Warming the Cracker Crust Dough

[Randy]

This was my best cracker crust ever.

I had a chance yesterday to experiment with dough warming on my KitchenAid cracker crust.  I made a dough warmer from a cheap crock pot.  This would probably not work on a crock pot with electronics.  I don't recommended this modification to a crock pot if you are not qualified to do it. As you can see, this pot has two metal strap heating elements with a manual switch to select one or both strips for different temperature settings.  The dimmer switch gives me good control with the manual switch on low.  Of course the dimmer and wiring needs a code qualified enclosure to be safe.

I also modified my recipe going to  from .7 oz oil to 1 oz Crisco and increasing my paddle run time to 2 minutes.  The Crisco amount gave  me a nice increase in browning.

I let the dough sit out on the counter for about 20 hours then into the warmer raising the internal temperature  of the dough to 87F.  The dough rolled out quickly taking less than half the effort of a cold dough ball.  There was also a dramatic increase in the bubbles in the crust as well as crispness.

Randy’s Thin Crust
Thursday, January 01, 2009


 16 oz King Arthur Bread flour
 0.3 oz or 2 teaspoon raw or Turbinado sugar or regular sugar
 1 Teaspoon salt
 1 oz Crisco
 5.8 oz.* warm(90F) water by weight
 1 1/2  Teaspoons instant yeast or active yeast

·   Place flour, salt, sugar, and Crisco in the mixing bowl then run the mixer on stir speed using the paddle attachment while yeast blooms. 
·   Weigh the warm 90F water
·   Add a pinch of sugar and yeast to the water then stir to dissolve.
·   Set aside for 5 minutes.
·   With the mixer still running still using the paddle atchment, add the liquid mixture.
·   Let the mixer continue to run for 2 minute
·   Stop the mixer and press the dough into a ball while squeezing the gaps together.  This dough will look strange and very dry.
·   Put the ball back in the mixer bowl and cover the mixer bowl tightly with Saran wrap and leave on counter top overnight but 16-24 hours is better.  I make mine in the late afternoon for supper the next night.
·   Roll out dough (not easy) to about 20" in diameter which should get it around 1/16” thick.  Place on 16" pizza pan then use the roller to cut off excess dough.  Use a fork or docker to prick holes randomly on the bottom of the pan but not the sides. 
·   Place the crust in a 475F oven on the bottom rack for 5 minutes to par bake. 
·   Remove and add toppings.  I use a half-pound of cheese and one cup of sauce plus toppings.
·   Place back in the oven using the bottom shelf.  Bake for 8 minutes.  Remove when cheese just barely starts to brown.  If you want, turn the pizza around at the 5-minute mark for even browning.



Randy

[norma427]

Randy,

That was a very creative idea for a dough warmer! 

Norma

[Randy]

Thanks Norma.  It worked better than I thought.  Without the ceramic liner the temperature is easy control but if you give it time to preheat and stablize with the ceramic crock, that should work as well.

Randy

[Jet_deck]

Any pictures of the finished product?  The cracker crust is my next adventure.  No pictures ?  It didn't happen.   Maybe get some next time.  What sauce are you using?

[Randy]

Batteries died in the camera.  I have a couple of pieces in the freezer.  I will do a photog then.

Steve and DKM talked me into giving a cracker crust a try several years ago and I am sure glad they did.  Those two brought us to where we are today.  I just branched off from their work trying to reach the next level.

We posted sometime ago that the warmth in a pizza kitchen would have a effect on the dough.  Then some of the other guys set up warm prof boxes.

Like your dough sheeter, it is fun to push on just to see what works.

[Jet_deck]

Randy, I tried my best to duplicate your success, but it just didn't happen this round.   I think that the biggest mistake on my part was using the regular mixer blades on my POS mixer for the entire process of the dough making.  I should have used the regular mixer blades to incorporate the shortning into the dry mixture and then switched to my "pigs tails" corkscrew dough blades once I started adding the water.  Instead of the cornmeal type, barely wet, brain looking dough, mine looked more like paper thin looking scraps about the size of your pinky fingernail.  The crust had excellent flavor, but no real cracker crunch.  It did look like an expertly created pizza and I will try it again this week.  Thanks for sharing the recipe!

[Pete-zza]

Jet_deck,

In your post today at Reply 83 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,11459.msg108533.html#msg108533, you mentioned that you made a 10 1/4" pizza with 11.5 ounces of dough (you said 11.5 grams, which I took to be a typo). With those numbers, I calculated a thickness factor of TF = 11.5/(3.14159 x 5.125 x 5.125) = 0.13937. When I played around with the original DKM cracker-style dough formulation, at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5762.0.html, I estmated that the thickness factor for a skin made with that recipe was around 0.085-0.09. At that value, the crust would have a tender cracker texture but would not be really crispy, which is my personal preference. It wasn't until I used a thickness factor of around 0.065-0.07 that the crust would crackle as I ran the pizza cutter through it. I haven't tried Randy's recipe with the Crisco, but if you roll out the 11.5 ounces of dough to 15", I think you should get a crispier crust, if that is what you are after. If you want a more tender crust along the lines of the DKM recipe, you could roll out the 11.5 ounces of dough to 12 3/4" [D = 2 times the square root of 11.50/(3.14159 x 0.09)].

Peter

[Jet_deck]

Thanks Peter for running the TF on this project.  I will buckle down the hatches on the next run.  I will also correct the mistake(s) that I made on this first run.  My ideal perfect thin cracker crust would be like Pizza Hut. I hope I am headed in the correct direction.

[Randy]

I thought it looked tasty to me.

Randy