Please keep in mind that the different forming methods produce finished crusts with different physical characteristics. Sheeting or rolling the dough to shape it creates a more dense crumb structure that is less crispy when finished than either pressed or hand formed.
To get a more crispy sheeted crust you can allow the dough to rise for a short time between forming and dressing/baking. Sheeting works well for thick crust production as the dough will be allowed ample time to rise in the pan before baking where as thin crust will go directly from forming to dressing/baking. Pressed dough skins are not as degassed as the sheeted dough skins are and as a result, they are closer to a hand formed dough skin and give finished crusts more like that of hand forming. A good comkpromise is to sheet a crust out to about 2 to 3 inches less in diameter than the desired finished size, then finish stretching the dough skin to size manually. This gives most of the hand formed characteristics but it is a lot more friendly to those who are “toss” challanged than opening the entire dough piece up by hand. As might be expected, hand forming removes very little gas from the dough so it also produces a finished crust with the lightest texture and probably crispiest texture of al the different forming methods. I’ve written about this before so you might want to take a look at my past articles if you want to find out more about the different forming methods and how they affect the finished crust.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
