Suggestions for an American Recipe?

[dani0100]

Hello all,

As you'll see by my post count, I am a new poster to these forums, though I've been thoroughly enjoying lurking over the past couple of months.  What a truly wonderful resource these forums are for the pizza making fanatic!

I am looking for some suggestions for a good recipe.  Here are the characteristics I'm after:

(1) Medium-thickness, crunchy outer crust with good chewiness in the middle.  I'm planning to use KA high-gluten flour or something similar, unless this seems like a bad choice in view of all of my desired characteristics.

(2) 12-48 hour cold rise performance.  I'd like to ideally use this dough after 24 hours of refrigeration, but it would be nice if it were usable after 12 or 36-48 hours, if the need arose.  I guess I need something that won't blow up to a balloon if I don't use it right away, but that will hopefully still work well if I can't give it a full 24 hour cold storage rise.

(3) Simplicity.  Basically, the fewer ingredients the better.  I'd definitely like to avoid any solid fats or any liquids besides oil and/or water.  Not sure if sugar would be good to avoid, given my desired characteristics above.

(4) Suitable for easy hand-tossing.  I guess I'm saying I want something that's fairly pliable and won't break easily when hand tossing.  Hopefully using high-gluten flour will get me there, but I thought I'd add it in case not.

In case it matters, I'm hoping this recipe will eventually be used in a restaurant environment, so it will be scaled up.  It will also would be cooked in a 450-500 degree commercial pizza oven on professional pizza stones.

Thanks so much for any advice.  I apologize if the answer is right in front of me, and I've been looking quite studiously at all of the recipes posted here, but I'm afraid I don't have experience at a lot of the restaurants whose recipes are being cloned so I'm not sure what a particular recipe is intended to be like.

[Pete-zza]

dani0100,

Is there a particular commercial American style pizza that fits or comes reasonably close to what you are after? Just about all of the chains that make American style pizzas, including Papa John's, Domino's, Little Caesar's and Pizza Hut, use doughs that contain a fair amount of sugar and oil. Although using a high protein/high-gluten flour will provide chewiness in the finished crust, the sugar and oil will produce a soft and tender crumb rather than a chewy one. Also, if the dough contains a fair amount of sugar, that might make the dough unsuitable to be baked directly on a stone surface without getting premature bottom crust browning or even blackening. All of the above chains use pizza screens and conveyor ovens. Unfortunately, if you cut back too much on the sugar and oil in order to get a chewier crust or to be able to bake the pizzas directly on a stone surface, you will no longer have an American style pizza. It will start to look like a thick New York style.

Peter

[Mad_Ernie]

In accordance with what Pete-zza said, I looks to me like you are looking for something closer to a New York clone. 

I suggest doing some searches through the forum and taking a look at some photos of finished products.  Peter has been excellent in this department for posting photos of various clones and experiments.  They might give you some visual clues as to what you are looking for.

-ME