Can't figure out why my pizza's bottom is very dry and firm
I have a stone, I usually keep it in my oven ~ about 1 hour with 500F. The pizza turned out to be very tasty except the bottom - dry and firm (~6-7 minutes in the oven). What should I check?
UPD
The base is not just crisp, it's really hard to bite and chew. My dough:
- flour 200g
- water 140ml
- salt 4g
- yeast 0.4g
The process:
- I mixed water and flour, leaving for 0.5hour
- Add yeast to a small amount of warm water
- Add salt and yeast mix into the dough, mix to incorporate
- Leave for ~40mins
- Fold
- Leave for 6 hours.
- Bake
The recipe is from the "Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast" book.
Best Answer
I believe your water content is too high. I use a reciepe similar to yours to cause the exact effect you dont like. High water content cause a crust so chewy it is hard to bite through. Try 90-110ml of water instead of 200ml.
When the stone hits that high water content is does something similar to when you mist bread in the oven to make blisters.
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Luckily this is easy to fix. You just need to make sure you cook it at a hotter temperature to help cook off the moisture or bake it for longer. The pizza base has a lot of moisture in it. Baking will cause the water in the dough to evaporate, which will give it that crispy finish.Can - Mother Sky (1970) [HQ]
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Answer 2
I suspect at least a part of the issue might be having too little alveoles (air bubbles/pouches) in the dough. If the dough size has not doubled after step 6 you might need a longer rise. If it has doubled you need to take care to work the dough in a way these bubbles not destroyed or flattened out before the bake.
In case you are aiming for a Neapolitan style with soft an fluffy dough a higher temperature and thus a shorter baking time would help to reduce the amount of evaporation that takes place.
In case you want a crunchier pizza adding some oil will help.
Answer 3
In addition to water content (per Adam Wheeler's answer) the other reason for unpleasant chewiness in a home-oven pizza is protein content and gluten development. When you bake a pizza at 450-500F as opposed to 700-800F in a pizza oven, it cooks longer and can become tough. The solution is to reduce the protein content per Cook's Illustrated(paywall). By having a lower-protein flour and working it minimally, you get a more "tender" pizza when baking at a lower temperature.
I've used this recipe a bunch of times, and make a pizza dough that is 25% either semolina or corn flour to reduce the protein content, with less than 5 min of kneading, at 60% hydration. Works quite well. And if it ends up being too soft, you can tinker with the percentages, kneading, and rise time until you dial in the right consistency.
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