Sometimes when I read all the complexities of the posts at this site, I feel like the Jimmy Stewart character in "Flight of the Phoenix", when he finds out that the person engineering the restructure of his wrecked plane is an engineer for model planes. But then the engineer informs him that model planes fly "without" pilots. Although I've been building pizzas for over 30 years of my life, you just never quit learning. It was through the experiments of making the cracker crust at home that I solved a problem at work which has been killing me for years. As you can probably imagine, when you are working with very low hydration percentages of dough, small changes in flour can occur which make huge changes in your skins. For instance, last week, I got a bunch of flour which developed too fast in the mixer...so I lowered the hydration rate by 3 percent (down to 34), and cut my mix time by almost one half. The skins are absolutely fabulous now....thanks for stimulating all the thought guys.
I had a thought though...in a restaurant, if a skin cooks to quickly, we slide a screen under to slow it down...or if a skin isn't browning, we simply move it to a hot spot. These simple techniques can turn a good skin into a great skin. We simply don't have much of this control in our home ovens, though, and I often wonder how many great recipes you all come up with, are just thrown away because temperature control isn't available...I guess I'm just simply amazed at great pictures I get to see here...God I love pizza!
John
