Why do my pizzas get such hard crusts?
I usually buy ready made pizza base and use it for baking pizzas. All of my pizzas get a very hard and crispy outer crust. Why so?
I thought of brushing some oil on the pizza base before I bake it but no help. I use a convection microwave oven.
Best Answer
The way you describe it, it sounds as if your oven uses microwave radiation while you are baking the pizza. This is obviously a bad idea, but a manufacturer could just add "pizza setting" as a selling point, without making a reasonable implementation. Or maybe the oven is OK, but the user interface is confusing and you somehow don't switch on the right setting.
First, try to find out if the oven is supposed to turn off the radiation while baking pizza. If this isn't described clearly in the users' manual, call technical support and ask them. If it is not supposed to turn it off, your last chance is that the oven has the possibility to manually override the setting and turn off the radiation. Else, this oven is not suited for pizzas or any other kind of dough.
If the oven is supposed to turn the radiation off, and you are sure you have selected all the correct options for it to do so, but your crust is still too hard, then the oven is probably defective and radiates microwaves when it shouldn't. Sadly, I don't know any way to test for that (theoretically, you could put a small piece of metal in it and look for sparks, but you risk damaging the oven that way.). Maybe if you have a friend with access to a physics or a sepcialized photography lab, they could find you some microwave sensitive film, but the probability is slim.
If you somehow find out that the microwave definitely isn't nuking the pizza, the only other problem I can think of is that it probably gets too dry when baking. You could try baking a thicker pizza (put two pure bases on each other and roll them a bit with the rolling pin, they should combine) and/or adding more sauce and fluid toppings/cheese. Or reduce the baking time. But it would take a lot of drying to make the crust unpleasantly hard, so I am 90% sure your problem is caused by microwaves.
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Quick Answer about "Why do my pizzas get such hard crusts?"
The most common reason pizza crust turns out hard and dry is that the pizza has baked for too long at a low temperature. To get a good crust, the pizza has to be baked quickly at a high temperature. Other reasons pizza crust gets hard are that the dough is too hard, didn't rise properly, or the use of a rolling pin.How do you keep pizza crust from getting hard in the oven?
You can try high hydration flour. go to 75 percent hydration dough. It will be harder to handle but will be more fluffy. Another thing, heat your oven as high temp as possible. use around 2% yeast as well.How do you soften a tough pizza crust?
As long as the pizza has been stored well wrapped, however, retrogradation can be temporarily reversed by reheating the pizza to at least 140 degrees\u2014the temperature at which the starch crystals break down and release the trapped moisture, softening the crust.What do you do if your pizza base is too hard?
So how do you actually fix tough pizza dough? If your pizza dough seems tough and it hasn't been proven or baked yet then balance out the flour with some more water as this will wetten the dough and allow the gluten to develop.Why do you cook pizza longer for softer crust?
At the same time, the baking sheet is trapping moisture in the crust, keeping it from drying out a lot. So that's why you use a higher temp, or bake longer, but end up with a less-crispy crust. When the pizza is on the oven rack, the air circulates all around it, drying the crust more and making it crisper.Why is my pizza crust hard? 3 possible reasons
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