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Question:
I've got a gum line in my pizza and it's causing all kinds of customer complaints, how do I get rid of it?
Answer:
There it is, that "dreaded gum line" again. Before we can go about getting rid of that gum line we must first understand it and know what is actually causing it. There are a number of causative factors that we need to look at since any one or more might be the culprit in any one specific case. Here are the things to look for:
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Your sauce is too thin/watery.
In many cases we will add additional water to the sauce to help control the cost of the sauce. This can be a case of false economics, especially if it results in a sauce that now separates upon standing for any length of time. What happens is that the tomato product can't carry all of the additional water that you have added and it separates badly upon standing for any time at all. The water ends up soaking into the dough, which is in direct contact with the sauce where it cannot be baked out due to the presence of the sauce, cheese, and vegetable toppings. A perfectly acceptable performing sauce can be made with about 12% solids content. A higher solids content will typically exhibit less of a tendency to separate, but a lower solids content will typically exhibit a greater tendency to separate.
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Pre-saucing of the dough skins.
If done correctly, this need not pose a problem, but done incorrectly and it can be a fast track to a gum line. If you find that you must pre-sauce your dough skins to keep up with the "slam" periods make sure your sauce has at least 12% solids content, and even better yet is to raise the solids up to the 14 to 16% range as this will help to reduce watering out of the sauce. At the same time, be sure to apply a very light application of oil to the surface of the dough skin just before you apply the sauce. The oil will serve to create a moisture barrier, helping to keep any moisture from migrating down into the dough where it can create a gum line upon baking. A good, common sense rule is to always try to limit the time that your pre-sauced dough skins are held before dressing and baking. The shorter the hold time, the lower the risk of developing a gum line in the finished crust.
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Baking your pizzas too hot and too fast.
This can be a common problem when you're using one of the air impingement ovens. The temptation and sometimes misguided, suggestion is to bake at a higher temperature and shorten the baking time to something well under five minutes. If this works for you, great, go for it, but all too often, the finished crust is hot and crispy on the outside and soft, or just barely baked on the inside. Now let this set for a few minutes and you've go the makings for a neat gum line. It's a much better thing to find a time and temperature setting that gives a reasonably fast bake while still providing a thoroughly baked characteristic to the finished crust. A thoroughly baked crust will still get soft upon standing for a while after baking, but it won't develop a gum line. The same care has to be taken when baking with a deck oven. In this case you might be inviting the development of a gum line if you bake your pizzas at temperatures much above 525F. There are some exceptions to this of course; very thin crust pizzas can be baked at high temperatures, some as high as 800F, without fear of developing a gum line.
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Excessive sugar in the dough formula can also lead to a gum line.
In this case the high sugar level results in a dough/crust that browns rapidly, leading one to believe that the crust has been fully baked, but in reality it is just partially baked in the center and when the pizza is removed from the oven, the crust collapses a little to create a nice, tough and chewy gum line. The way to address this is to lower the baking temperature and extend the baking time to allow the crust to be completely baked before it is removed from the oven.
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Damaged or impaired yeast activity.
When damaged yeast or impaired yeast activity is the problem the gum line issue will seem to have a mind of it's own as it will seem to come and go as it pleases. This inconsistent appearance of a gum line is usually a pretty good indicator by itself that the problem is related to yeast performance. If you are using fresh yeast (compressed yeast), keep in mind that this type of yeast is highly perishable and it's performance deteriorates naturally with each day that passes. The yeast is also prone to temperature abuse resulting from poor storage conditions (above or below 34 to 42F). Then too, think about how the yeast is being added to the dough. Do you mix the yeast along with water, salt and sugar? This is not a good idea since it can severely impair the fermentative properties of the yeast. It is much better to either stir the yeast into the water all by itself, or to add it to the flour by itself by crumpling it into the flour just before you begin the dough mixing process. In this case the salt and/or sugar are added to the water. Don't worry about the yeast not getting mixed into the dough, it will mix in just fine when you crumple it into the flour, bakers have been doing it for years with great success. What happens in this case is the yeast can be damaged by contact with the salt and/or sugar to the point where it will no longer have good fermentative properties. This can result in a dough that is lacking in volume/height, especially in the critical center section. During baking, the heat is easily transferred through the dough to the sauce where it is dissipated as it converts water in the sauce to steam or water vapor. This action prevents the center section of the crust from ever getting sufficiently hot to fully bake the dough within the allotted baking time resulting in some collapse during cooling which is seen as a gum line.
6) Bright or silver colored baking trays
Bright colored baking trays will reflect heat away from dough making it more difficult to properly bake without over baking the top of the pizza first. This normally results in an under baked crust condition which may collapse upon removal from the oven to form a gum line. Or, if the crust doesn't collapse, it will have a less than ideal firm or crispy eating characteristic. To correct for this, you can either change over to pans/trays with a dark colored anodized coating or season the existing pans by wiping the pans, inside and out with vegetable oil and then baking the empty pans for about 20 minutes at 400 to 425F. This will result in a slightly golden colored pan, which will continue to darken with use until it becomes a dark black color. The darker color of the pans/trays will absorb heat and transfer it directly to the dough giving a more thorough bake to the dough.
Some heavily loaded pizzas present a unique baking situation. Due to the amount of toppings on the pizza, it must be baked for a relatively long time, but during this longer than normal baking time the exposed, untopped edge of the pizza gets overly done and too hard. In the past, these pizzas were baked just until the crust edge was done, but this left the middle section relatively undone and prone to develo0ping a gum line. The solution to this is to use a perforated baking tray/disk with a solid edge and holes in the center. The solid edge acts as a heat sink to absorb heat away from the edge, while the perforated center section allows for a more efficient and rapid heat transfer to the center portion of the pizza. When properly balanced, this results in a pizza that can be baked long enough to give the desired firm and crispy crust characteristics without a gum line while still retaining a desirable tender, yet crispy eating edge characteristic.
Lastly, before you go trying to get rid of a gum line, make sure that you've really got a gum line to get rid of. While this might sound silly or confusing, I've actually seen cases where operators were convinced that they had a problem with a gum line, only to find out that what they were looking at wasn't really a gum line. To check for a gum line first cut the suspect pizza into four (4) slices, then grasp one of the slices at the edge and pull it apart as if trying to tear the slice in half. Examine the torn edge for signs of a gum line just beneath the sauce. It will be seen as a gray line or section. In severe cases you can actually see the gum line as it stretches, like raw dough, just before tearing apart. If, after tearing the slice apart, none of this is apparent, you probably don't have a gum line. If you cut the pizza with either a pizza wheel or a rocker knife and see what looks to be a gum line, don't worry, it isn't a gum line, it is just a compressed section of the crust that was created by the action of the wheel or rocker knife, it is just a characteristic of the cutting method.