The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Hand Made Pizza Dough

BPapa's picture
BPapa

Hand Made Pizza Dough

Looking for assistance in how to develop a hand made pizza dough that can be made in a home oven with a thin crust.

I have tried many times to make a pizza dough by hand and always seem to come up short and inconsistent.The type of pizza I have been trying to achieve in my home oven with a max temp of 500 degrees is a thin crusted with a open cell around the perimeter. The closest I came is when I tried this recipe from the web site. 

5 cups all purpose flour

1 Tablespoon sugar or honey

2 teaspoons salt (or 3 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt)
1 teaspoon instant yeast
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 3/4 to 2 cups room-temperature water

Any assistance in what I may be doing wrong would be appriciated.

 

BPapa's picture
BPapa

 

I have tried many times to make a pizza dough by hand and always seem to come up short and inconsistent.The type of pizza I have been trying to achieve in my home oven with a max temp of 500 degrees is a thin crusted with a open cell around the perimeter. The closest I came is when I tried this recipe from the web site. 

5 cups all purpose flour

1 Tablespoon sugar or honey

2 teaspoons salt (or 3 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt)
1 teaspoon instant yeast
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 3/4 to 2 cups room-temperature water

Any assistance in what I may be doing wrong would be appriciated.

fotomat1's picture
fotomat1

pies are you making from that recipe? Are you baking in a stone? How are you forming the pie rolling or tossing? Mixing by hand or mixer? Time between making the dough and cooking the pie? Results???? What was good and what was bad? Pictures are always helpful??

STUinlouisa's picture
STUinlouisa

Much of the success in making thin crust pizza is in the baking technique. Do you have a pizza stone and does your oven have a broiler on the top? If you heat the stone to 500F for a long time to saturate it with heat then blast it with the broiler for about 5min and turn it back to bake before you load the pizza it helps to simulate the higher temps in a pizza oven. You also can turn the oven back to broil the last few minutes of cooking to help brown the top.

As far as shaping the dough, have you tried refrigerating it? A cold proofed dough is easier to shape than a room temp.

Stu

Arjon's picture
Arjon

I'm still a pizza newbie, but have learned that the end result depends not just on the amounts of the ingredients, but how you treat them. For example, one way to get a thinner crust is to dock the part where you don't want it to expand as much during baking. I'm sure there are other, quite possibly better ways. This one happens to be easy enough for anyone to use.

David Esq.'s picture
David Esq.

I've found the Roberta's formula from the NY Times to be very good. I've hanged it by adding 50% whole wheat, and I still get a very nice crust.  Check it out:  https://eatingwithdavid.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/excellent-pizza/

 

cranbo's picture
cranbo

You didn't share the full recipe: fermentation time, mix time, etc. 

If you keep the recipe above, I would suggest: 

  1. Cut the yeast in 1/2. Good flavor and the right extensibility has to do with the right fermentation, which has to do with less yeast and more time. 
  2. Do an intensive knead (10min @ medium speed in a stand mixer, KitchenAid speed #4).
  3. Shape the kneaded dough into balls and refrigerate for at least 24 hours before baking. Remove from fridge 1 hour before baking.  
  4. Consider mixing in some high-gluten flour in with your AP flour, this will give it more chew. 

 

BPapa's picture
BPapa

 

 Thank you every one for your input there's a lot to digest and needless to say very over whelming as a newbie. After reading your posts I find that there is a lot of what I do that is wrong. I do have a quality pizza stone but its not really working for me because I seem to have trouble going directly to it even if I use parchment paper which will not release from the pizza and or if in a pan first I have trouble releasing the dough after 5 minutes of cooking time from the pan to place it on the stone and I believe its because of an improperly developed dough. I do mix everything by hand and will need some time to take in all of the comments to correct my inadequateness. When I make a dough I make just enough for one 16" pie and almost always the dough will break in the stretching process while its in the pan being fanned out or if I work it by hand in the air and then place it into the pan it will become to thin in the center and not stretch evenly to the perimeter. I started using a preferment that consist of 100% flour and 100% water which improved the flavor. If I was using 400 g of flour I would eliminate 1 cup of weighted flour and add 1 measured cup of the preferment in place. Water was added to the total mix to get a dough that would slightly stick to the bowl when done. I used the plastic bag method and would cook that dough later in the day. the flour I used is Len's Best which I believe is from Canada with a high protein level and added no other types with it. As I stated earlier there is a lot to learn and will have to break it down at a beginners level and to engrain the basics so as I can build my skills and achieve my ultimate goal and that is to produce the type of pies I see on our site. I am a very patient person and with your help will push myself until I succeed.

cranbo's picture
cranbo

There's always lots of suggestions for other recipes. I think your current recipe is fine. 

Your dough breaking when stretching is probably because it's not extensible enough. An overnight rest in the fridge will invariably solve this; of course to do this without overfermenting, you need to reduce your yeast as I suggested earlier. 

If you're hand-kneading, consider doing a 6-8 stretch & folds over 2-3 hours. Not a lot of active work, but you'll get nice development that way.

BPapa's picture
BPapa

Thanks cranbo will try that friday for a bake on saturday. When you say stretch and fold I assume thats pulling each side of dough left and right and then wraping them into each other,then folding the ends on top of that.

cranbo's picture
cranbo

Yes you have it exactly. Do it with 20-30 minutes between each stretch & fold. 

jaywillie's picture
jaywillie

Let me point you to a community of pizza makers who are as nice and accomplished as the bakers here on TFL -- <www.pizzamaking.com>. Take some time to search the forums there and you will find all sorts of help with your exploration of pizza making.

True thin-crust Neapolitan pizza requires the right ingredients, a fair amount of skill with the dough, and an oven temperature that no home oven can achieve. But if maybe NY-style thin crust pizza will work, that's do-able. 

As to recipes to get you started, look at this seriouseats.com recipe: <http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/07/basic-new-york-style-pizza-dough.html>. I have used that recipe many times, getting great results. 

jaywillie 

BPapa's picture
BPapa

I have seen that site but choose to enter into the The Fresh Loaf site because I also enjoy making bread and now that I am retired I have a little more time to explore into it. What I make is a no knead bread but will be trying soon to go further with an artisan bread with out having to use a Dutch oven. Learning how to make pizza dough by hand I thought would be a good start to get the feel and observe its many changes through the process.

jaywillie's picture
jaywillie

Creating great pizza and great bread are equal challenges. My advice (which is worth exactly what you are paying for it -- nothing!) would be to start with and master a standard white bread loaf. That will give you lots of great experience applicable to both artisan loaves and pizza dough. 

As to pizzamaking.com or TFL, I visit both sites nearly every day, and both sites have informed my baking to a huge extent. I would not pit one against the other by any means. Good luck to you!

jaywillie

barryvabeach's picture
barryvabeach

I agree with Jaywille,  it is worth your time to spend some time at www.pizzamaking.com - Much as this site has a number of subfolders for each different type of bread making issue, PM has separate categories for the many different styles of pizza.( they also have a folder on off topic, which includes many bread related posts).   The tearing in the middle has three potential problems, the dough, the time you when stretch it out, and how you go about stretching the dough.  Lets assume the dough is fine,  I find the best timing is to stretch it out just a little bit and let it rest a few minutes,  Then when you go to stretch it further, it opens more easily.  Second, the manner of opening that works best for me is the stretch from 11:00 to 1:00 -  That is, if your pie was a clock face, if you stretch from 9:00 to 3:00 - the dough in the center will be thinned on every stretch and will develop holes.  Instead, you place your hands at 11:00 and 1:00 just inside the rim and bring them slightly apart, rotate the pie, then repeat.  You are never directly stretching across the middle, but it will get thin as the rest of the pie opens.  Don't get hung up on spinning the pie in the air, much of that is for show, and you can get great results without that.  If you are really dedicated to good pizza, buy a Blackstone Patio Oven , there is nothing like it at that price.  If you can't go that route,  do a search on PM on pizza steels, and get a steel and a peel so you can launch right no the steel, and the taste should improve .  

BPapa's picture
BPapa

Friday night I put together my dough consisting of; Flour-345g Water 168g salt 6g IDY 2.42g Dough Starter 46.93g and what should of been a Total of 570.01g. Right out of the gate I ran into my first mishap in that when I weigh the water I didn't carry out the gram reading far enough,Ooops. Not wanting to through out the flour water and yeast mix I proceed to carry out by using a visual and feel to bring the dough into a slightly sticky mix in the bowl. I then rested the 3 ingredients for a period of 30 minutes and after that time did a stick mix by hand for 3 minutes, rested for 10 and again stick mix for 5 minuets. Dough was then set aside with salt added to the first stretch and fold and with 30 minute increments' I completed 6 stretch and folds and placed into a oiled plastic bag and refrigerated until the next evening. When I took out the dough that Saturday night I noticed something I've never seen before in the making of home made dough and that was small bubbles in the texture, I believe this to be a good thing. I then stretched the dough out into a heavy 16 inch round pizza pan that was oiled to prevent sticking and with 2 times resting the dough before completing its final shape. I then brought the pizza to a 500 degree preheated oven for 1.3 hrs and placed it on the bottom rack which in my oven is 1-1/2 inches from the hearth. 4 inches above that was another rack with a pizza stone on it. My intention was to get enough heat to brown the bottom of pizza while still in the pan and at the same time reflect the heat from the stone above to the top of the pizza. I have pics but not sure how to post. The end result was a nice looking pizza fairly good texture great taste but to the near center of the pizza slightly under done and found that it stuck to the pan and was somewhat messy to release. I believe that perhaps the hydration of dough was to high but not sure because of initial error of putting it together. I have been on the other site but found it difficult to get around. I will have to revisit and spend more time to try to work it out. I have looked at the Blackstone Patio Oven, its pretty amazing, but would there be an oven that would be a little more versatile as to what can be cooked in it with out sacrificing the high temperature that the Blackstone Oven gives you?

gerhard's picture
gerhard

Just a comment on your recipe, there is no need to be that exact in measuring water and flour.  I would round your flour to 350 g, water to 170, your starter to 45 grams etc.  It will make your life much easier and in the end you will have more consistent results because the recipe will be easy to remember resulting in fewer mistakes.  We aren't chemist where a small variation will result in an explosion or something, remember the bakers of a couple of hundred years ago that so many want to emulate probably didn't own a scale.

Gerhard

barryvabeach's picture
barryvabeach

BPapa,  it sounds like you are making progress.  First on the ovens,  yes the BS isn't very versatile.  It can make some other dishes, like steak in a cast iron skillet, but its primary purpose, which it does very well, is pizza.  Nothing compares in that price range.  In terms of the scale issue,  I did not follow exactly what went wrong, but if you are part way through the recipe and have a problem,  scrape everything out of the mixing bowl into another bowl, put the empty mixing bowl on the scale and tare to zero, then put everything back in the mixing bowl and check the reading against the numbers you know you got right.  This doesn't work for yeast, or salt, because the numbers are so low, anything that is stuck to the bowl may be a few grams either way, but if you wanted to put in 168 grams of water, and you put in the correct amount of flour, and then added some water and hit the tare button before you got a reading, you can use this method to determine how much flour and water is in the mixing bowl. ( just subtract the flour amount from the total ).    If you like a crispy pizza, you will need to have it bake on a pizza stone or steel.  If you don't have a peel, you can improvise a large piece of cardboard, and use it for several launches, though eventually it will wear out.  If you have a thin pizza pan, you can use that to retrieve the cooked pizza, again, it is easier to do both with a pizza peel.  The stone over the pie is a good idea, but it works best when it is extremely hot -  well over 600 and as high as 1000 would work.  Sticking to the pan is probably not because it was too moist, though that is possible, more than likely, it did not have oil at that spot. 

The Bread Stone Ovens Company's picture
The Bread Stone...

Hello all,

I hand craft French true bricked wood fire ovens, and of course we know some of the best pizza's come from brick ovens. There are many ways to make the dough, but one of the important factors i've learned with my 10+ years of pizza making coming from France, is that a lot of the dough success comes from properly feeding the starter/levain. I have written a blog on my company website that will be of most help to you. I love giving tips, and as a former chef, have picked up some tricks along the way.

Feel free to check out our blog on starters/levain!


http://www.breadstoneovens.com/blogs/news/17901733-starter-levain-and-such

 

ALSO- here is my favorite, old faithful pizza dough recipe I use for my cooking class.

http://www.breadstoneovens.com/blogs/news/16538557-home-made-pizza-dough

I hope it is of help. Feel free to ask me any questions.

Cheers!