Is Undermixing Pizza Dough as Unhealthy as It Sounds?

• As soon as your components are well-incorporated into the dough, you’ll be able to cease mixing proper then and there.
• The bottom line is to combine your dough till it develops a smooth-looking pores and skin, which can make it simpler to deal with throughout the scaling and balling course of.

Associated: How you can calculate bakers share in dough making

Q: How have you learnt in case your dough has been blended lengthy sufficient?

A: Pizza dough that’s blended at a pizzeria and refrigerated to be used over the following few days is usually blended simply lengthy sufficient for the dough to develop a smooth-looking pores and skin. (Pizza dough doesn’t require almost as a lot gluten growth as you’d need in a bread-type dough.) So must you fear about undermixing pizza dough? No, probably not. In truth, as soon as the components are well-incorporated, you possibly can cease mixing and take the dough from there. Nonetheless, for those who combine the dough simply till it types a {smooth} pores and skin, it’s a lot simpler to deal with throughout the scaling and balling course of, and the dough won’t require as a lot dusting flour on the bench.

To offer you an concept of how a lot a pizza dough will be undermixed, there’s a technique for making a skinny cracker sort of pizza crust the place the dough is blended solely till most, however not all, of the flour is hydrated. The dough is then faraway from the blending bowl and positioned into a bath, the place it’s lined and allowed to ferment for 12 hours at room temperature. After that, the dough will be scaled into items of desired weight and loosely shaped into pucks. You may wrap these pucks individually or stack them two excessive on a sheet pan, cowl them with a bag or stretch wrap, and place them within the cooler to ferment for a further 24 to 48 hours. This dough is just not unusually sticky attributable to low absorption (45% to 50%), however it’s fairly stiff, requiring using a dough sheeter to open the pucks into pizza skins.

Are you able to hurt the dough by overmixing it? Not generally, however relying on the dough absorption, you may discover that extra mixing yields a extra breadlike crumb construction in your completed crusts. And since that extra mixing time takes a toll in your mixer, you should definitely have your mixer repairman’s cellphone quantity helpful—you’ll in all probability want it ahead of later!

The late Tom “The Dough Physician” Lehmann was a longtime contributor to PMQ, a famend business advisor and the previous director of bakery help for the American Institute of Baking (AIB).