If you’ve tried adding ice to your dough to keep it from getting too hot, you might have encountered a common problem: The dough comes out all sticky and harder to handle. What’s the solution?
First, keep in mind that, if the ambient temperature in the kitchen or dough prep area is high, the friction from mixing plus warm air can cause the dough temperature to rise too much. Adding ice cools it down quickly, but that has a downside.
The stickiness comes about when the added ice melts so late in the mixing cycle that the released water never gets fully incorporated into the dough. This can happen if you use too much ice or the wrong type of ice.
For example, cube and tube ice both have less surface area per given weight and a thicker cross-section, so they melt too slowly for the mixing process. Instead, try using chipped, shaved or crushed ice.
Alternatively, many experienced pizzaioli recommend using ice-cold water rather than ice.
If you still prefer to add ice to your dough, add it directly to the dough water and stir to dissolve some of the ice and chill the water. Then you can mix the dough as usual. This approach yields less ice to melt while still providing the benefit of cooling the water.
However, there will be times when you’ll need so much ice that this fix won’t work. In that case, first add the ice into the water and stir for a few seconds. Mix the dough in the normal manner for about four minutes, then stop mixing and allow the dough to set in the mixer for at least five minutes. This will allow time for all, or at least a good portion, of the ice to melt. Mixing can then be resumed for the normal amount of time.
When using this procedure, listen to the dough as it is mixing; if you hear a “tink, tink, tink” sound, that’s just the ice particles hitting the side of the mixing bowl and is perfectly normal—up to a point.
You don’t want to hear this sound when the mixing process is within four minutes of completion. If you still hear it, immediately stop the mixer to allow time for the ice to continue melting before you resume mixing. Otherwise, you’ll end up with sticky dough and, in some cases, severe bubbling during baking.
The late Tom “The Dough Doctor” Lehmann was the director of bakery assistance for the American Institute of Baking (AIB) and a longtime industry consultant and contributor to PMQ Pizza. This article first appeared in the April 2016 issue of PMQ Pizza and has been updated.
