Question:
We are trying to make whole-wheat and multi-grain crusts, but our crusts come out flat and dry. What are we doing wrong?
Answer:
The common response to this is to simply add more water to the dough, but I’m betting that your dough got unusually soft when you did so; as a result, you looked elsewhere for a solution. You were right if you looked to increase the water content. These types of doughs tend to carry a higher percentage of water than regular white flour doughs. The problem is in hydration rate. When you must hydrate bran, present in both whole-wheat flour and multi-grain blends, you must allow sufficient time for this material to fully hydrate. Typically, this takes about an hour to accomplish, so up until that time has elapsed after mixing, the dough will indeed appear to be wet and or sticky. If you are making a multi-grain type of crust, which contains both white flour and a multi-grain blend, you can just put the grain-blend into a container of warm water and allow it to hydrate for an hour or so before you add it to the mixer along with the other ingredients to make the dough. When doing this, it is important to have enough water in the container with the grain-blend for complete hydration. To allow for this, make sure you have at least 65 to 67% water based on the weight of the grain-blend in the container. After an hour of hydration time the mixture should look something like thick oatmeal. You can then calculate the rest of the water needed on the weight of white flour you are adding. Generally, 54 to 56% water based on the weight of white flour will then give you a dough with the desired handling properties and a finished crust with a desirable crispy outer crust and a softer, more chewy internal crumb characteristic for the thicker crusts and or a relatively firm and crispy characteristic for the thin crusts.
If you are making a whole-wheat type of dough you are better off just increasing the dough absorption to 65 to 67% and mixing the dough until it has a smooth appearance then allowing it to hydrate/ferment for an hour or so before processing the dough in your normal manner. Keep in mind that all multi-grain blends and whole-wheat flour are not the same, and they may change with regard to absorption properties at any time during the year so you might find that your dough absorption properties are not exactly the same as I’ve quoted here, but they will probably not be too far off base. In any event, experiment to find out what works best for you and you should soon be able to make multi-grain, wheat or whole-wheat doughs that handle well and give a very acceptable quality finished crust that your health conscious customers are sure to enjoy.
Question:
We make par-baked crusts for all of our pizzas. If we use a hot press, do we still need to bake them or will the hot press provide all of the baking needed?
Answer:
I don’t know where or when this old idea got started, but it has been around for a long time. Hot pressing dough does not constitute baking it. A hot pressed dough skin still retains most of its yeast activity and the yeast is still very capable of supporting fermentation. In a par-baked dough, the dough has been heated sufficiently to fully set the structure (180 to 195˚F). If it isn’t the dough structure would either begin to collapse as the dough skin cooled, or it might even begin to ferment or rise. When a properly baked, par-baked crust is made, the internal temperatures reached during baking are sufficiently high to kill the yeast in the dough. This happens when the internal temperatures rise above 140˚F.
When using a hot press to form the dough skin, only the very outer most portion of the dough might reach temperatures above 140˚F and then just for a few seconds. This exposure to high temperature has a searing affect upon the dough allowing it to take a set in the shape that it was pressed in, and it also gives the dough piece a firm, dry, outer skin which makes handling the shaped dough easier and it allows for baking the dough without the need for first putting it into a pan or on a tray. I have referred to this “skin” as an exoskeleton for the dough since it affords so much control over the shape of the formed dough piece. Since the yeast in the dough is still very much alive, hot pressed dough can still be given a proofing period if necessary to achieve a thicker finished crust characteristic. So, to produce a par-baked crust, you must still give the hot pressed, fully formed dough piece some amount of baking to increase the internal temperature to fully gelatinize the starch and set the dough structure.
Question:
Do you recommend buying a used conveyor oven?
Answer:
Yes, they can be a great investment and save you a lot of money over the cost of a new oven. The thing that you absolutely must keep in mind though is that conveyor/air impingement ovens are not dedicated “pizza ovens”; they are used by restaurants, hotels, and fast food chains to make a variety of different food items. The one sure thing that you can safely assume about these ovens, when purchased used, is that when they were purchased new, they were set-up to properly bake the food items in that particular application. Even if that application was pizza, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the oven will be set-up/profiled to bake your pizza in the best manner. There are literally thousands of different baking profiles that can be incorporated into these ovens at the factory, or by service technicians out in the field. If you have purchased a used oven of this type that does a great job of baking your pizzas, congratulations, you’ve won the lottery. But, if your newly purchased oven isn’t living up to it’s reputation as a pizza oven, don’t despair, all you might need is a little assistance from a qualified oven technician with experience in profiling the oven. When you look into an air impingement oven you will see stainless steel sleeves at the top and bottom of the baking chamber. Contained within those sleeves are the “fingers” that control the airflow within the oven. These can be anything from full open to full closed as in a “radiant heat” panel, which allows for product heating without the airflow. There are even finger panels that are designed to split the airflow characteristics within a single panel. Be aware that some ovens (especially those with a split conveyor) might be set-up with split finger panel that allows for a different airflow pattern to each side of the oven. This can be a bummer if you don’t know about that one and try to bake two of the same pizzas side by side.
So, what’s a person to do? If you are buying from a used equipment company find out if they will re-profile the oven for you if needed. If you are buying from a private party, pull the sleeves and find out what finger panels are configured. If you have done your homework and talked to the oven manufacturers and reps at the various pizza shows you should have a pretty good idea of what their recommendations are for baking your type of pizza, and what the cost of replacement finger insert panels are. You can then make an intelligent comparison and be in a position to negotiate a fair price in view of the fact that you will, or will not, need to purchase different finger insert panels.
One other thing to keep in mind, when talking finger configurations with the reps, be sure to include oven models in the conversation. The finger configuration/profiles are specific to oven models and manufacturers.
