House Calls with Tom Lehmann, The Dough Doctor

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Tom Lehmann will be available to answer your dough/bread/baking questions on Monday, November 27. We will have him on the ASK PMQ HOTLINE – Please call in or post your questions in this thread.

For call-ins, dial: 1-800-PMQ-4592 ext. 411 … Please leave a detailed question along with your name, pizzeria name, and phone number. All questions will be answered by Tom Lehmann on Monday and posted to Pizzaradio.com on Tuesday morning.

Questions can be submitted any time between now and Monday.

Thanks for your participation in helping make this new feature work!

 

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I will repost all incoming questions to Tom Lehmann to this thread until the end of the week–If you have a question for Tom, please post it here.

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Tom,

I have encountered some strage results with my dough. We handtoss our dough and bake in a conveyor oven. Our dough is typically 2 days old when we use it and allow it to proof at room temp for an hour or so before we use it. Nothing odd about our recipe, Hi-Gluten flour, 56% water content, soybean oil, sugar, salt, and instant yeast.

We did an experiment using a rolling pin to roll out the dough rather than tossing it by hand as we are having trouble with the trainees getting a consitant dough tossed out.

The rolled dough was actually much more tender, airier, crispier, and had a very nice open cell structure throughout the pizza.

The dough tossed by hand was dense, chewy, tough and had a much more noticable gum line to it.

I have done the experiment several times with batches from different days, using dough 1-3 days old, with different topping combinations and still get the same results.

From what I have read - shouldn’t the opposite be happening? I would appreciate any thoughts or comments.

Thanks,

Michael

 

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Hi,

I have a great recipe for french bread, and I am using a HOUNO oven with humidity control from Europe. . This is a no oil type recipe and actually the finished product tastes great, exactly what I think it should taste like BUT I always get a “blowout” on the side of the loaf when I bake it.

What causes blowouts? Too much yeast? Too little yeast? Stretching the dough roll too much with too few grams? Proofing too long? Proofing too little?

Please HELP!!!

I am getting desperate, the pizza / bakery opens in 5 weeks and this is the ONLY thing that is causing me problems.

THANK YOU!!!

 

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Dr. Lehman: We currently are using all that I learned at the American Institute of Baking’s Pizza Seminar, taught by none other that you, to make and market a frozen version of our restaurant’s popular pizzas. We are adding a USDA plant in the back yard of one of our locations. We have a blast freezer, which can freeze about 60 pizzas in 45-75 minutes (high-power freezer at minus 30 degrees). But I was wondering how much different our product would be if we just used the regular old walk-in freezer we are building, to freeze the pizzas (Good old zero degree freezer by Kolpak, same as what you find in the back of most grocers). Using the walk-in will take longer at zero rather than minus 30, but we will be able to put 500 pies in it at a time, instead of 60. Should I anticipate that the slower freezing will produce any perceptible difference in the end product? Thanks so much for your consideration. PS: I talk up the AIB and its seminars often. It was a great course, and well worth the time and money. - Kurt at Shakespeares

 

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Does anyone here have a recipe for yeast doughnut dough?

Thanks in advance,
Roy