Friday, August 26, 2011

Pizza Crust Techniques

By Dunkan Bakshmidt


A pizza is the sum of its parts; specifically, the pizza crust, the pizza toppings and the pizza sauce. Make each one as wonderful as you can make it and you'll be assured of turning out the best home-made pizza practical. Try out the following strategies when you make your home made pizza.

Pizza Crust Secrets

Cook your pizza crust separately: It might be best if you can bake your pizza crust first before you add on the toppings and sauce. There's one good reason for doing this. If you heat the lot at one and the same time, you'll finish up with a pizza that has overcooked toppings, burnt cheese and an undercooked, flat crust. Of course, you should not heat your crust entirely the first time so you will not end up with a pizza that has a burnt crust after your last baking stage.

Mixing pizza dough ingredients: Begin by putting in a bowl at least 1/10 of the luke-warm water stipulated in your home made pizza recipe. Add yeast steadily to the water, stir and let it stand for a few minutes. Meanwhile, in another bowl, put the remaining warm water, mix in the sugar and salt (if your recipe requires these ingredients) and the other dry ingredients excepting the flour, add the water and yeast mixture, stir the lot then immediately add the remainder of the ingredients.

Kneading the pizza mixture: Kneading will let air mix with your pizza dough mixture. You should knead the pizza dough only till it reaches the right consistency: the dough does not stick to the container and individual portions can be stretched without breaking. Over-kneading will end up in fragile pizza dough. While kneading the dough, use flour to prevent the mix from sticking to your hands and the bowl, but use as little flour as practical.

Let your pizza dough rise before using it: After kneading your pizza dough, you have to give it sufficient time to rise to your required thickness. Generally, the longer the fermentation time you permit your pizza, the better the flavor of the pizza crust. Nevertheless be careful not to use too much yeast if you're going to let the dough rise for hours (say you prepared the dough in the morning and let it relax for the rest of the day in preparation for baking by day end). Red ink Pizza

If speed is of the essence: If you want the pizza dough as quickly as possible you can let it rise quicker by adding more yeast to the mix or by increasing the temperature of the dough. To do the second, you can heat your stove for one or two minutes, switch it off, chill the cooker off a bit by leaving the oven door open for 1 or 2 seconds, put the dough in a covered bowl, put the bowl in the stove and close the door. Let the blend stay in the warm oven for a minimum of 30 minutes, take it out, softly press the dough down then repeat the "rising" exercise for another 30 minutes. Another strategy that you can sign up for a quicker fermentation period is by using hot water. The bigger the water temperature, the speedier yeast action will be. Just a word of warning nonetheless , the pizza dough which has been allowed to ferment longer using minimum amount of yeast typically results into a better-tasting pizza crust so it's best that you mix and knead your dough hours before you really need it.

Frozen homemade pizza dough preparation: If you have prepared pizza dough the evening before and left it in the fridge for next day's baking, take it out in the morning and let it rise for a minimum of one or two hours before you use it. Again, the less the yeast used, the longer the rising period needed.

To make a thin pizza crust: If you are going for a thin crust pizza, you will want to use less dough per pan. You may just stretch your pizza dough more on the pan. Doing this could naturally scale back the crust thickness.

To get a thick pizza crust: For a thicker crust, you need to utilise a pizza pan with a smaller rim, use more pizza dough per pan or stretch out the dough less. The result would be increased crust thickness.

To get a crispy pizza crust: For a crispy pizza crust, it might be best if you cut back the amount of water. Drier pizza dough often means a crispier pizza crust. Stiffer pizza dough also means crispier crust so it'd be best to use flour with high gluten content if you would like a crispy crust.

For a soft and gooey crust: To get a soft and chewy crust, you want to add more water to your dough blend or use less flour. More wet pizza dough means softer pizza crust. To gain better results, use flour with low gluten content. You will make gluten-free pizza dough by employing gluten-free flour

If you live in a high-altitude location: Be aware of the effects of. High altitude on pizza dough. A higher altitude means less air pressure so that the dough will rise quicker, and it means a faster rate of evaporation so the dough will dry out quicker. Therefore, if you're in a high-altitude location, it is normally a good idea to use more water and less yeast in your pizza dough mixture than you would usually use if you were in a low-altitude location.




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