60 / 40 hydration thin crust test

[buceriasdon]

So for my own edification I made two small yeastless dough balls today. 50 grams flour in both, one 40% water and one teaspoon oil, one at 60% plus the same amount of oil. Preheated my toaster oven with the steel plate in it for forty five minutes while the balls rested. I rolled both out to the same thickness, yes I used my dial calipers, and placed them in the oven at the same time and baked them for ten minutes. After cooling, both displayed the same browning, or lack of browning but the lower hydration crust had a noticeably crisper crust. It would snap in pieces while the 60% was slightly flexible and more chewy. If there is some error in my side by side test I can't think of what it could be.
Don
I have to make some kind of a docker......

[Pete-zza]

Don,

I believe that what you did, especially in making the two skins of like thickness, given the two different dough ball weights, was appropriate. FYI, using the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html, I got the following dough formulations for your two dough balls:

40% Hydration Dough Ball

Flour (100%): Water (40%): Vegetable (Soybean) Oil (9.0834%): Total (149.0834%):

50 g  |  1.76 oz | 0.11 lbs 20 g  |  0.71 oz | 0.04 lbs 4.54 g | 0.16 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1 tsp | 0.33 tbsp 74.54 g | 2.63 oz | 0.16 lbs | TF = N/A

60% Hydration Dough Ball

Flour (100%): Water (60%): Vegetable (Soybean) Oil (9.0834%): Total (169.0834%):

50 g  |  1.76 oz | 0.11 lbs 30 g  |  1.06 oz | 0.07 lbs 4.54 g | 0.16 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1 tsp | 0.33 tbsp 84.54 g | 2.98 oz | 0.19 lbs | TF = N/A

In my experience, there is a practical limit to how much water (and oil) you can use in a dough and still get a really crispy crust. You would perhaps have to roll out a high hydration dough super thin to get the finished crust crispy. See, for example, the thread at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,10703.0.html where very low thickness factors were used to make the matzo like pizza crusts described in that thread.

To demonstrate the limitations that you might experience with high hydration doughs used to make a typical cracker-style crust, see Reply 119 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5762.msg50909.html#msg50909. In that post, I described how I modified DKM's basic recipe as given at http://www.pizzamaking.com/pizzainnstyle.php by increasing the hydration from 36% to 60%. From a baker's percent standpoint, the rest of the dough formulation was quite similar to the DKM dough formulation. Like you, and as I noted at Reply 119 referenced above, I experienced a chewier crust along with other crust textures. I experienced similar results when I was trying to reverse engineer and clone the DeLorenzo crusts and pizzas which were typified by crispiness or cracker like parts but with some tender parts. See, for example, Reply 117 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7841.msg45060.html#msg45060.

From my experience, once you get above about 45% hydration for a cracker-style crust, and with modest levels of oil, the texture becomes less cracker like and less crispy and more tender and chewy.

Peter