooler, unless you are using a very weak flour or a reducing agent, I would expect your dough to be pretty tough to stretch out and even then dough memory/snap back would be a problem, not to mention bubbling/blistering during baking unless you have already made significant reductions to the yeast level. I make a pretty mean pizza crust in a similar manner without the addition of any yeast at all, but I use PZ-44 to make opening the dough into skins a lot easier.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
After reading my last post ,
I think I was lacking on clarity and I might have been misunderstood in our dough management process.
We do not use the dough immediately after mixing, What I meant to convey is that it gets no rest period in the bowl before scaling/balling.
Here is a better description of our process;
No commercial reducing agents or onion powder are added. But, If I know that I will need to use it in less than 24 hours after mixing, I do add a few pounds of dough from a previous batch to add to the flavor and workability that I desire.
I can send you the exact formula in a PM if you want to try it.
Like I said, my dough breaks all the rules that I thought I knew.
We are baking in a Sveba Dahlen Classic, at a hair over 300C temps. Since these ovens have independent temp controls for the deck, top & front to back differential. I run my top heat at max, deck heat near minimum, and the differential about midway
We blend 2 different flours , 75% Bouncer with 25% APF
Our yeast (IDY) is at .5%, oil at 3% , & 61% hydration (50% of our water weight is ice cubes)
It requires at least a 24-36 hours rest period, and is best after 48 hours .
It gets a 12 minute mix in a crappy Impasti spiral mixer, We do not cross stack our boxes, they get capped and cooled right after balling.
I’ve tried 100% bouncer, hated it! Tried 100% all trumps, I hated that even more.
I’d be curious to know the total protein content of my blend just to see if I can buy a flour with that protein level so I may not need to blend anymore to get what I want.
GR;
The protein content of the blend you are using works out to roughly 12.975% (call it 13%). This would be about the same as General Mills Hi Power, Progressive Baker Spring King,
Spring Up, or Majestic Flour depending upon the manufacturer. Most flour suppliers have a cross reference chart so if you give them any of these names they should be able to identify a brand that they carry which will be a match.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
I’ve had some success thanks to all of the input here. One of the things I did was to lower my suger by one percent. I also tried cross stacking which I didn’t do before. What I was aiming for was for a 2 day dough with minimal blistering. Testing the same dough the next day, I did seem some big blisters, but on 2nd day they weren’t there! Not sure if that meant yeast activity was slowing down due to less sugar? I’m sure Tom can shed some light on this.
Also I wanted to ask you guys and gals about dough thickness. Starting, we will be sheeting dough about half way then opening up to size. We’re aiming for a med-thick crust. Using 18oz dough for 14 inch I should get I believe thickness factor of .12. Is weight of dough directly assciated with the thickness? Or is yeast level and how we stretch also play a factor?
Impasti was my 1st mixer and I loved it!
#1, I think you are mixing far to long…6-8 minutes…
#2, we used cold water from the walk-in to make all our dough…
#3, we prefer All Trumps, as did all my clients when I sold food…
#4, use more oil…helps spreadability…
#5, we began with a sheeter, the a brief stint with a DP press…ended up hand tossing…a sheeter will degas the dough too much, IMHBCO…you’ll get fast at hand tossing quick…
#6, we use a long fingered dough docker all the time…
#7, we floor proofed our dough in dough trays for several hours, then rolled back into the cooler & removed several trays as needed, spun 'em cold, topped & baked…
my 2¢…
6, at what point of opening the dough do you use dough docker and to what advantage?
The dough docker is used after the dough is stretched to size just prior to saucing the pizza. the purpose of the docker is to “spot weld” the top surface of the dough to the bottom surface which helps to eliminate the bubbles that might form.