Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

[gjbingham]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

Ken,
I've seen no ill effects from a light dusting of spray oil on top of the balls. I was just kidding about that helping to keep them from sticking.

A light dusting of flour and plastic wrap covering the balls, and tucked down between them makes them easier to separate if they rise too much.

You basically degass the dough almost completelty during the shaping phase anyway, so there's not much harm in using a dough knife (or any blade) to cut between them if they do stick together. I'm not sure if it is the dull blade that pinches the dough and almost completely seals it, but it much better than just pulling the two balls apart.

[Dutchoven]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

Indispensible is a great term. I have found that we use the dough cutter to remove the dough balls from the container. Pinch it down at the in at the side and kind of scoop under.
Best
Dutch

I have found it easy to separate the dough balls that might grown together using a dough cutter. Indispensable.
James

[Ken524]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

Great replies. Thanks guys.

[KiwiPete]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

A dough cutter is a really good tool, but for picking up balls of dough that stick together (mine always do, I don't use oil and they "grow" together) I use an ordinary putty knife. Works a treat, because you can cut the dough ball loose from other ones and use it to pick up the ball in one motion.

Not an original idea: I picked it up when I was visiting Pizzeria Salvo in Naples. According to some of the guys on the pizzamaking.com forum this pizzeria is as good or even better than Da Michele.

Attached are some pics:

- one is my putty knife
- the other shows the dough balls at Pizzeria Salvo (note how they stick together)
- the third one shows some dough balls on the bench and if you look closely, you can see the handle of the putty knife.

[Ken524]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

Thanks for the pics, Pete.

As an update, we had pizza (again!) last night. Shortly before making my dough, I discovered I had a dough blade for our 14 cup Cuisinart processor. It holds 6 cups of flour, so I converted the FB dough recipe for 6 cups of flour (1.5 batches). The Cuisinart did a super job mixing and kneading. I've been doing this by hand, so this is a welcome discovery!

[Dutchoven]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

Ken
Doughs blades on the food processors will do a pretty good job with doughs, especially the mixing part. I would suggest a bit of hand kneading to finsih as I don't know what kind of friction they create...and also the blade will tend to cut the dough rather than fold it.
Glad you're having fun!
Dutch

Thanks for the pics, Pete.

As an update, we had pizza (again!) last night. Shortly before making my dough, I discovered I had a dough blade for our 14 cup Cuisinart processor. It holds 6 cups of flour, so I converted the FB dough recipe for 6 cups of flour (1.5 batches). The Cuisinart did a super job mixing and kneading. I've been doing this by hand, so this is a welcome discovery!

[Ken524]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

Ken
Doughs blades on the food processors will do a pretty good job with doughs, especially the mixing part. I would suggest a bit of hand kneading to finsih as I don't know what kind of friction they create...and also the blade will tend to cut the dough rather than fold it.
Glad you're having fun!
Dutch

Thanks Dutch. I didn't do any kneading at all, and was really pleased with the texture of the dough. It was much better than what I had done previously by hand.

Next time I'll knead it a bit after processing to see if I can continue to improve it!

[gjbingham]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

Last night, I again used a 100% bread flour pizza dough that was hydrated way beyond my normal experience. I used Reinhart's recipe for Pizza Napolitana. The stuff was incredibly sticky, but when dusted with flour, handled like a dream. Really easy to stretch and shape.

I'm going back to Caputo for a comparison next time.

[mmmhumous]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

Just tried Jame's dough recipe (though only used ~1-2g salt). worked great, lots of elasticity and the dough was really easy to handle too!

[tdibratt]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

Hi folks I have been using the FB Caputo recipe for making pizza for the last 2 weeks using Devela Tipo 00 and/or Molino Pizzuti Pizza flour. My experiences with both have been similar. I use fresh yeast from a local bakery so instead of 3 gr of active yeast I have been using 8 gr of fresh.

The dough rises, I punch it down and carve it up into 4 pieces and then stretch and fold each one. Place it in a proofing container and 1.5 hours later they have grown to a soft elasticy blob of dough stuck to one another.

I then proceed to take each one on a floured top and flatten and ty to get a close to a circle as possible. It cooks well and is pretty thin. Unlike when I use bread flour I can actually get this to a thin crust by stretching it ans it stays pretty good. When I use bread flour it has a tendency to want to go back to it's non stretched state.

Here's my question. How come when I see videos or even watch the local pizza guy make a pizza, the balls of dough seem more dense, not as fluffy and can actually be rolled with a pin and flattened perfectly? Am I using the wrong flour, too much yeast, too much water? Or is it that they keep theirs in the fridge till it's time to use it?

I was in Niagara Falls this past weekend and wood oven pizza's seem popular. I had one at one restaurant where they actually roll the dough with a pin. The then run this roller over the pizza which looks like little spikes on it putting very tiny holes in the dough. Then then pre-cook this so it retain's it's shape, take it out of the oven, add the toppings and then in it goes for final cooking. Different method but again their dough was perfect balls before they rolled it out.

Thx

[Momo]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

I can at least answer the rolling spiky thing... that's called "docking" the dough and it puts small pin holes in the dough to prevent huge bubbles from forming in the crust. About the rolling pin, I have never done it, but I believe you can roll to an extent... like, out close to the edge of the dough but do not roll completely off the edge or you will push out the gas bubbles. If a cracker-like crust is desired, then I guess rolling would be okay.

[CanuckJim]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

TDI,

Quick answer: you're doing it the correct Neopolitan way. The result is a creamy crust with good crunch at the cornice. The other guys are doing it the North American way, developed because they're using harder flour. The result is a dense, cracker crust that lacks personality. That's why N Am pizzas are heaped with toppings, to make up for a sub-par crust. The rolling pin guarantees a tough crust, no matter how well shaped. They use a docking wheel so the pizza does not develop a large bubble in the centre. With such a tough crust, it's almost a certainty unless one is used.

Just keep doing what your doing. Who cares about perfect shape? Your looking for perfect taste.

Jim

[FigliodiMariaeGiovanni]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

TDI,

Quick answer: you're doing it the correct Neopolitan way. The result is a creamy crust with good crunch at the cornice. The other guys are doing it the North American way, developed because they're using harder flour. The result is a dense, cracker crust that lacks personality. That's why N Am pizzas are heaped with toppings, to make up for a sub-par crust. The rolling pin guarantees a tough crust, no matter how well shaped. They use a docking wheel so the pizza does not develop a large bubble in the centre. With such a tough crust, it's almost a certainty unless one is used.

Just keep doing what your doing. Who cares about perfect shape? Your looking for perfect taste.

Jim

All of this time I was fretting about roundness [the pizza I mean]

[brokencookie]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

Just wanted to jump in with praise for using weight recipes. I recently was tearing out my hair. I could not figure out why my pizzas were so thin and small. James has reported using 275 gram dough balls for 11 inch pizzas. I was using 300 grams and ending up with a credit card thin 9 inch. Everything was great except for the small amount of dough. After a few weeks of frustration I realized that I had my scale set on a funky unit. When I set the scale back to grams I found that I was actually using about 40% of the ingredients I should have used.
So why am I praising using weight ? Because, even thought I screwed up.. the recipe still worked !! The units become unimportant as long as the percentages stay the same. Using the recipe by weight allowed me to continue to enjoy excellent pizza while I figured out the problem.

[ERASMO]

Re: Perfect Pizza Dough by Weight

I am having a hard time finding the active fresh yeast. Does anyone know a conversion from active fresh to dry yeast?
Thanks