Dough help for a hopeful business person............

[pizzagrace]

I am looking for that perfect dough recipe.
I noticed under “Recipes” on the Think Tank homepage a recipe for dough for home ovens.
If I want to open a pizza place eventually, is there any point in practicing in my home oven.
I have yet to get anything near restaurant quality crust at home?
Thoughts?
Thanks so much.

 

[bodegahwy]

No, I would say there is no point in practicing with home batch sizes and a home oven. Don’t waste your time on it.

 

[NicksPizza]

I spent 8 years in the business, and closed last fall. I have had to completely reformulate and reprocess the dough making and baking. Formulas are okay, but all th gadgets I’ve had to use in my oven to replicate a commercial baking oven . . . . just not even worth trying to work with you.

The one benefit you will get is experience handling yeast doughs. That could be of use eventually . . . .just having experience handling and feeling the dough. That’s about it.

 

[pcuezze]

I’ll disagree with the other posters. I think you can replicate restaurant style dough at home. Of course there will be adjustments to scale the recipes, but I was very successful in getting quality doughs out of my oven. I’m lucky in that I have 2 3-burner ovens so I could realistically attain 525-550 degrees at home.

I spent a lot of time at the pizzamaking forum. Those guys have lots of knowledge about making pizzas at home…

Critical equipment for home is:

1. Several pizza stones. I line the bottom of my oven with 2 and then cook on another.
2. A scale. You must weigh all your ingredients to have any chance with home dough making.
3. A good stand mixer. I burnt up 2 kitchen aids with my thin dough. You really have to watch the dough in those mixers.
4. A source for quality ingredients. There is no substitute for fresh-packed tomatoes. No pizza will taste restaurant-quality without good tomatoes. Same for cheese and pepperoni. The Hormel pepperoni in the store is not the same as hormel restaurant pepperoni (the stuff in the store is no-refrigeration required).

Hope this helps!

Patrick Cuezze
www.nextdoorpizza.com

 

[system]

I have done what you are asking. First making “good-ok” home pizza. People that ate it all said best homemade. Then with access to larger mixers and walkin coolers started to play around. At that point throw it all out the window and start over. Then invest in a Bakers Pride countertop electric oven with the stone pizza decks. Now throw out 75% of what I learned with commercial dough and home oven. I will say that all the testing and experience did not harm in anyway… but if you are really serious and have a few thousand as practice money and the space to do it… go buy some small scale commercial items. Get a double door refer and a 30qt pizza mixer. Then work on a small used pizza oven. If you seriously shop around I bet you could get it all installed at home for $6-7k. You now have your own home pizza shop…so long as you dont sell anything…because you can play around but are not inspected so you are cooking for yourself. Other than a small oven… if you do open the shop…the small mixer as a backup and the 2-3 door reach-in could all be utilized in your new venture…so not a total waste of money…just paying for your training.

 

[system]

I just saw Patricks post… his ovens make a difference. The one big thing that he mentioned that I missed was get a good scale! Bakers math and not measurements is the only way to duplicate any dough formula. Also would add…thanks to Tom pounding this one into my head… get a good thermometer and follow the dough and ingredient temps. When you finally get that great product that you then say “this is the one I want to sell”… you dang well want to be able to make another batch of it! :idea: