Anyone know the Real Wolfgang Puck dough recipe?

[DoouBall]

I had Wolfgang Puck's pizza at the Houston airport a couple of weeks ago. It was topped with Pesto, Mozzarella, Black Olives and Prosciutto and was wonderful. The dough had a very faint sweetness to it that paired perfectly with the savory toppings.

Would anyone happen to know the real Wolfgang Puck Pizza dough recipe? This is the one shared online, but I can't imagine that this is what they use in store: http://www.wolfgangpuck.com/recipes/pizza/All-Purpose-Pizza-Dough

The yeast amount is extremely high - it seems designed for same day use. I also doubt that they use AP flour. I called one Wolfgang Puck restaurant and they wouldn't go into detail, but they told me they use High Gluten flour. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Alex

[Pete-zza]

Alex,

I suspect that you are right that the dough recipe you found is not the one used by Wolfgang Puck in his restaurants. But, several years ago, I used a Puck dough recipe and reported on my results at Reply 5 at https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=9362.msg81955#msg81955. I also tried a Puck dough recipe that called for a blend of all-purpose flour and whole wheat flour, and reported on my results with that dough at Reply 2 at https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=1701.msg15284;topicseen#msg15284. That blend might come closer to a high gluten flour that the all purpose only version I described in Reply 5 referenced above.

Peter

[DoouBall]

Thanks Peter! I will experiment with those, and also reduce the yeast quantity to 3/4 tsp ADY since I'm going with a 24-48 hour fridge rise. Wolfgang's recipe allows a 1-2 day fridge rise as an option, so it seems logical to reduce the yeast quantity.

Also, according to Peter Reinhart's blog, it appears that at least one WP restaurant uses a 9 day pizza dough that is made with a biga?!?!?! I'm going to stay away from trying to replicate that for now. 

https://www.fornobravo.com/pizzaquest/peters-blog-wolfgang-puck-pizza-bar/

[pizzalatino]

Pete-zza do you have the baker's percentages? I tried searching for them but keep coming up empty. I know it's an old post but wanted to try this style. I also wanted to know if there is a place on this site that has the percentages for all the styles. I've been a member a long time but never have figured out where it all was. Thanks! I love your very informative posts on here.

[Pete-zza]

Pete-zza do you have the baker's percentages? I tried searching for them but keep coming up empty. I know it's an old post but wanted to try this style. I also wanted to know if there is a place on this site that has the percentages for all the styles. I've been a member a long time but never have figured out where it all was. Thanks! I love your very informative posts on here.

pizzalatino,

Is this the Puck dough recipe that you would like to see in baker's percents format?:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100818211926/http://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity-lifestyle/how-to/life-advice/wolfgang-puck-pizza-recipe

If so, I think I can come up with a reasonable approximation. Do you know offhand the type and brand of flour you would be using?

We do not have a central location or even separate locations on the forum for recipes for different pizza styles given in baker's percents. Many recipes are given by volume measurements, which are sometimes hard to convert to weights, so you may not see baker's percents versions unless someone finds a way of converting to baker's percents.

Peter

[pizzalatino]

Hello Peter,

     Yes the one described in the link would be great if you can convert, which I know you can . I liked the ones you had done and posted so I'd like to try it. I believe I've had the pizza at one of his restaurants but don't remember who it was. Thanks so much for doing this.

Mike

[Pete-zza]

Hello Peter,

     Yes the one described in the link would be great if you can convert, which I know you can . I liked the ones you had done and posted so I'd like to try it. I believe I've had the pizza at one of his restaurants but don't remember who it was. Thanks so much for doing this.

Mike

Mike,

I have set forth below my best approximation of the Puck dough recipe in baker's percent format. What makes this process challenging is converting flour and water that are recited by volume into weights. In the case of the flour, the conversion is especially difficult since there are so many ways to measure out a cup of flour volumetrically. Some will spoon flour into a cup and level it off (or maybe not), and some will just dip the measuring cup into a bag or other container of flour and level it (or maybe not). And some will tamp the measured cup of flour on a flat surface, which will compact it. Dough recipes almost never tell how to measure out the flour called for by the recipes. In the case of water, most people just eyeball a cup of water, usually from above, whereas the proper way to measure out a cup of water is to fill the cup to the one-cup line and view the water line at eye level while the cup is on a flat surface.

In my case, for the flour I assumed that the flour is scooped out of a container. I then used the Mass-Volume Conversion Calculator (https://www.pizzamaking.com/FoodSim.htm), for which I provided a lot of data for member November to create the tool. For the present purpose, I used King Arthur all purpose flour as a proxy for the all purpose flour called for by the Puck recipe. However, you should be aware that there are differences in all purpose flours so some minor adjustment may be needed for the amount of flour, and/or the water, called for by the recipe. Using the Medium Measurement Method, the weight that I came up with for three cups of flour is 14.128 ounces. For the water, I simply used 8.2 ounces, which is a number I came up with by a series of tests where I tried to simulate how most people are likely to measure out a cup of water volumetrically and took the average.

The above said, and using the expanded dough calculating tool at https://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded-calculator.html, here is what I came up for a baker's percent version of the Puck dough recipe.

All Purpose Flour (100%): Water (58.0407%): ADY (2.12338%): Morton's Kosher Salt (1.19841%): Extra Virgin Olive Oil (3.37054%): Honey (1.74594%): Total (166.47897%):

400.53 g  |  14.13 oz | 0.88 lbs 232.47 g  |  8.2 oz | 0.51 lbs 8.5 g | 0.3 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2.25 tsp | 0.75 tbsp 4.8 g | 0.17 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1 tsp | 0.33 tbsp 13.5 g | 0.48 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3 tsp | 1 tbsp 6.99 g | 0.25 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1 tsp | 0.33 tbsp 666.8 g | 23.52 oz | 1.47 lbs | TF = N/A

Note: Dough is for four 8" pizzas; the corresponding thickness factor = (23.52/4)/(3.14159 x 4 x 4) = 0.116979; no bowl residue compensation

You will note that I calculated the thickness factor so that you can use it in the expanded dough calculating tool in case you want to make more or fewer dough balls or pizzas of other sizes. I did not use a bowl residue compensation although normally for a dough like the Puck dough I would use 1.5%, and weigh out the desired final dough ball weight (23.52 ounces in this case) using my scale. If you'd like, you can round off the final dough ball weight to 24 ounces, which would be six ounces per dough ball if you'd like to make four 8-inch pizzas per the Puck recipe.

Good luck and let us know how things turn out if you decide to use the Puck recipe. If you elect to use a different all purpose flour than I used for the above exercise, you may be able to use the tool I referenced above to tweak the recipe if your flour is in the pulldown menu. Otherwise, you might use my number. You may also need to tweak the amount of water to produce the desired final form of the dough after kneading because of the varying natures of the flour and water because of their recitation in volumes rather than by weights. You might even want to note how much of the water is needed, or maybe even more, for future reference. Even with dough recipes recited by volumes it is a good idea to weigh out the flour and water as measured out volumetrically, and to do this regularly, so that over time you can hopefully arrive at the weights that produce the best results.

Peter

[pizzalatino]

Peter,

     Thank you so much for doing all the calculating! That's not the fun part of 'pizza making' for me. I usually use KA so I had planned on sticking with it. I'll post results 

Mike

[Jon in Albany]

An observation, but there is more yeast in the recipe than salt. That seems off to me. If you try it and the dough seems bland, the first thing I'd recommend is bumping up the salt.

Just my 2 cents

Edit: I just reread the directions and it is a very quick rise which explains the yeast, but the salt still seems really low to me.

[SoCalPizzaMaker]

I was looking at this post and pulled out my 2002 version of Wolfgang's book - "Pizza, Pasta, and More" and thought I post the pizza dough recipe for those interested: