Question (Problem?) Re: PH Pan Recipe -> Pics Added

[ChrisS68]

Hi folks.  Been lurking on and off for a while.  Tried DKM's thin recipe a while back, and now decided to try xPHmgr's  Pizza Hut style deep dish recipe.  I just got done making the dough, and it's in the pan rising.  However, I'm not sure if I messed something up or not.  In the instructions, it says, "The dough will be loose and scrappy at first and will quickly form a moist, smooth cohesive ball ..."

The dough never became a smooth cohesive ball, and is wasn't moist at all.  The dough was incredibly stiff and was putting such a strain on my little Kitchen Aid that I turned it off.  I tried kneading by hand, but only did that for a few minutes as it was so stiff.  Finally managed to get it rolled out and in the pan.

Did I do something wrong, or is this the way this dough is supposed to be?  I'm no baker, and I imagine it's possible that I mis-counted how many cups of flour I added (Pillsbury bread flour BTW).  At this point I'm wondering if I should toss it and just make another crust.
Any help is greatly appreciated!

Chris

[Pete-zza]

Chris,

The recipe you used has a hydration of 55.6%. With 4.4% oil, the combination of the water and oil should not have taxed your mixer. If you used volume measurements for the flour and water, I believe that you may have either used too much flour or too little water. Rather than throw the dough away at this point, I think I would go the rest of the way with the recipe. However, you may want to increase the fermentation time in the refrigerator for longer than 4 hours. You might go out the full 24 hours. You might also let the dough warm up for about an hour or so before finishing the assembly of the pizza.

Whatever you do, please let us know how things turn out.

Peter

[ChrisS68]

Thank you for the input/insight Peter.
I did use the volume measurements.  I understand that it's not the best way - I still need to do some learnin' on the percentages and whatnot.  I was just kinda surprised that it was so stiff, though like I said, I'm kinda new to this.  Well, I worked in a pizza place ages ago, but I never handled making the dough.

Anyhoo, in a reactionary move, and somewhat out of character (or was it) I decided to toss that batch of dough.  Of course, the instant it landed in the garbage I thought I should have just gone ahead and used it.     Oh well.  Thankfully flour is pretty cheap.

I made a second batch.  This time I had some extra water at the ready.  As the dough came together, I saw that it was going the same direction as the first batch.  I sparingly added water until I got to what I thought was a more appropriate consistency.  I feel a lot better about the way this batch came out as it was more workable and a lot easier to roll out.  I still wound up kneading a bit by hand as the mixer was straining a little in the kneading process, but nowhere near as badly as with the first batch.  It's a Kitchen Aid Classic, so it's not the biggest mixer.  Maybe I'm just paranoid, but it's my wife's and she'd kill me if I burned it up on her. 

Thanks again for the input.  I'll be sure to let y'all know how it goes!

Chris

[ChrisS68]

Ok, time for the post pizza report.
Generally speaking, I'd say the potential is there, but I need to work on it some.  The outer texture of the crust was about right with a good crispyness, but the crust itself was too dense and lacked the airiness of Pizza Hut's pan pizza.  It seemed somewhat bread-like and (maybe) kinda tough.  Also, PH pan reheats nicely while this crust became quite hard the second time around.

First thing I guess I need to look at is getting my ingredient quantities right.  I think the dough still might have been too dry.  Also, not having done enough reading, I just used whatever dry milk I grabbed at the store - not sure how much of a detriment that is.  When I went shopping, none of the stores near me had any decent pans, so I wound up using a lasagna pan we have; it's shiny stainless steel, so I know that's not necessarily the best.  I did put it on a pizza stone, so I think that helped.  By my calculations, it is a little smaller than a 14" pan, so the pizza might have come out a little thick.

After mixing the dough, I rolled it out and put it in the pan.  I covered it and let it rise for a couple of hours before putting it in the fridge.  It's pretty cold around here right now, so it didn't rise all that much.  When I took it out the next day, I put it in a warm oven (100 degrees) while still covered for about half an hour, then left it on top of the stove while preheating for another half hour.  It had puffed up pretty good by the time I was ready to add the toppings.  Before adding the toppings, I pressed the pizza just a little bit to make a depression for the toppings and to make an edge on the crust.  This caused the dough to deflate, so I don't know if I made a mistake there or not.  Would I have gotten better results letting it rise fully before refrigerating?

Pizza was put in at 500 degrees.  I actually overshot a little, and tried turning the heat down some and the oven settled in around 450 degrees.  I didn't really watch the clock, but rather pulled the pizza when the crust looked right.  I'm guessing it was in around 15 minutes.

Anyway, here's some pics.  I think the last picture shows the texture of the crust pretty well.