Passionate About Pizza: Making Great Homemade Pizza (49 page)

Preparing Dough

Make the dough in batches. You might find it useful to stagger the times that the dough starts rising so that it does not finish all at once. I typically use my electric mixer and make double-size batches (six or so cups of flour). I knead the dough then split it into single-pizza balls. I let each ball rise in an oiled gallon-size zipper-lock storage bag. I cover each bag with a towel while the dough rises. You can change the time that dough takes to rise by choosing where and how you let it rise. You can use quick-rise techniques to speed up one batch, normal rise for other batches dough, or slow-rise techniques for further batches. I frequently use the different rising techniques to space out when the dough is ready to shape.

Letting the Dough Rest

Letting the dough rest is the first step in forming a pizza. As you have prepared for the party, all the toppings are ready. To initiate the actual pizza preparation you start by letting the dough rest. Take one piece of risen dough, punch it down, knead it briefly, make a dough ball, flatten it into a disk, and wrap it in plastic wrap to rest. I recommend that you let only one or two pieces of dough rest at a time; otherwise, you will end up letting some dough rest too long and it will be so soft that it will be difficult to shape. As you finish shaping one pizza, you can prepare the next piece of dough for resting. The amount of time it takes to shape one pizza is a good period for letting the next piece of dough rest.

During the Pizza Party

Making the Pizzas

So, how do you make a bunch of pizzas? One at a time. Really! As long as all the dough, sauces, cheeses, and toppings are prepared in advance, you can shape and assemble one pizza while another one is baking. Time it right and you can keep the finished pizzas flowing to the table as fast as your oven can bake them.

Shaping, Assembling, and Baking

Just do it again and again and again… You will get in the groove and the pizzas will fly!

If you are baking thick-style pizza, you can start baking one, prepare a second one while the first bakes through its first half, and then add the second one to the oven. When the first pizza finishes cooking and you remove it from the oven, you can add the third pizza to the oven. And so on, and so on...

If you are baking thin-style pizza, you can start baking one, prepare a second one while the first bakes, take out the first pizza, and then immediately place the second one in the oven. You will find it helpful to have two pizza peels so that you can make a pizza on one peel and use the second peel to remove the other cooked pizza from the oven. You will also want to prepare the next piece of dough for resting partway through shaping a pizza. Repeat this process until all pizzas are cooked.

Even with these preparations, it is tough to make more than four thin-crust pizzas or two thick-crust pizzas per hour in a single oven. Double ovens can double your output rate, but you will have to be very efficient to keep both ovens filled at all times. If you cut the pizzas into small pieces, have some activities and appetizers around, and understanding guests, this continual flow of pizza works very well.

Can you cook multiple pizzas at the same time? I have tried placing two pizza stones in one oven to get pizzas baked faster. I found that each pizza cooked more slowly so there was not as much improvement in pizza throughput as I wanted. Of course, it might work in your oven. Just experiment to figure out what works for your oven.

A double oven really helps for making more pizza faster! Putting a pizza stone in each oven lets you can cook two pizzas at once. However, you may find that keeping two ovens going can stretch your pizza-making skills to the limit! My dream house will have enough oven space for me to cook three, four, or more pizzas at a time so that I can have huge pizza parties!

Serving the Crowd

If you are making pizza for a crowd that generally means several or more pizzas. Since they will come out of the oven at different times, you have a choice on when to serve the pizza. You can serve them as they come out, you can serve them in sets of two or three, or you can serve them all at once. You can serve kids first then adults. You can serve appetizer pizzas then main course pizzas later. You can wait to serve the pizzas until you have made the whole bunch of them. Do whatever works for you (and your significant other)!

Post Party Depression

Well, the party is over and you are now hip-deep in dirty dishes. Get those dishes cleaned and then take a breather to relax. Are you thinking back on how the party went? Now’s the time to remember the continual improvement part of the
Passionate About Pizza System
. You might want to make some notes in the cook’s notes section or write in the book to make notes in the recipes you used.

Continual Improvement

Capture your thoughts when they are fresh in your mind so that you will benefit from the experience next time you have a pizza party.

What went right? What went wrong? You might want to make some comments in this chapter or in the troubleshooting guide.

Which recipes were a hit? Which recipes were duds? Did anyone suggest a particular pizza recipe that you thought sounded good? Did you make up a pizza recipe that everyone liked? Write down those ideas, now, so you will not forget next time!

So, when are you having your next pizza party?

Advanced Pizza Making

Baker’s Dough Recipes

Professional bakers use different methods because they make dough in bulk. In order to maintain consistency, they measure their ingredients with different units, as well. Baker’s recipes express quantities in terms of “baker’s percents”. Weight is the primary means of measuring each component because it is easier to be consistent with large quantities and it is more precise. It is very easy to replicate the same weight of a particular ingredient at any time so weighing the ingredients gives repeatability. Since flour is the main component of dough, the recipe lists quantities of the other ingredients as a percentage of the weight of the flour in the recipe. Using weight also makes it easy to scale the recipe to larger quantities or smaller quantities with simple math. Further, it makes it easier to duplicate the same results later or by another person. The disadvantage for most home bakers is that they are not used to measuring ingredients by weight or they may not have an accurate scale.

For example, here is the
Basic Pizza Dough
recipe expressed in baker’s percents. Note that the ounces shown are ounces of weight not of volume.
Makes one fourteen to sixteen inch thin-style pizza.

Flour (100%) – 370.66 grams (13.07 ounces)
Water (63%) – 233.52 grams (8.24 ounces)
Oil (4%) – 14.83 grams (0.52 ounces)
Salt (1%) – 3.71 grams (0.13 ounces)
Dry Yeast (1.5%) – 5.56 grams (0.2 ounces)
Sugar (0.8%) – 2.97 grams (0.1 ounces)

You can follow the same methods for preparing the dough. The units in which the recipe lists the quantity of ingredients does not change the way the recipe behaves.

Weighing ingredients brings consistency to the dough. Bakers also weigh the dough that goes into each pizza they make and adjust the amount of dough to get just the desired weight. You can easily do this if you want to ensure that each of your pizzas turns out to be the same size. It is especially easy if you are making multiple batches of dough together or you are making individual pizzas.

Professional Dough-Making Techniques

You cannot just take a home recipe and scale it up to make huge quantities of dough. Similarly, you cannot take a commercial-quantity recipe and scale it down for home use. The amount of yeast, the amount of sugar, and the amount and type of dough conditioners must vary because the overall quantity made impacts the way the dough behaves. Pizzerias make their dough in large batches hours ahead of time. They frequently use machines to mix it, knead it, let it rise, and prepare it for extended storage. They use less yeast, they sometimes add dough conditioners, and they store the prepared dough in coolers to compensate for this longer time. They keep improving and fine-tuning their recipe until it works for them.

Bakers use the word
Fermentation
to describe initial stages of allowing the yeast to grow and propagate before mixing the full dough. Sourdough sponges and starters are two types of recipe that use this technique. Fermentation allows the yeast to multiply which produces more yeast as well as byproducts created by the yeast that provide flavor for the dough. Varying the time, temperature, and strain of yeast gives different results and flavor.

Proofing is the baker’s term for letting the dough rise. If you read professional recipes, books, or periodicals you will see the term proofing used frequently. You can just read that to mean, “letting the dough rise”. There are many discussions about the length of time, the temperature, and other variables about the proofing process. For the most part, the book already mentioned the things that you need to know most. Individuals having a serious interest in food science can find additional information about proofing in their own explorations. There is a lot to learn so if you are interested I encourage you to look into it.

Professional bakers regulate or
Retard
the progress of the yeast by placing the dough in cooler temperatures while it proofs. This controls the rate at which the yeast grows and therefore controls the rate at which the dough rises. They mix the dough with ingredients at very specific temperature, especially the liquids. You may remember that friction causes heat and kneading bread dough generates friction. As a result, the kneading process adds heat to the dough. By controlling both the temperature of the ingredients and the amount of kneading, the dough will result in a particular temperature so that the proofing or retarding process goes exactly as planned. Professional bakers prepare pizza dough balls immediately after kneading and the dough retards as the dough balls sit before using them.

Autolyse
is another term used by professional bakers and food scientists. In non-technical language, it means to let the dough rest while the flour completely absorbs the water and enzymes break down chemical constituents within the flour. To use an autolyse, the mixed flour and liquids making up the partially completed dough rest to autolyse for some period of time. After the dough rests, mixing in the salt and kneading the dough prepares it for proofing. They add the salt after the autolyse because salt makes the gluten in the dough tough and lessens the effect of the autolyse. Breads made with an autolyse are purportedly easier to shape, have more volume, and improved structure. Dough can have an autolyse stage during mixing and before kneading, after proofing before final shaping, or after final shaping. Letting the dough “rest” as is described in the dough recipes in this book provides some of those benefits. In recipes where the shaped dough rises before baking the dough is undergoing a combined autolyse and proofing at that time.