Detroit style pop up - speeding up the process

[Dan101]

Hi All,

I've been down a rabbit whole on this section lately and have already learned so much.  Many of you are so far ahead of the game, it's just fantastic to read your posts.  Hoping for some additional guidance here.

I have some pizza pop-up events planned and I want to go with Detroit style.  I have been making incredible Detroit/Sicilian style in the home oven recently.  It's coming out looking and eating fantastic every time.  I've been going with the parbake method.  However, even par baking the crust, the finishing bake is still taking too long to be usable at an event.  We are talking 30 minutes on the second bake to get it done ebouvh.  Just hoping for some pointers on what is slowing things down and how I can speed things up and making improvements.  Essential info:

80% hydration
Making in a home convection oven, max temp 220 degrees Celsius
In UK so very limited pizza cheese options to purchase on a retail basis, I have been using mozzarella balls which I drain and dab with paper towels to try and dry out a little
24h CF and then maybe 4 hours final proof in stainless steel pan to come up to room temp
Par bake crust for 11 mins which gets us to a nice light golden brown
I cook my sauce so it is a reduced down sauce

For the pop ups I plan on a commercial electric deck oven.

I was really hoping to get the final bake down to a max of 10 minutes.  Is it just a case of having access to better cheese and a hotter oven?  Or am I missing out on something here?

Thanks in advance guys.

Dan

[foreplease]

260 C is where you need to be, at a minimum, IMO. I bake at 500 F (I am limited to 500). 11-12 min on convect-roast cycle, starting with raw dough, and love the results. Seems to me you should be able to achieve a sub-10 min bake if your dough is par baked with a little trial and error.

[Dan101]

260 C is where you need to be, at a minimum, IMO. I bake at 500 F (I am limited to 500). 11-12 min on convect-roast cycle, starting with raw dough, and love the results. Seems to me you should be able to achieve a sub-10 min bake if your dough is par baked with a little trial and error.

Many thanks for chiming in.  I figured oven temp would be a big part of it.  I don't yet have an actual pizza oven.  I'm going to have another try with a drier mozzarella and to put the sauce on post bake.  I also think I'm using too much dough.  I'm putting a 690g dough ball (80% hydration) in a 9.5 x 13 inch Chicago pan.  I'll try reducing dough down by 100g.

[foreplease]

You bet. For 70% hydration using that pan I think I would use 432-475 grams of dough. TBH, I would have to re-check Hans's thread... https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=42012.0


I just did and verified he uses 3.5g of dough per square inch of pan floor. Like many people here, I use the formula he came up with for DS — reliably and appreciatively. I sometimes figure at 10% higher if I am making more than one or having company, just to make pushing it out wall to wall a little easier. Even so, it is not a thick crust by nearly any other panned pizza standard.


Good luck with your venture. Changing dough formulas and batch sizes are easy. I think the oven is the first thing you need to solve.

[spaceboy]

to chime in here...ur oven temp is much too low but it does not seem like you have any other option right now
when and if you do, i stay around 500-525, i dont parbake but my entire bake time runs roughly around 15-17 minutes

for me personally, i think your biggest issue is the dough ball size, i do 260-280 for an 8x10 lloyds dsp pan
and roughly double that for a 10x14.  i know thats what hans did, and i took that and ran with it and have had no complaints
with that dough size and bake time

good luck!

[Dan101]

Thank you so much guys!  I really do appreciate you pitching in.

I won't have the oven for a few weeks, but I am going to have another attempt at the weekend using a lower dough weight, amongst a few other little tweaks.  I really can't wait to get a real pizza oven though, I know anything less is really doing your pizza a disservice. 

[Dan101]

Had another go today guys.  Lowered hydration to 75%, lowered dough weight to 600g from 1090g, added sauce after bake.  Photos are just before I added sauce.
Really happy with the result, great crust.

[Chefbaker]

I just did a pop-up with Detroits the night before Thanksgiving at a brewery. Had only one small electric deck oven.
I brought all the pizza fully baked. Figured it was the only way to keep up and I was right. Just reheated it on-site.
Sold 63 10x14 Detroits in about 3 hours.
I had only 12 pans available, and the oven fit only 1 pizza at a time.  Just had the fully baked pizza on a speed rack, popped it back in the pans as I went along.
Even ended up just decking the pizzas without a pan towards the end, it was too slow to reheat in the pan.

It worked out good..... we are opening another pizzeria in a month or so, and just trying to get the word out.