How can I make my pizza dough easier to work?
I run a wood fired pizza van and I currently make about 40kg of dough a week in a spiral mixer.
The dough cooks brilliantly and tastes great, but it's very difficult to work with, particularly with the various temperature fluctuations you deal with working outside.
Before starting the business I'd only ever made dough and pizza at home on a small scale. So I basically just adapted and scaled up the home recipe I used to use. Unfortunately I assume this may be part of the problem with why the dough is tough to work.
The current recipe I use (adjusted based on how much I need to make, but usually a batch this size) is;
23.4kg Flour (Caputo Pizzeria Flour)
15.6 Litres Water
2 Tbsp Salt
3 Tbsp Sugar
5 Tbsp Dry Yeast
1.56 Litres Olive Oil
I mix the sugar with warm water and add the yeast and let it dissolve and activate. I add the rest of the (warm) water into the mixer, add the yeast when it's ready and some flour.
I add the flour slowly (3kgs at a time) until I've added 18kg and this has mixed. I let the dough rest like this for 15 minutes to autolyse (I added this step a while ago to try and make the dough easier to work with and it seemed to help, despite not being a proper autolyse).
I then add the salt and olive oil and mix until combined.
After that I add the rest of the flour and mix for about 20 minutes.
My first issue is with the use of the spiral mixer as I've found it fairly difficult to find information about how long to mix with it online. I'm not sure 20 minutes is enough but I'm worried about over mixing it if I give it too long.
The second problem is that due to a lack of space (specifically fridge space) I freeze the dough as soon as it's mixed. Once it's finished mixing I divide it into 3kg bags and put it in a chest freezer. Freezing generally takes between 12 - 24 hours and it's usually doubled in size before it's fully frozen.
When it comes time to use it I take it out the night before it's needed and then ball it up a few hours before we open.
The dough never has that smooth silky look (it has a rough wrinkly texture usually) and doesn't window pane properly (it tears), it can be very difficult to roll (and impossible to hand stretch or toss).
I'm looking to get that smooth feel and easy stretching as the effort of rolling lots of pizzas from this dough each night has become quite an issue.
I'm assuming the mixing or the freezing is likely to be the biggest problem as I've made smaller batches to the same recipe by hand or in a KitchenAid and got better results (and I always used to freeze dough when using it at home with no issues) but I'm not sure how best to adapt (and worry about experimenting in case I ruin a batch or make it even more difficult to work with)
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Quick Answer about "How can I make my pizza dough easier to work?"
Bring your dough to room temperature. Gluten, the protein that makes pizza dough chewy, is tighter in cold conditions like the fridge, which is why cold pizza dough will stretch out and snap back just like a rubber band. This step will loosen up the dough and make it easier to shape.How do you make pizza dough easier to stretch?
If your pizza dough is quickly snapping back or difficult to stretch, your dough is too tight. Cover your dough with plastic wrap and let it sit for 10-15 minutes. After a bit of rest, the gluten in the dough will relax, making the process of stretching much easier.How do you make pizza dough more tender?
How To Make Pizza Crust SofterPIZZA DOUGH 6 MISTAKES \u0026 TIPS TO MAKE IT PERFECT!
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