How oil affects your dough

[eiram21]

Interesting article on how oil affects pizza crust if you are interested. I'm sure some members have seen this before? I've been using 1% oil - I'm going to try bumping it up. I feel the oil is the main reason why I prefer NY style dough over Neopolitan, so why not play it up a bit?


http://www.pizzatoday.com/Buckets/oilsAffectDough-Lehmann

[canadianbacon]

Great article ! thanks for posting it !

[dmcavanagh]

Don't forget that much of what Tom writes he is gearing toward commercial type establishments, think the big names of American style pizza. These businesses have concerns and issues that are not necessarily shared with the home pizza maker. SOme doughs may benefit from the addition of oil, but the classic pizza doughs of years gone by were comprised of the same ingredients as a classic French baguette, flour, water, salt and yeast. These are still the only ingredients used by many bakers and pizza makers. Try different formulas and see what works best for you. Don't follow blindly, remember that if there was a "best" pizza recipe, we wouldn't need all the rest.

[Pete-zza]

Dave,

I was thinking about what you said, and the only dough recipes that I am aware of on the forum that include only flour, water, salt and yeast are a few NY style doughs that harken back to the old days of the NY style before deck ovens and conveyor ovens, maybe some no-knead doughs, and Neapolitan style doughs that are intended to be baked in very high temperature wood-fired ovens. And the Neapolitan style doughs call for 00 flour, and the resulting crusts are not baguette-like in any way in my opinion.

There are also a few Shakey's cracker-style clone dough recipes that call only for flour, water and salt, and no yeast.

The above categories represent a very small percent of all the recipes on the forum. Most contain oil and/or sugar (and many other possible ingredients), especially those that are patterned after chain pizzas.

Peter

[slybarman]

Does anyone know why the Lehman dough calculator says that, "extra virgin olive oil is not advised"? In the article Tom Lehman talks about using olive oil - though maybe cutting it with other oil to lower cost.

[Pete-zza]

slybarman,

Since I was involved in the design of the Lehmann dough calculating tool and was responsible for the language you quoted, I guess I should be the one to explain that language.

The Lehmann dough calculating tool was the first one that I worked on and it was specifically dedicated to the Lehmann NY style recipe and to Tom Lehmann. That recipe is a commercial one. And if you look at the original recipe, you will only see Olive Oil as the oil to be used in the recipe. You will not see Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  In his writings outside of the recipe, including over at the PMQ Think Tank, Tom routinely suggested that one use inexpensive olive oils in pizza doughs. You can see an example of one of Tom's PMQ Think Tank posts where he discusses this matter at http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewtopic.php?p=13122#p13122. You will see there that Tom recommends pomace olive oil for commercial doughs, or blends of oils.

In a home setting, there is nothing wrong with using extra virgin olive oil. However, I would perhaps use a lighter olive oil if the percent usage is high, say, above 4-5%. That amount, while not particularly common for the NY style, might be too robust from a flavor standpoint.

If you look at the rest of the dough calculating tools, you will see no restrictions on the type of olive oil.

Peter

[slybarman]

Thank you Peter for the explanation. I had been using Canola since I did not know the reason, but I will probably try olive oil next time.