Eddie,
I took the liberty of using the expanded dough calculating tool at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html to convert your recipe to a baker's percent format so that I could better see what your recipe is and what it does. In doing this conversion, I assumed that you were using instant dry yeast (IDY) and regular salt, not Kosher. Based on my conversion, I got the following:
Flour (100%):
Water (73.5294%):
IDY (1.77187%):
Salt (3.28318%):
Sugar (1.17256%):
Total (179.75701%):
| 170 g | 6 oz | 0.37 lbs
125 g | 4.41 oz | 0.28 lbs
3.01 g | 0.11 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1 tsp | 0.33 tbsp
5.58 g | 0.2 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1 tsp | 0.33 tbsp
1.99 g | 0.07 oz | 0 lbs | 0.5 tsp | 0.17 tbsp
305.59 g | 10.78 oz | 0.67 lbs | TF = N/A
|
There are several things that jump out at me when I look at the above table. First is the hydration (the weight of water divided by the weight of flour). At about 73.5%, it is very high. If I had to guess, you perhaps found it necessary to add a fair amount of bench flour in order to get a dough that you could work with and be able to shape and stretch it into a skin. Second, assuming that you used IDY, the amount you used is certainly high enough to be able to raise a dough and use it in about two hours. This would be true even if you used active dry yeast (ADY). Third, your salt level is too high. A more typical value would be 1.75%. Salt at high levels suppresses the fermentation process by which the yeast acts to produce carbon dioxide gas to cause the dough to rise and alcohol to get converted to compounds that develop flavors and the aroma of the finished crust.
The above recipe you used is known in the pizza trade as a short-time or emergency dough because it is intended to be make and used within a few hours. As such, it is very common to get a finished crust that is lacking in color. The reason is that there is not enough sugar in the dough at the time of baking to produce good crust color. The sugar for that purpose comes not only from the sugar that is added to the dough, as you did, but also natural sugars that are released from the flour by the action of enzymes in the flour and in the yeast. Unfortunately, it can take several hours to develop enough sugar to create good crust color. Hence, with a two hour dough, you end up with a crust that has little color. If you used an ordinary all-purpose flour, that will also penalize final crust color because of its relatively low protein content.
Based on my assumptions and analysis, your recipe yields about 305.59 grams of dough, or about 10.78 ounces. You didn't indicate what size pizza you made with your dough, but I suspect that it was not all that large and perhaps also on the thin side. If so, and you baked the pizza until it started to develop color, you could easily end up with a dry, hard, cracker-like crust. This condition might have been alleviated if you had added a fair amount of oil to the dough but I see that oil is not in your recipe.
I think the better course for you at this point, particularly if you are really after a NY style pizza, is to abandon your recipe and use a better one for your purposes. I frequently suggest that new pizza makers interested in the NY style pizza read the following thread:
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,2223.0.html. That thread pretty much covers all aspects of making a NY style dough and pizza and contains a lot of helpful tips. If after reading that thread you feel that you would like to give that style a try, let me know and I think I should be abe to come up with a customized recipe for you to use. What I would need to know is what kind and brand of flour, yeast and salt you have available to you, what kind of pizza making gear you have, whether you have a digital scale, and some details about your oven. I would also want to know what pizza size and numbers of pizzas you would like to make. If you plan to use the pizza stone, which is the preferred and recommended method, you should keep in mind that, unless you have a pizza screen to use, the size of your pizzas will be limited by the dimensions of your stone.
Finally, if you are outside of the U.S., please so indicate. That is often a major consideration because of different ingredients, equipment and ovens.
Peter
