I was pointed to this site from Pizza-Making.com. We are opening up a coal fire powered pizzeria restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky in two weeks. Yikes! Previously we owned a food manufacturing business that provided calzone, panini etc to customers such as Trader Joes, Sam’s Clubs, Costco. Although we have been in the business for 23 years this is our first restaurant.
My question is dough. Although I have studied and made dough using Lehman and Reinhart formulas I have not been able to test my dough results in the actual oven. We fire up the oven next weekend and then I will have only two weeks to perfect the dough.
What I really want for this crust is to have a thin crispy outer layer that crackles and breaks apart when you put pressure on it. The inner dough is light and airy with a creamy custard like crumb. It should have big irregular bubbles yet have a little chew when you take a bite. A puffed cornicione giving way to a thin, yet crispy crust, all the way to the edge and does not droop. It will have maximum flavor in the dough and I would be willing to put a sourdough starter (I am cultivating one), a poolish/biga, long ferment, etc to get the dough where I want it. All this using a local mill for a hard spring wheat flour at 12.9 protein. Can I get there? Is there a starting recipe that I can use to get the ball rolling and then be able to tweak as I experiment?