Pizza Dough Question

I'm a bit confused?? If the dough is elastic how can it not want to stretch?

Anyway, if I were using this formula I would add more water. You have barely 50% hydration here and I would recommend 65%.

Jock

I would also add apinch of sugar,and maybe some honey.

i have a pizza douch recipe that we used at the pizzeria i used to work at, which containted sugar and also semolina flour. no honey tho, thats a recent addition made by me.

That looks like the correct proportion of water to flour. I don't see why it's not elastic.

Do this:

Take it out of the bread machine before it raises.

Portion it out according to how many pizzas you want to make out of the dough.

Hand knead it quickly and form it into a ball.

Let it raise directly on the counter. Oil the tops and cover with plastic wrap.

When they're raised, nice and soft, form your pizza crust.

The key is that is waiting until it's time to make your pizza. It'll be hard as a rock if it's not raised or if it's cold.

Bingo:chef:

For that amount of dough, Id say around a tablespoon. You can add more or less to your taste, it brings a suttle sweetness to the finished dough which i do like. A friend of mine at work also uses honey in his pizza dough, but he puts way more in then i do, and u can really taste the honey instead of the dough, which in my opinion, defeats the purpose lol.

to each his own i guess right?

Enjoy, pizza is like the best food ever

You know, all the bread machine is doing is kneading it. Why don't you just knead it by hand?

Here's a sorta OK look at how to knead bread dough.

Illustrated Version of: How To Knead Bread Dough

Instead of 50 minutes you're done in 15. Pizza dough really only needs one raise. Remember to proof your yeast first using warm water.

Best pizza dough recipe ever.

12.5# high gluten flour
3.5 qt water
.5 qt olive oil
1 oz fresh cake yeast
1 oz salt
3 oz sugar
put it all in a mixing bowl and mix with a dough hook until it pulls away from the sides. Take it out, knead it 10 times and ball it. cover with plastic wrap and let it rest/proof for 20 minutes. Scale it and you are ready to go. You do not need to soak your yeast first.

I add 1 tsp. sugar to my dough, & use yogurt cheese instead of oil. I used to let it mix in a bread machine (until it commited suicide by flinging itself off the counter); however, I didn't let it rise in the machine--just in the pizza pan.

southern, that dough recipe definitely has too little water. kuan, I'm going to have to disagree with you on that. It's the underhydration.

jock, add me to your paintball team. So far, it's me and you against kuan and Ma Facon. :lol:

I didn't check jock's figures, but I agree that less than 50% hydration for a pizza dough is very underhydrated. That is the main source of your problems, southern. There could be other smaller factors in your gluten development, but that dough is way dry.

Montelago's is 56% hydration, a little better, but that's still dry to my preference, though there's another 8% in oil.

Southern, I would say definitely use a recipe with a wetter ratio of water to flour than the one you're using. If you have a kitchen scale, use a recipe that's by weight, the flour will weigh out more accurately for you also.

Southern, isn't it nice when it's the recipe's fault and not yours!:roll:

That's well beyond the capacity of home equipment considering a home cook posted the question.

Montelago

If I use your recipe what would be the gluten to flour ratio.  I have both all purpose and gluten and have to mix.  Do you also use semolina in your dough.  we are attempting to create a dough we like so that we can make pizza when ever we want somel  I am also looking for some sauce recipes;  so far, my bolognese has the taste my husband likes (i even strained out all of the meat to have a simple sauce but that is truly a waste of all those ingredients).  Do you have any suggestions, please?

Fewls, you may not hear back. That thread is several years old, and Montelago hasn't been posting since the summer of '08.

 

I'm not sure I understand your question. The recipe calls for high-gluten flour, which, I'll admit, is not readily available to many home-cooks. But you can substitute bread flour, with no ill effects. If you want to use the high-gluten flour, both King Arthur and Weisenberger Mills sell it by mail.

 

Given your criteria for an always-on-hand pizza dough, let me suggest you check out the recipe in Mario Batali's Molto Gusto. The key to that one is that the dough is, after shaping, pre-cooked on the stove top. We make it in batches, and keep the pre-cooked flatbreads in the freezer. Then, when we want pizza it's a simple matter of defrosting, topping, and final baking.

Hi KYHeirloomer

Once again you come to the rescue.  I woke up in the middle of the night and rather wake my husband, went on line.  Needless to say, I was not looking at much of anything but particularly not the date of the post.

 

The reason I asked about the gluten is that we have "gluten" that hubby adds to his bread.  We have placed an order for the King Arthur Sir Lancelot (high gluten flour) but until that comes I was wondering how much to add to the regular flour.

 

As a matter of fact, I just purchased Batali's "Mucho Gusto as it was recommended as a good Pizza source. 

 

Thank you, as always for taking the time to respond.  I will try to pay attention to the dates on posts in the future.  I am living and learning as I go!

 

Have a lovely day!

The Molto Gusto recipe probably calls for 00 flour which is even rarer in the States than High Gluten flour.  00 flour is highly refined flour--think of it as high protein cake flour.  I've read that a mix of 25% cake flour and 75% all purpose or bread flour is a decent substitute.  Personally I make due with regular old AP.

To answer the original question too elastic of pizza dough is due to one of the following:

 

Too much protein - This is likely the culprit.  Rather than get bread with MORE gluten, try using regular old AP flour and make the dough the same way you always have.  You could also add a bit more oil to even things out.

 

Dough too cold - Dough needs to be at room temperature.

 

Dough under risen - The original poster said their pizza rose nicely but had it not doubled in size it likely would have been very elastic and difficult to roll without reverting back to its original shape.

 

Dough unrelaxed - Let the dough sit for a half hour and try again.  You can stack the deck with a dough processing aid like L-cysteine.

 

Dough undermixed - Kneading dough is a lot of work.  The original poster used a bread machine, many of us use stand mixers.  This is preferable to doing it with one's hands imo.

 

Hope this helps at all.

You're right, Benway, the recipe specifies OO flour.

 

As I said in my review, the one drawback to Molto Gusto is Batali's over-reliance on rare and hard to find ingredients. When he appeared here as a guest his answers to why that was so were superficial and contradictory. I lost a lot of respect for him over that.

 

I just sub bread flour for the 00. But I think, as you said, that AP would work just fine. And the whole secret to any pizza dough recipe is to let it rest sufficiently so it relaxes. Not doing that is probably the commonest mistake made by home cooks.

Most Italian flour is milled to two levels of fineness -- 1.0 and 00.  The numbers refer only to how finely the flour is milled.  They have nothing to do with the amount of gluten/protein.

 

Italian panafiable (bread flour) can be had as either 00 or 1.0. It's protein is more like a US AP than a bread flour.  As a practical matter there is little to no difference between 00 and 1.0 panafiable for artisanal bread baking, or pizza for that matter.  

 

As it happens, the hardness (amount of gluten/protein) in US flours is still a bit regional.  If you live in the south and buy from local mills, AP can be very soft.  For bread baking purposes you might want to buy a national brand AP like King Arthur, switch to a local bread flour, or mix AP with bread 50/50.  Here in the non-south, I mix AP with cake flour (Swan's Down) to make biscuits and pie crusts.  

 

Otherwise, for most artisanal baking of European style breads and for pizza, AP is the best choice.

 

So what about bread flour?  If you're using a true, heavy-duty mixer kneader for mixing and kneading bread flour will handle the stress better.  But for hand kneading, a residential mixer-kneader (including a small Hobart), or a semi-commercial mixer-kneader you're probably (and you pay sufficent attention to turn the machine off when the dough is completely kneaded) AP is your best bet.

 

Finally, 90% of the time "high gluten flour" and "bread flour" are different names for the same thing.

 

Hope this helps,

BDL

Finally, 90% of the time "high gluten flour" and "bread flour" are different names for the same thing.

 

Maybe. And maybe you're overstating the case. Might as well say that 90% of the time "all purpose flour" and "bread flour" are different names for the same thing. The protein content varies between those two the same as between bread flour and high-gluten flour. 

 

According to my references, here are the standard gluten contents of various flours:

 

Cake flour: 6-7%

Patry flour: 7.5-9.5%

AP flour: 9.5-11.5%

Bread flour: 11.5-13.5%

High-gluten flour: 13.5-(a theoretical) 16%

 

If you had said, "90% of the time you can use high gluten flour and bread flour interchangeably," you'd have been nearer the mark, in that the gluten development, and its effects on the final loaf, are close to indistinguishable.

 

However, because high-gluten flour usually is milled finer, there can be physical differences in the texture and taste of breads made with them. Personally, I don't care for high-gluten, and only use it those times when I'm testing a recipe and the author calls for it. But if I like the recipe, I go back to bread flour the next time I make it.

 

 

 

Maybe you all can answer a question for me.  Why does good pizza dough fold...what is the indreditiant or process that makes the dough pliable after cooking.  Is it the ingrediant ratios: water to yeast to flour etc or the length of the kneading,  could it have anything to do with baking on a lot stone to draw out the moisture?

 

As always, many Thanks for your time!!