Alo of those responses are “spot on”. I totally agree that you’ve gotta allow the dough to rise/proof before baking. I typically use a proof box at 90 to 95F with about 70% relative humidity and allow the panned dough to rise for 45 to 70 minutes depending upon the desired finished crust thickness. A good way to determine the MAXIMUM amount of oil to put into those pans is to add oil until there is just enough so you can tip the pan around in your hands and see it flowing across the bottom of the pan. Once you have determined this amount use only 1/2 to 2/3 of that amount. Any more oil than that will just make for an oily crust. I like to use a pastry brush dipped in oil to oil my pans. With a little practice you can easily judge the correct amount of oil to apply (no need to weigh). With an ait impingement oven you will probably be looking at baking temps of 435 to 450F and baking times of 10 to 12 minutes for those thicker crusts. If you want to par-bake the crusts you will need to drop the temperature to about 385 to 400F and look at baking times of about 4 minutes. You will need to do some experimenting to get the bakin time and temperature just right for par-baking. If the dough “pockets” like pita then you need to reduce baking time. If you see what looks like grease or oil spots on the dough after cooling (no, they’re not oil spots) then you need to decrease the baking temperature and increase the baking time. Those spots are actually collapsed dough. If the baked crust collapses upon cooling, it is not sufficiently baked and you will need to bake longer at a lower temperature. Some hints for par-baking; Remove the baked crust from the pan immediately after it comes out of the oven. Invert the crusts onto a wire rack or screen for cooling. When the crusts are THOROUGHLY cooled, they can be packaged in suitable plastic bags and stored at room temperature for up to three days. To use the par-baked crusts, re-oil the same size pan that it was baked in and place the crust back into the pan, dress the crust and bake. Surprisingly, thich crust pizzas made from par-baked crusts take just about as long to reheat/bake as they would when baked from a raw dough. this is due to the thick, par-baked crust being so difficult to thoroughly reheat. You will need to be very careful when par-baking those crusts to make sure you don’t get the bottoms more than just a light, sandy color. If you get them too dark they will get too dark (objectionably dark) when you re-bake the crust as a completed pizza. I guess you could change the bottom finger configuration on the oven that will be used to bake the finished pizzas in (reduce heat to the bottom of the pizza) but that isn’t practical in most stores. If the pizzas are to ba finished in a deck oven you can just put a screen or two under the pan to reduct the bottom heat and prevent burning the bottom crust. You might also experiment with using a bright colored pan to bake the “pizza” in. The bright colored pan will reflect a good deal of heat awaqy from the pan and this might be enough to control the bottom color. So, this would mean that you would be par-baking in a dark colored pan and baking the pizzas in a bright colored pan. It might be worth a shot to see if it works for you. By the way, try to keep the sugar content in the dough as low as possible, maybe delete it from the dough formula entirely as this wil also help to control the bottom crust color. Remember, when you are baking a pizza on a par-baked crust, you are only baking the top of the pizza while you are trying to reheat the crust. Remember, its already baked, you just want to reheat it and give it a little more color.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
