Dough question Tom

[system]

How is it when i cook my pizza on the brick, the crust is more tough? If I cook it on a screen it is just as crisp, but after it sits a couple of minutes it isn’t as tough as when I cook it straight on the brick. I currently have a roto-flex but am opening a smaller shop and want to use a woodstone oven for the apeal to customers. This is why I’m trying my pizza cooked straight on the stone right now to see how my pizza would be that way. Just don’t think it would look as apealing to throw a pizza in a woodstone oven on a screen. Thanks. Also I use 50 lbs Pillsbury Balancer high gluton flour, 1 3/4 cup salt, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups oil, 29 lb water, 6 eggs, and
4 tbl inst dry yeast.

 

[ADpizzaguy]

I think Tom will ask you this… what is your proceedure for mixing your dough? Also, I recently asked tom for dough help with yeast, he told me that with out a weight measure he couldn’t help. I will tell you what I found out concerning the weight of yeast. 4 tbsp of IDY weighs about 1.5 oz. chances are that you’re not using enough yeast, Tom told me that typically with 50 lbs of flour the yeast percentage should be anywhere from .25 percent to .50 percent. .25 percent would come out to about 2 oz. That could be the problem, but without knowing your proceedure it’s more difficult to diagnose. and just a thought, I could be wrong but you don’t typically see eggs in pizza dough recipes, that could be part of the problem. Eggs in dough work with the gluten to make a lighter bread, it also bread more moist.

And a big Thank You to Tom

I’ve learned a lot about dough from him!

 

[Tom_Lehmann]

While I was reading your question I said to myself “now this is an interesting turn of events” and I speculated that the most likely cause was a less than ideally baked crust coming out of the deck oven. Your formula confirmred my suspicians. Yes, the yeast is a bit on the low side, but that isn’t relevant to your question, The presence of sugar and eggs in the formula is. Both of these ingredients cause the dough to color up faster in the oven, probably why you presently bake on a screen. When you now bake on the hearth/deck, your crust colors up faster so your crust never gets quite as well baked as it does on a screen (you end up taking it out of the oven a little sooner because of the color). It is well recognized that a crust which is baked less than ideal will develop tough eating properties as it begins to cool. I’m betting that if you were to delete the eggs and sugar from the crust formula you would get different results.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

 

[Russell]

Tom,

If one takes out the sugar will that change the taste of the dough and will you have to increase the yeast at all?

 

[Tom_Lehmann]

At the level at which you are using sugar it has essentially no affect upon the flavor of the dough, just the rate at which it colors (browns) during baking. Sugar isn’t enough by itself for what you want though, you will also need to “nix” the whole egg too, then experimentally begin adding a small portion of the whole egg back into the dough formula until you find a compromise level that you are willing to accept.
No further adjustments to the yeast level should be needed.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor