hey - bread-baking friends... question.

[rmd]

okay, so, i tried making pizza dough a while back, and it turned out kind of mediocre. it ended up being too crunchy for the thickness. (if it had been cracker-like and a quarter inch thick, that would be cool. but cracker-hard and half and inch thick is *bad*.)

how do i get my crust to be less "solid thick brick" consistency? i tried rolling it out thinner but it really wasn't willing.

suggestions?

thanks!

Comments

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I wish I could help you, but ever since I discovered that I could buy pizza dough on a whim at Bertucci's, I have been far less motivated to make my own. Damn, but they do it well. Good luck!

[rmd.livejournal.com]

YOU CAN???

all the branches? whoah. i may have to go investigate this.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Heehee :)

As far as I know, any one that has pizza (which I think is all them) will sell you the dough, but I've only tried at a handful. Once I bought some roasted eggplant from the one in Davis. I wanted to put some on the pizza I was going to make at home, so I asked and they said sure. I hear tell they will also sell you some sauce or even shredded cheese if you like. A very friendly place in all of my experiences. :)

(Trivia: The Bertucci's in Davis was the first one ever, and they have a bocci court downstairs.)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

there used to be a bocci court near the dining area in the one in central square. they did away with it some time after i was eating there once and our table was hit (and one of our dishes smashed) by an errant bocci ball. i suspect that this is not a coincidence.

[clauclauclaudia]

Dude. I wanna go on a bocce outing sometime!

[kathrynt.livejournal.com]

lower oven temp, maybe?

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Hee. sounds like having a Source is a good thing.

Three things for hard resulting pizza. a) don't use a bread flour, do use a lower protein flour b) be sure your recipe has plenty of olive oil in it c) the dough'll need to be kinda slack to start, not firm and dry before you even roll it out, i.e. it'll need plenty of liquid in it, not so much you can't handle the dough, but it shouldn't be rubbery, and it should just stick, a little, to your hands if you don't have flour on them.

Hopefully that'll help. Chicago deep dish pizza doughs have a huge amount of lard in 'em, which is why they get so crisp on the outside and are so soft on the inside, it's nearly like baking your pizza on a yeast biscuit.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Darn, she beat me to it. This was the advice I was going to give. :)

Um, look through www.kingarthurflour.com for interesting things you can buy (like pizza dough improver) for your homemade pizza.

I got to this late, but...

[(Anonymous)]

Olive oil is one of the keys. Don't use extra-virgin unless you want olive-flavored pizza dough, though. My recipe calls for a tablespoon of it (along with 3 cups of flour, 1 to 1.25 cups of flour, and a teaspoon each of yeast and salt). It works well with either bread flour or APF.

If it wasn't willing to be rolled thinner (incidentally, most sources i've seen recommend against using a roller, but I forget why), it probably needed to be let to rest for a couple minutes. Dough is only willing to stretch a certain amount at a time.

Pizza is best baked at the highest temperature your oven can manage. (Commercial pizza ovens run around 800F.) This gets the dough baked before the cheese and toppings burn.

I made calzones tonight for the first time. They came out OK even though I overfilled them and they leaked. They're a lot of work though.

-Chip.