how long after opening youre pizza base do you get the best results for cooking. is 45minutes too long till you use it?
If we are talking about a thin crust, you should be able to open the dough into a skin and get great results right away, but if we are talking about a thick crust pizza, then allowing it to proof/rise for 30 to 70-minutes after opening it will significantly improve the overall quality of the finished pizza. Can you provide us with more details?
Thanks,
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
my question is if i opened the pizza bases at 3pm and left them on the rack and used the first rack at say 5pm and so forth that is the second rack around 6pm
will that affect the quality of the pizza?
In one word, yes. While the dough skins are setting on the rack they are continuing to proof/raise so the final thickness of the crust will vary to some extent. The extent of variation will depend upon factors such as room temperature, and the actual dough temperature at the time it is first opened up. What does work pretty well though is where you open the dough pieces into dough skins and place them on screens, which are then placed into wire racks in the cooler. This helps to limit/minimize the amount of rise until the dough skins are used. It is a good idea when doing this to allow the dough skins to remain uncovered for about 30-minutes, then slip a plastic bag over the rack to prevent excessive drying of the dough skins. Using this procedure the dough skins can be made ahead of time for use at just about any time during the same day. We don’t recommend holding the dough skins over from one day to the next though as drying will typically become a problem. Just remember to bring the dough skins out of the cooer about 30-minutes before you anticipate using them to allow them to temper a little prior to use. Failure to do this can result in excessive bubbling of the dough during baking.
Tom Lehmann/the Dough Doctor
the base of the pizza is not cooking through properly and the pizza tastes doughey?
have tried different settings on time and temp.giving inconsistent results.
There are a number of things that might be coming into play here. Baking time, temperature, color og pan/disk if used, dough weight, and type of oven used. As I’ve probably got more questions right now than answers, it would be best if you could please give me a call at 800-633-5137 (ext. 165) so we can discuss. I’m sure we can get to the bottom of it in just a few minutes on the phone.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
Tom,
When using skins from the fridge, have you ever seen where the rims of the crust once baked, have small blisters bout the size of the blunt end of a pin? Might say it looks even sort of scaly.
Only happens on dough skins opened into pans, that are refrigerated for any length of time, warmed and baked.
[/url]http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=7559.0;attach=12252;image
Yep, see it most of the time. This happens when the dough dries. Keeping them covered helps to eliminate or minimize them if you find them objectionable.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
Tom,
Can you elaborate further on the science that is behind the blistering? I know that there are a lot of people who actually like the blistering effect. Is there a way of inducing it? When I get blistering it is usually as a result of long fermentation, often several days (cold fermentation). Also, is a high hydration dough less prone to blistering because of the higher moisture content?
PN
I wish I could elaborate further on those little blisters (looks like a case of heat rash), but we have never set about to study them in depth. We see them on well fermented dough, as well as frozen dough. They also seem to be more prevelant on lower absorption doughs. For these reasons, we have a feeling that they are in some way, associated with oxidation of the dough skin, but we haven’t consucted a study where we have attempted to control them.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
Tom I do cover them with pan lids, perhaps there is a better way to seal them?
In all cases I get the blisters if the skins have been inside the fridge long enough to cool down. I don’t like the appearance and have tried several approaches to getting rid of them:
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Allowed the covered pans, varying amounts of warm-up time prior to baking. No help
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Misted the skins with h2o from a spray bottle before refrigerating them. No help.
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Misted them with h2o just before baking. No help.
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Lightly oiled them with spray on canola oil before refrigerating or alternately brushed oil olive around rims just before baking. The blisters were dramatically reduced, however, I don’t like the yellowing the oil imparts to the crust.
The oil application helps to seal the crust surface from the air, thus reducing the oxidation of the dough on the surface. This is why we feel that it may be caused by oxidation rather than drying of the dough. For some unknown reason to me, we have seen what we feel is a reduction in those blisters when higher dough absorption levels are used, or put another way, lowering the dough absorption seems to make the situation worse. The one next step that I would suggest is to increase the dough absorption by a minimun of 2% of the total flour weight: flour weight X 2 (press the “%” key) and read the amount of additional water to add in the display window. Keep in mind that you might need to do this more than once. Another thing is to look at your flour bag and read the ingredient label to see if the flour is bromated or not. If it does contain bromate, you might want to ask your supplier to get you a bag of the same flour, but without bromate to try. Bromate (potassium bromate) is an oxidant that is added to some flours by the mill to further strengthen the flour. In pizza production, we really don’t need this extra strength, so you shouldn’t see any ill affects to the dough, but by removing the bromate, you might also get rid of the blisters. Let me know what you find out.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor