Proofing on trays after mixing ?

L

Luke

New member
Hi Tom,
Wondering what the best process is for proofing your sheeted thin crust pizza bases on the trays straight after mixing.
The reason I’m thinking about it as a new process for us is that if the bases are stacked in the cool room with lids on (like dominoes Australia does)…then no one during or before the lunch shift has to roll the bases out.
My staff are completely dough challenged and I want to open for lunch…just finding rolling out bases is a real road block for some of them.
Having them ready to go already proofed on the trays would mean I have one less thing the lunch person has to do and they can work solo.
At the moment, we mix dough, scale & ball immediately, cross stack in cool room, close boxes for 24hr cool room old ferment, bring out 4 hrs before service, rollout to 2/3rd size of tray, hand stretch, and let have one last 30-45mim proof on wall mounted pizza racks.
I find that last bit of proofing for our thin crust 220gram bases makes for a huge improvement in cook and far less sag.
Want to get the same proofing on trays straight after mixing and then have hem ready to go.
Appreciate any thoughts…as I now understand one reason dominoes Australia rolls out straight after mixing and proofs overnight on trays with lids on…it’s very user friendly.
 
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Your best approach is to open the dough balls into skins and place them on wire pizza screens, place these in a wire tree rack and store in the cooler. Do Not Cover for the first 30-minutes, then slip a plastic bag over each tree rack. They’ll be good all day in the cooler.
To use, remove from cooler, allow to temper AT room temperature for about 30-minutes, then INVERT the skin(s) off of the screen onto a prep peel or baking platform, dress to the order and bake. If you are using a peel be sure to put a little semolina or corn meal on the peel as a peel dust.
Tom Lehmamm/ The Dough Doctor
 
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Thanks for the response Tom.
We use a Middleby Marshall conveyor oven with perforated aluminium trays.
Our challenge is to come up with a process as close to what we do now.
Wondering if instead of slow fermenting our dough balls overnight in the cool room, can we sheet them onto our trays straight after mixing…so effectively skipping the balling step.
 
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More than likely you will find that the dough will be proofing into the holes in your baking disks, expand during baking thus locking the dough onto the disk. Every dough performs differently so you might just try a few to see what happens.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Thanks Tom,
Wondering if you had any thoughts on a dough management process where you sheeted your mixed dough straight away and put it into pan trays (with no perforations ) and a lid, cool roomit for a night.
Then use the next day.
Effectively I’m asking what would the difference between cold fermenting dough alls vs on a tray sheeted
 
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It’s going to be pretty difficult to sheet the dough right after mixing unless you use a reducing agent such as dead yeast or PZ-44.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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So watching the youtube clip in this link

Is it safe to say that the organisation featured uses PZ-44 l-cystine
 
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From as soft and pliable as the dough looks to be I’d say either something like PZ-44/L-cysteine of quite possibly dead yeast since it would not show up on any label since it is included with the live/active yeast and all yeast ends up dead in the finished product.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Thanks for that.
They said they don’t use animal products…so I guess that looks like it is dead yeast…
I’m just playing around with different dough management things to get around our dough challenged staff.
I’ve noticed our thin crust bases really sing when they have had a lot of time to proof on the trays.
So am doing a bit of trial and error to see if rolling out straight after mixing and letting them rise overnight in the cool room with lids on would produce a nice risen thin crust base ready to go.
We’ve got wall mounted pizza racks in the shop, so if we do it well before servive so they can rise, unfortunately the bases would dry out as you can’t get covers over wall mounted racks…
The other benefit would be the lunch person would not have to roll out bases if they were in trays already to go. They would just take lids off and dress…
 
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For the fast casual concept we have sheeted the skins and then allowed them to proof for a specific period of time (you would need to determine that time), they are then placed in the cooler and allowed to cool for about an hour or so, they can then be stacked 5-high with a piece of parchment paper between skins and placed into a plastic bag for refrigerated storage. The skins managed in this manner can be held only for the day on which they’re made. Skins not used are either added back to new dough or made into bread sticks or garlic knots for use over the next few days.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Hi Tom,
Thanks for the info.
Just wondering if you knew of anywhere to look at a video or pictures of pizzas made using hot dough presses.
Am intrigued by the potential of them to mitigate staff dough handling problems and to improve consistency. I’ve only been able to google content which stops at the dough ball being pressed…nothing post cook.
 
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I’m not sure just what you are looking for, are you looking for a video of a pizza made from a pressed skin being baked? No real difference from any other pizza. If you are looking to see the difference in crumb structure I’m not aware of any videos showing this, but I did write a very comprehensive article on the differences of pizzas made from the various dough forming methods. I believe this article was written for PMQ so it should be available for viewing in the archives. If you don’t find it here at PMQ you will need to go to Pizza Today Magazine to find it. In a nutshell: Hand opening provides the most open/porous crumb structure; Hot pressed provides a finished crust with a smaller, more uniform crumb structure; Sheeting provides a finished crust with a more dense crumb structure and also tends to increase the chewiness of the finished crust unless the formed skin is allowed to proof for a period of time between sheeting and dressing/baking. It also needs to be noted that pressed dough needs to be sufficiently soft and relaxed/extensible to allow for pressing without significant shrinkage/snap-back after pressing. This is usually accomplished through flour selection (favoring a lower protein flour), longer fermentation time for the dough balls, and/or use of a reducing agent (L-cysteine, dead yeast, vegetable powder (deodorized onion/garlic), and occasionally elevated dough temperature (+/- 100F).
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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