Commercial Dough Enzymes or Enhancers to do Tests in Pizza Dough

[norma427]

end of pictures

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

I have been viewing the EL-7 product as a potential substitute for the proofing box, to see if the EL-7 product alone can improve the rolling out process (see Reply 122 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,13820.msg145761.html#msg145761). I notice that you used both the EL-7 product and the proofing box for the last two cracker-style pizzas. You might try just the EL-7 product to see if it works on a dough of very low hydration to allow the dough to roll out easily, without forcing it. If it doesn't work well enough, you might still have the option of using the proofing box after regathering the rolled out dough.

Peter

[norma427]

Norma,

I have been viewing the EL-7 product as a potential substitute for the proofing box, to see if the EL-7 product alone can improve the rolling out process (see Reply 122 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,13820.msg145761.html#msg145761). I notice that you used both the EL-7 product and the proofing box for the last two cracker-style pizzas. You might try just the EL-7 product to see if it works on a dough of very low hydration to allow the dough to roll out easily, without forcing it. If it doesn't work well enough, you might still have the option of using the proofing box after regathering the rolled out dough.

Peter

Peter,

I didn’t realize until you linked me back to your post, that I should try the EL-7 without the proofing box.  I know, the last two times I did use the EL-7 with the proofing box.  Even then the dough didn’t want to roll really easy, at least after the dough cooled a little.  At market yesterday, the rolled dough did roll out easier.  How long do you think I should let the dough with the EL-7 product ferment at room temperature, before trying to roll out the dough?  I can understand that would be a good test for the El-7 product.

Sorry, I got confused on what to try.

Norma

[Pete-zza]

How long do you think I should let the dough with the EL-7 product ferment at room temperature, before trying to roll out the dough?  I can understand that would be a good test for the El-7 product.

Norma,

No harm done. In fact, those were perhaps good tests. At least we now have an idea as to how the dough reacted to both the EL-7 product and heat from the proofing box. Maybe both were too much.

I think I would let the next dough ferment at room temperature for about a half hour, or even less if the dough will be at market with temperatures in the 90s. You might try rolling out the dough after the initial proof period and if the dough balks to rolling (is overly elastic), then I think I would let the dough proof for another half hour. If the EL-7 product is going to work meaningfully for a cracker-style dough, one hour of proof should be enough in my opinion.

Peter

[norma427]

I think I would let the next dough ferment at room temperature for about a half hour, or even less if the dough will be at market with temperatures in the 90s. You might try rolling out the dough after the initial proof period and if the dough balks to rolling (is overly elastic), then I think I would let the dough proof for another half hour. If the EL-7 product is going to work meaningfully for a cracker-style dough, one hour of proof should be enough in my opinion.

Peter

Peter,

I guess I will do the next test at home, because I don’t have any food processor at market to mix the dough.  The dough yesterday, at market, did look different than the dough looked last week and also rolled a lot better.  Last week even after the proof in my home proofing box, and letting the dough in the refrigerator for two days, the dough at market hardly budged when rolling.  This week after the proofing box, and the two days in the refrigerator, the dough rolled much better at market.  I did use 3/4 teaspoon of the EL-7 product in the mix this week.  I really don’t think the small amount of time, with the EL-7 products is going to make a big difference in being able to rolled out the dough, but I guess I will see, if I do the test.

Norma

[norma427]

I mixed another cracker style formula this morning with the  EL-7 product and left it sit for 1 ½ hrs.  I used another formula this time, which can be seen below.  The dough wasn’t soft enough to be rolled out in about 1 ½ hrs.  I would put the dough into my homemade proofing box, but I have to go to market soon.  I am not sure if I should just let the dough sit out until tomorrow, and then take it to market to try and roll the dough out, or put the dough into my proofing box, when I return from market, then roll the dough.

Pictures below

Norma

[norma427]

Formula I used.

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

You might check the dough again when you return home from market today to see if it can be rolled out easily. If not, you might refrigerate the dough overnight to see if the EL-7 product simply needs more time to do its thing. Then, tomorrow, after a reasonable temper time at market, you might try again to see if the dough rolls out any better. If not, then your test would suggest that the EL-7 product does not do as well with a very low hydration dough, especially in a home setting using a rolling pin. Maybe a commercial sheeted/roller is needed.

Peter

[norma427]

Norma,

You might check the dough again when you return home from market today to see if it can be rolled out easily. If not, you might refrigerate the dough overnight to see if the EL-7 product simply needs more time to do its thing. Then, tomorrow, after a reasonable temper time at market, you might try again to see if the dough rolls out any better. If not, then your test would suggest that the EL-7 product does not do as well with a very low hydration dough, especially in a home setting using a rolling pin. Maybe a commercial sheeted/roller is needed.

Peter

Peter,

Thanks for your advise.  I did just check the dough and it feels softer now.  I will try rolling it again, if a little while.

Norma

[norma427]

The cracker style dough with the EL-7 product was easier to roll out after sitting out for awhile.  It wasn’t as easy as using the proofing box first, but wasn’t too bad.  I would think if using a real sheeter, instead of a rolling pin, the dough would be much easier to work with.

Norma

[TXCraig1]

Norma,

What do your customers think of the cracker-style vs. your other pies?

CL

[TXCraig1]

I'd like to try that dough with nothing more than a good bit of parmesan cheese on top. Maybe a touch of rosemary and black bepper too. Cooked crisp, it would be like cheese crackers. You could sell it with a cup of warm sauce on the side for dipping.

CL

[norma427]

I'd like to try that dough with nothing more than a good bit of parmesan cheese on top. Maybe a touch of rosemary and black bepper too. Cooked crisp, it would be like cheese crackers. You could sell it with a cup of warm sauce on the side for dipping.

CL

Norma,

What do your customers think of the cracker-style vs. your other pies?

CL

Craig,

I haven’t given any of the experimental cracker style pizzas to any of my customers.  I really don’t have the right kind of cutter pan to try, and I don’t even know what a real cracker-style pie is supposed to taste like.  I did another experiment today, with another cracker-style pizza and I wasn’t happy with it either. 

Your ideas for toppings really sound good for a cracker-style pizza. 

Norma

[norma427]

I really don’t think the EL-7 product worked as intended in the cracker-style pizza formulation I used, or maybe I didn’t go about making a cracker-style dough pizza right, but I am not happy with this style of pizza or my results.

After the dough was rolled out on Monday the dough did look okay.  When I took the rolled out dough out of the plastic wrap and a plastic bag I had stored it in, the dough felt drier than when I had rolled it.  The dough skin also looked different, in that it had some spots in it.  I tried to roll the dough more at market, but it wouldn’t budge.  I oiled my blackbuster steel pan and placed the dough skin in the pan and then cut the dough some.  The skin was pre-baked, then dressed and put straight onto the deck this time. 

The pizza did have a definite crackery sound when cutting, but doesn’t seem crackery enough for me.  The pizza was crispy, but not crackery, if that makes any sense. 

Pictures below,

Norma

[norma427]

Norma

[norma427]

Norma

[norma427]

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

As I understand it, you used DKM's cracker style dough formulation at http://www.pizzamaking.com/pizzainnstyle.php but modified in accordance with Reply 126 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,13820.msg146068.html#msg146068, including the use of the EL-7 product. If so, can you answer the following questions?:

1. Are you looking for a more cracker-like crust or a crispy one? A cracker-like crust by my definition would be somewhat thicker than a crispy crust and more tender than a crispy crust. A cracker-like crust might break along a clean line rather than shatter.

2. What type and brand of flour did you use?

3. What is the size of your pan?

4. After you trimmed the skin to fit your pan, did you weigh it?

Peter

[norma427]

Norma,

As I understand it, you used DKM's cracker style dough formulation at http://www.pizzamaking.com/pizzainnstyle.php but modified in accordance with Reply 126 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,13820.msg146068.html#msg146068, including the use of the EL-7 product. If so, can you answer the following questions?:

1. Are you looking for a more cracker-like crust or a crispy one? A cracker-like crust by my definition would be somewhat thicker than a crispy crust and more tender than a crispy crust. A cracker-like crust might break along a clean line rather than shatter.

2. What type and brand of flour did you use?

3. What is the size of your pan?

4. After you trimmed the skin to fit your pan, did you weigh it?

Peter

Peter,

You are correct, that I did use DKM’s cracker style dough formulation at the link you posted with the EL-7 product in higher amounts, but I didn’t use my homemade proofing box.  

I still am confused about what a cracker-style crust should be like and taste like.  I know I tried the V&N clone different times, and although I did like that formulation and pizza, didn’t really like a thin crust pizza as much as I like thicker crust pizzas.  I guess my tastes in pizzas are more about how the crust tastes.  The cracker-style I tried yesterday wasn’t tender in the crust, but did break along clean lines when cut.  It didn’t shatter.  I think I had read somewhere here on the forum that there should be fine crumbs when a cracker-style crust is cut.  When the cracker-style pizza I made yesterday was cut, there weren’t fine crumbs.  To Steve and me the crust was almost tough.  Another friend did taste a slice and liked how the crust was.  I don’t think many thin crust pizzas have much taste in the crust.

For my last experiments before yesterday, I use the Superlative “All-Purpose” flour from the Country Store.  For my experiment yesterday I tried Gold Medal “All-Purpose” flour.  I think I did read that maybe a high gluten four (maybe KASL) might be used.  I think that is why I can’t understand what really should be used in terms of flour.  I used Hodgson Mill ADY for the yeast and did hydrate it.  Would it matter that for this week I used regular table salt.  I did put regular table salt in the Expanded Dough Calculation Tool.

The pan I used was 14" round.  I didn’t weigh the skin after I cut it, because I also trimmed off some of the dough after rolling it on Monday, and didn’t weigh that either.  

Another thing I can’t understand, and confused me is how the dough became drier from Monday until Tuesday, when it was in plastic wrap and a plastic bag.  I don’t know if that was from the EL-7 product or from something I did.  I don’t know if the EL-7 product keeps working on dough something like PZ-44, but it sure didn’t seem that way this week.  

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

I think that often the confusion about the cracker style of pizza stems from semantics. For example, the terms "cracker", "cracker style", "cracker-like", "crackery", "crunchy", and "crispy" can mean different things to different people. Even the term "tender" has a different meaning in the context of the cracker style pizza than for other types of crusts. The DKM recipe you have been using is DKM's interpretation of a true cracker style crust that was popularized by Pizza Inn many years ago. Yet, I have seen the above terms used for pizza crusts that, in my opinion, are quite different than the DKM Pizza Inn type of crust. Examples include the Chicago cracker style pizza, such as the Vito & Nick's pizza (see also Tom Lehmann's recipe at the PMQ Recipe Bank at http://pmq.com/tt2/recipe/view/id_161/title_Chicago-Cracker-Style-Pizza-Crust/), the DeLorenzo pizzas, the Monical and Round Table pizzas, and even the Mack's pizzas. Sometimes the above terms are also used with terms like chewy to describe other parts of a pizza crust. As we have learned, it is not always easy to make any pizza identically every time. A pizza intended to have a soft crust can have chewy and cracker-like parts and, conversely, a pizza intended to be cracker-like can have soft, chewy parts.

If you would like to try to find the species of cracker style pizza that you like the best, and at the same time learn something about the different possible textural characteristics of a cracker style crust, I would like to suggest the following. I suggest that you make two pizzas that are identical in every way,  except for the thickness factor. For one of the pizzas, I would use a thickness factor for the skin as it is fitted into the pan of 0.09. For the other pizza, I would use a thickness factor of about 0.05-0.06 for the skin as it is fitted in its pan. The reason I asked you the questions about the pan size and the weight of the skin in the pan was to be able to determine the corresponding thickness factor. Knowing that might have allowed me to explain your results. If you decide to conduct the test suggested above, you can use the EL-7 product for both doughs, or you can run the test without that product (and use your proofing box if necessary). If you choose to use the EL-7 product, you can post your results in this thread. If you'd like, you can also make the two pizzas on separate occasions so long as they are identical as much as possible but for the thickness factor as discussed above. Hopefully, making the two pizzas you will experience different crust textures from which you may develop a preference or, in the alternative, get ideas for improvement if you decide to proceed further with that style.

The question about the type and brand of flour was raised because the type of flour used for the cracker style pizza can make a difference. As DKM has noted, the three basic kinds of white flour, including all-purpose flour, bread flour and high-gluten flour, can all be used to make the DKM cracker style pizza. I personally found that I liked the Harvest King/Better for Bread flour better than all-purpose flour, whereas other members indicated that their favorite flour was a high-gluten flour. Bread flour and high-gluten flour promote increased crust flavor and increased crust coloration. I briefly touched upon the flour issue at Reply 159 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5762.msg71979.html#msg71979 (note also the discussion of crust chararacteristics) and also in Reply 135 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5762.msg53189.html#msg53189. In Reply 135 I also espoused a pet theory of mine that a thin cracker style crust has a different impact on the palate because each bite of a cracker style pizza has proportionately less crust in each bite than with most other pizzas with much thicker crusts (assuming the same things on the pizzas). If my theory is right, that might help explain why you seem to prefer thicker crusts over thinner crusts. Or it may simply be a case that you just don't like cracker style crusts and pizzas, based on flavor, crust characteristics or maybe even both.

Peter

EDIT (3/22/13): For the updated link to the PMQ recipe, see http://www.pmq.com/Recipe-Bank/index.php/name/Chicago-Cracker-Style-Pizza-Crust/record/57734/