Pre Bakes

[daisy]

I searched the topics & could not find anything to what Im looking for. OK on prebakes, when you need to do up a bunch for an anticipated busy nite, what is the rule of thumb for how long you pre bake your crust for with out loosing the actual quality of your pizza dough when you actually put all the ingred. on it to fully bake.

 

[daisy]

Ok I forgot to add in. Its seems that if you just put the dough in for 1 or 2 minutes to just set the dough, then when you actually add the rest of your ingred. & put back in to bake the dough will not rise anymore or am I wrong

 

[daisy]

I guess I was wording the topic wrong, I was continuing to look thru topics & came across a topic “Par Bakes” So I read them but not really much answer to what Im questioning on the rise of the dough after pre baking. But 1 question I have is what is “gum” this is my first time thinking of doing pre bakes.

 

[pizzashack]

We have a dessert pizza that we prebake the dough for about 2 minutes. It makes it much easier to spread our cream cheese base as it is stiffer and warms the cream cheese. They seem to turn out fine although most of our rising happens in the first 2 minutes.
***Important to mention we do not have the typical dough everybody uses here. We use a much higher yeast content and prestretch our dough to pans when made. Actually was wondering if anyone else does their dough like this.

 

[Tom_Lehmann]

Daisy;
Per-baked crusts, AKA Par-baked crusts are just as their name implies, “baked”. While not baked to the full color development, they must be fully baked internally to support their structure. If this were not the case, they would collapse upon removal from the oven. Since the thermal death point for yeast is at about 140F, and the final setting temperature of the starch ib the flour is at about 180F, the thermal death poiunt for yeast has been well exceeded by the time the dough structure has sufficiently set to inhibit collapse upon removal from the oven. IE. par-baked crusts will not exhibit any more rise after bakin or cooling because the yeast is dead. It is not a good idea to mix fresh baked dough and par-baked dough for your pizzas. It is recommended that you either go with all par-baked crusts, or go with all fresh baked pizzas (where the pizza is assembled on a raw, unbaked dough skin, and then taken to the oven for full baking). If you need to do something to stay ahead of the orders during “slam” periods, a good trick is to pre-open the dough into skins and place them onto pizza screens that you store in the cooler on wire tree racks. Cover the racks to prevent excessive drying of the dough skins. To use these pre-opened dough skins, just bring them out of the cooler about 30-minutes before you need them, remove from the screen and finish by final stretching to full size, then place onto the baking screen, disk or prep-peel for dressing to the order, then take directly to the oven for baking. This way all of the pizzas will be made with fresh dough rather than a mix of fresh and par-baked crusts.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

 

[pizzashack]

Tom Lehmann, have you heard of anyone doing dough our way where we stretch to pans immediately after mixing. We use a higher yeast content so it rises quickly. I recently took over the place in December but we have been doing it this way for over 15 years. There are a lot of people that love our dough so I don’t think its a big issue but it does not hold well after 24-36 hours.

 

[daisy]

Tom, I have only thought of it becuase we are anticipating a big order for a school on one of our busy nites, I did 1, cooked for only a minute or 2, let it cook down, waited for a few hrs, brushed the outside crust with lite olive oil, put the topping on then baked it, it turned ok, was just a thought, we have never done it before

 

[Tom_Lehmann]

Daisy;
We did a special order for a local grade school a number of years ago. The pizzas wer for a fund raiser that the school was holding. To facilitate getting the order out in a timely manner we did exactly what you are proposing (mind you, this is different from sales in a store), we made 150 par-baked crusts, stored them at room temperature (no need to refrigerate) dedicated one of the air impingement ovens to the order, then we began producing pizzas faster than a flash, as soon as we had 20 pizzas boxed we would send them over to the school, then 20 more, and again and again, until the order was filled. Lots of work, but very rewarding. Experiment a little to determine what your final bake time will be and to make sure you won’t need to change the baking temperature when using the par-baked crusts.
Good Luck,
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

 

[Daysleeper]

You lose quality the second you prebake a crust. The flavor of pizza comes from using fresh made dough, raw sauce and a good cheese blend cooked in your oven.

A prebake will taste worse than dominoes and you will lose customers if you implement this practice.

 

[Pizza_of_the_Month]

Daysleeper:

You lose quality the second you prebake a crust. The flavor of pizza comes from using fresh made dough, raw sauce and a good cheese blend cooked in your oven.

A prebake will taste worse than dominoes and you will lose customers if you implement this practice.

You can get the same results and even better results by using a prebake. It depends on the dough that you use, how soon you use it after being prebaked, and if it is prebaked properly. I have done this many times. Our customers never notice. We have been open since 1959 and our sales climb every year. Never lost a customer yet from using a prebake.

 

[Tom_Lehmann]

Par-baked crusts are not as bad as they are made out to be IF the pizza is consumed while hot. Cold pizza made with a par-baked crust I agree is a whole lot less than desirable. The key here is that the pizza must be consumed while still HOT.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

 

[daisy]

We had our BIGGGG school order Friday nite. WOOOW, it was crazy but we got thru it, I pre-baked the crust Friday morning for just a minute or two, had them stacked all over my kitchen all day, started making the pizzas up about 4pm, we had 75 to do, along with our normal busy Fri nite orders, luckly I have a dbl deck stone oven, as we made them we lightly brushed the edge of crust with olive oil, put the other items on, they came out perfect, we actually made one & taste tested at 3pm, quality was perfect. School called me yesterday morning said it was a big hit, will be calling us again next event they do YEAH!!!