New to dough

Hey all,

I’m new to dough making. I have been running franchise stores as manager for 10+ yrs, but always had dough delivered. I have purchased the store i ran for the last 5 yrs, 48% sales increase in that time. I am going to start making my own dough now, kinda scary. I am trying to go for a NY street style thin crust. I have read most post on here and still have a few questions.

1 flour: quality and what type
2 yeast: what are the pors/cons of the different types of yeast
3 weights of the dough balls vs size of pizzas

ah ya almost forgot, any good recipes to try other than the one Tom posted?

Thanks gang,
Mychal

If its not broke, why try to fix it? There are extreme risks when changing such an important part of the businesses success.

Do you even have a mixer?

are you looking to replace your frozen dough completely or just add a different line of dough offerings in addition?
If you are completely replacing it then I have to agree with steveo it is extremely risky. Some questions I would ask myself if I were in your situation are: What are your percieved benefits? What value does this add to my product. Will this make your different from your competition? Will the segment that your store caters to care?

If you are set on this course then I would definately take the time to educate yourself on the process in general and specifically for making pizza dough. Take the AIB course or some equivilent course if offered in your area. I would also take it slow. Develop the dough and test it the hell out of it. Bring it focus groups from your community, give some slices away to random customers and get their feed back. Hold a tasting event to generate PR for your store and to gather feedback from your customers. This isn’t a small thing that you are proposing. You will want to develop a strategy with backout options incase it doesn’t perform the way you expected. Dominos is spending millions at the moment to education the public on their pizza changes.

I like the dough posted to this site as a starting point. As far as books I have about 20 books on the subject of pizza and my favorites are from Peter Reinhart (specifically American Pie and Crust and Crumb: Master Formulas for Serious Bread Bakers) I’ve made about half the doughs in American Pie and I like them all. As far as the Crust and Crumb it gives you awesome insight to bread making in general and has a couple of pizza doughs. The doughs in C&C use a preferment called a poolish. I’m still working with this formula because while I have had good results I am not convinced it’s worth the extra trouble although I’m willing to accept it might be methat is the problem . there are tons of books on Amazon specifically for pizza.

Bryan

Thanks for reply’s. i should have been more specific. It was a Dominos and now i am going independent. i am vetting different food vendors right now, So i have NO dough or sauce recipes. I just got the keys to store. the longer i take the longer tell i have a product to sell! I have made dough yrs back at other stores but wasnt planning on using those recipes, not that great. I will check out the books mentioned and have ordered Toms book. This all come up very quickly this year so i am trying to move fast but not so fast a dont open with a Great product. the area im in is on the higher income side in southern CA.

Thanks again,

Mychal

  1. Use a high gluten flour with a protein content in the 12.5% to 14%. A search of the think tank of high gluten flour should yield some brand names.
  2. I’ve never used fresh yeast or ADY so I can’t really comment on those but IDY is easy and almost foolproof.
  3. My pizza is a bit thicker than a NY style but If thats what I was marketing I would start with 12oz for a 12", 20oz for a 16", and 25oz for an 18". These are just a starting point but I think they’ll be close to what you are looking for. If anything maybe go a little lighter.