We currently hand toss our pies which works great and are very happy with the finished product however this requires a skilled person working to accomplish this. Right now I’m here open to close everyday because we cannot seem to find a good pizza guy or if we do they want more then we are willing to pay them…
What I need is an easier method to produce hand tossed pies without having to hire an expensive pizza guy, Right now we hand toss the dough onto a peel and dress it then into the oven. This is the only way I know how to do it and teaching some of the staff here to do that comes with mixed results… I’ve heard people tossing the pies on screens which eliminates getting it off the peel which is most of the new guys problem area… Any other ideas ?
You might have success using a pizza press, like DoughPro, and the staff can finish the minor stretching on a screen…then just ‘deck it’ off the screen for a minute or so to finish…
The ‘trick’ in using a press, is to make sure the dough is proofed & not to cold…
Dough presses and sheeters will never get you the right crust for a NY pie. To get a NY style pie tossing is the most comon method today but hand stretching is right up there. If you use semolina on the peel launching is pretty fail safe. I run a bakery/pizzeria that teaches special needs kids entry level work skills and the first step I do with pizza is shaping the dough on the bench and then we go to hand stretch. I have a few of those rubber pizza olympic doughes and they really help get the motion and hand placements down. Here is a video of one of my students making a pie via hand stretching. I grew up in the NYC/NJ pizza world and lots of the older guys did the hand stretch when I was a teen back in the 60’s-70’s… Walter
Here she is after 2 days at tossing. She did so good they used this picture for the story on us.
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/article/2 … ck_check=1
here is a video of her hand stretching and launching.
http://youtu.be/b5-5AxX6EJc
http://youtu.be/ORqe62-9hZ8
tossing one of our 18" pies
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y237/waltertore/rsz_paigetossingpies_zps9315ada9.jpg