Tom Lehmann's Dough Management Procedure

[Pete-zza]

Several years ago, Tom Lehmann published a Dough Management Procedure detailing a method that professionals might use in their businesses with large volume requirements typical of pizza businesses. And it has successfully served that purpose. While the Dough Management Procedure may not apply to every possible style of pizza, it is general enough to apply to most styles. Also, with a few changes, such as mixing speeds and times to reflect the type of mixer being used and the amount of dough being made, and using storage methods other than cross-stackable dough boxes (like bowls or bags), the Dough Management Procedure can be also used by non-professionals in a home setting.

Here is Tom's Dough Management Procedure:

1. Determine water temperature needed to give a finished (mixed) dough temperature of 80 to 85F. With a room temperature of 70 to 75F, this will typically require a water temperature of 65F using a planetary mixer.
2. Add the water to the mixing bowl.
3. Add salt and sugar (if used) to the water. Do not stir in.
4. Add the flour and then add the yeast.*
5. Mix for two minutes in low speed, add the oil and mix for one more minute in low speed.
6. Then mix for 8 to 10 minutes at second (medium) speed or first speed for approximately 15 minutes. The idea is to mix the dough just until it takes on a smooth appearance.
7. Check the finished dough temperature (it should be in the 80 to 85F range).
8. Take the dough directly to the bench for scaling and rounding/balling.
9. The dough should be cut and balled within a 20-minute time period.
10. As soon as the dough is formed into balls, place in plastic dough boxes and wipe the top of the dough balls with salad oil.
11. Immediately take the dough boxes to the cooler and cross stack them.
12. Allow the dough boxes to remain cross stacked in the cooler for 2 hours, then down stack and nest the dough boxes.
13. The dough will be ready to use after 16 hours in the cooler.
14. To use the dough, remove about a 3-hour supply of dough from the cooler, leave it in the covered dough boxes and allow it to temper AT room temperature for 60 to 90-minutes, then begin shaping the dough into pizza skins for immediate use.
15. The dough will remain good to use for up to 3 hours after you first begin using it.
16. Any dough remaining in the cooler will keep for up to 3 days.
*If the yeast is fresh yeast, it can simply be crumbled on top of the flour

Peter

EDIT (11/20/20): For an update by Tom, see Reply 6 at https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=66269.msg648467#msg648467

[aiisshsaak]

Hello, Thank you for sharing this helpful precedure.
I am still strugling to have the dough ready for baking. can you tell me what is the temperature of cooler should be ?

[Pete-zza]

Hello, Thank you for sharing this helpful precedure.
I am still strugling to have the dough ready for baking. can you tell me what is the temperature of cooler should be ?

aiisshaak,

Tom has discussed cooler temperatures at Reply 1 at:

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=43168.msg432148;topicseen#msg432148

Peter

[aiisshsaak]

Ah thanks for your quick reply, much appreciated

[Giggliato]

Its a very good procedure, I am just wondering why it is advised to not stir in the salt and sugar into the water? I stir the salt and sugar into the water currently, I also add ADY to the water and then immediately add the flour.

I am also wondering why it is not advised to mix on low speed for the entire process?

[Pete-zza]

Its a very good procedure, I am just wondering why it is advised to not stir in the salt and sugar into the water? I stir the salt and sugar into the water currently, I also add ADY to the water and then immediately add the flour.

Giggliato,

You can read Tom's explanation for the above question at Reply 32 at:

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=43529.msg440691#msg440691

I do not have an answer to your question about the mixing speed other than to say that using the low speed only will increase the total knead time to reach the desired dough consistency. Whether that will adversely affect the finished dough temperature or encourage premature fermentation of the dough, I cannot say. Maybe Tom will respond if he sees your post.

Peter

[The Dough Doctor]

The dough mixing can be done at either low or medium speed, Peter is correct in that it just depends upon how long you want to wait for the dough to be mixed. Typically we see mixing times of 18 to 20-minutes at low speed and 8 to 11-minutes at medium speed. I also recognize that for a number of reasons some mixers will not handle mixing some pizza doughs at anything but the lowest/slowest speed so that eliminates any options for mixing speed right off of the bat. The main thing about mixing almost all pizza doughs is that you don't want to mix to the point of developing a lot of gluten, mix the dough just to the point where the dough takes on a smooth, satiny appearance, biochemical gluten development will take care of the rest of the gluten development for you during the fermentation period. The one exception to this advice on gluten development is when we are making COMMERCIAL frozen pizza dough. In this case there will be essentially no fermentation so there will be no biochemical gluten development taking place, but we still need the gluten development to provide strength to the dough after slacking it out (thawing) so the only way to get the desired gluten development in this case is through mechanical gluten development. Since frozen dough is made cold (60 to 65F) the doughs are extremely tough, add to that the fact that the gluten is somewhat more difficult to develop at those lower temperatures it is common to include a reducing agent such as L-cysteine/PZ-44, glutathione, or deodorized vegetable powder to the dough to help develop the gluten and shorten/reduce the overall mixing time (hence their reference as a "reducing agent"). To achieve the needed gluten development these doughs must be mixed at high speed in mixers that are specially designed to withstand the mixing forces applied to the dough, they are also designed with direct expansion jacketed mixing bowls to help keep the dough cool during mixing allowing the targeted finished dough temperature (60 to 65F) to be CONSISTENTLY achieved.
This is probably more than what you wanted to know about dough mixing but I know that some of our posters either use or have used commercially prepared frozen dough from the supermarket or food distributor so I thought it might be good for them to have an understanding of how the commercial frozen dough is made.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

[Pete-zza]

Tom,

I appreciate the discussion on the commercial frozen dough inasmuch as I was helping Norma make frozen dough balls for sale and I found the material that you and others had created helped me better understand the issues involved in making frozen dough balls. There is, however, a question that I am not sure that I have found an answer to in respect of commercially make frozen dough. The question is whether any attempt is made to give the yeast a kick start on fermentation, even if very brief, as by prehydrating the yeast in some way? Or maybe a special form of yeast that is designed for frozen or refrigerated doughs is used rather than the basic fresh yeast, IDY or ADY?

Peter

[The Dough Doctor]

Peter;
For many years frozen dough manufacturers used nothing but either FRESH compressed yeast or cream yeast (liquid yeast/available only in truck load quantities). The compressed yeast was/is delivered to the bakery normally twice a week to ensure freshness. This compressed yeast is the same yeast that we can buy from a distributor but most likely a lot fresher. The frozen dough manufacturers go to great lengths to make sure the dough/yeast isn't activated prior to freezing. Once the yeast begins feeding/fermenting the individual cells plump up and are more easily and to a greater extent damaged in the freezing process. These steps are necessary to ensure satisfactory performance over the shelf life of the dough (18 to 22-weeks). When shelf life is not the prime concern and we can live with a predictable 15-day shelf life you can get away freezing a fermented dough in a non blast type freezer (blast freezer = -30 to -35F with 600 to 800 linear feet per minute airflow over the product) Static freezing, which is what many small operators do is defined as freezing at 0 to +10F with little or no airflow over the product. This type of freezing allows for the development of a very large and angular shaped ice crystal which is especially deleterious to the life of the yeast. The type of freezer that the dough is stored in can also have a dramatic impact upon the shelf life of the dough too. Residential freezers may defrost 12 to 24 times in a 24-hour period which results in moisture migration within the dough and continued development of those large ice crystals (this is why your ice cream looks grainy in your home freezer, just look at the top of the carton at all the moisture/frost that collects there, that's all from the ice cream, the dough does the same thing, we have a name for it, "freezer burn". Commercial freezers don't have this problem by design, that's another way they get their long shelf life. Lately, there has been some development of freeze tolerant yeast but due to the higher cost not many commercial frozen dough manufacturers are using it. A number of years ago I did a quick calculation on the impact of yeast cost on the profit margins of a commercial dough manufacturer, a $0.01 (1-cent) per pound cost difference in the yeast impacted profits by roughly $91,000.00 a year assuming a production of 100,000-pounds of dough per day. That's why everyone isn't jumping on the freeze tolerant yeast band wagon, most dough manufacturers just don't see the R.O.I.
There is one type of commercially frozen dough that is fermented prior to freezing, this is pre-proofed frozen dough, pre-proofed dough is frozen cryogenically at between -45 and -65F using liquid carbon dioxide or nitrogen which allows for the development of a very small ice crystal which does very little damage to the yeast so the product retains a reasonably long shelf life, you can see this type of dough in the Freshetta Pizza that is sold in the frozen food case at your local supermarket. If frozen dough has a common denominator it is temperature, everything revolves around temperature when making and storing frozen dough.
One last thing about commercial frozen dough formulations, many of them include some form of oxidation in the form of ADA (azodicarbonamide) or AA (ascorbic acid), these oxidants help to reverse the dough weakening effects of the glutathione which leaches out of the yeast cells damaged during freezing making for a stronger dough after it is slacked out/thawed.
I'm feeling like I'm back in teaching again!
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

[Pete-zza]

Tom,

Thank you very much for the detailed response. It is much appreciated.

I had read that fresh yeast was commonly used to make frozen dough but for my experiments it was not an option since I did not have access to fresh yeast in any of the stores where I shop. I later learned from a key employee at Lamonica's that they used IDY for the frozen dough balls that they sold to Costco. So, that is what I used. I know that on at least one occasion I prehydrated the IDY in a small amount of warm water so that it would not be shocked or subjected to impaired performance once it was added to the rest of the ingredients, which included very cold water. And on one occasion, I added the prehydrated IDY late in the mixing process to also protect it somewhat. Maybe I was being overly protective given that I was only expecting a frozen shelf life of about two weeks and thought that some fermentation would not be harmful.

Peter

[The Dough Doctor]

Peter;
In a commercial operation CY is preferred over IDY only because of the cost factor with the one condition being that it must be available to the bakery fresh and at least twice a week. If either of these conditions cannot be met the cost of the yeast will become a secondary factor to the performance of the yeast, this is where IDY is looked at more favorably. Due to the difficulty of developing the gluten in such a cold dough it is customary to mix these doughs using what is referred to as the "delayed salt" mixing method. Since the sodium complexes with the wheat proteins/gluten mixing the dough without the salt allows for faster dough development (it shortens the total dough mixing time by about 2-minutes), the salt is then added at a point approximately 4-minutes prior to the end of the mixing time. In some of the smaller frozen dough operations where IDY is in use the most common method for adding the IDY is along with the salt, the additional 4-minutes of mixing after the addition of the IDY is sufficient to disperse the IDY and allow for complete hydration (it's one of the recommended ways to add IDY). As you have already discovered, yeast leavened dough is pretty tolerant to static freezing conditions if you limit your expectations to not more than 15-days. I know people will argue with me saying that they have successfully frozen dough in their home freezer for much longer periods of time but two things are sure, one is that they cannot do it repeatably with consistent results, two I've yet to meet the person who would do it with as much as 22-weeks of production on the line (at anything from 50,000 to 100,000 thousand pounds of dough made on each of those days), the last thing you want to hear in a commercial frozen dough bakery is that the dough is failing...Ouch!
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor 

[Pete-zza]

Tom,

Out of curiosity, since salt acts as an antioxidant, does that result in the dough becoming lighter in color (due to damage to the carotenoids by mixing) when the salt is added later in the dough making process? Also,I would think you don't need further strengthening of the dough since most flours used to make frozen dough already are quite strong (high protein content).

Peter

[The Dough Doctor]

Peter;
No, salt isn't an antioxidant. Due of the complexing of the sodium with the wheat proteins the gluten is strengthened so when a dough is mixed without salt it will reach any specific level of gluten development faster, then when the salt is finally added the dough will tighten back up again. The idea is to mix the dough past peak development and then when the salt is added it brings the gluten back to whatever level of development you've developed the mixing time and salt addition to achieve. The beta carotenoids are what gives unbleached flour its yellow or creamy color and they can only be removed through oxidation. Back when we were using potassium bromate at 65-ppm and above all bread came out with a bright, white crumb color due to the oxidizing effect upon the beta carotenoids (of course everyone was looking for the brightest, whitest crumb color at the time so all was good). What makes the dough change in appearance (note I didn't say color) is the smoother skin that is being formed over the surface of the dough due to gluten development, this smooth skin reflects light better than the rough, porous surface texture of the undeveloped dough (light absorption into all of those crevices). As for flour strength in a frozen dough system you are correct in that the flour provides all of the strength needed, so why oxidation added to the frozen dough? The answer is because of the glutathione that is slowly released from the yeast during the long shelf life of the frozen dough, without the ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, or potassium bromate the glutathione would progressively weaken the dough to the point where it potentially could not be successfully used to make some yeast leavened items (pizza, in all probability would not be one of those items since we don't call for a lot of residual strength in the dough like we do when making bread where the structure is several inches high and is also subjected to mechanical shock from handling the pans of fully proofed dough. If the dough is intended just for pizza production you're right, no additional strengtheners in the form of oxidation would probably be needed, but as it is, the dough that is used to make pizza crust today might be used to make French bread, Vienna bread or rolls tomorrow. Add to that the fact that there is potentially so much dough in the pipe line and oxidation is something of a crutch, you will see oxidation continue to be used in frozen doughs if for no other reason than as an insurance policy to protect the dough performance just in case something goes wrong in storage or distribution.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

[Pete-zza]

Tom,

In his book, The Taste of Bread, Prof. Raymond Calvel discussed the effects of adding the salt late in the dough making process. I remember how it irritated him that many French bread bakers did that, along with using an intensive mix. In his book, Prof. Calvel said that using the late salt addition, as well as intensive mixing, resulted in a high level of oxidation (at page 30 of his book). I briefly summarized his position in the second paragraph of Reply 3 at:

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=12877.msg125021#msg125021

I wasn't sure I interpreted your last post correctly, or possibly the preparation of a commercial frozen dough is different than making French bread dough, so I wanted to elaborate further on the subject.

Peter

[TXCraig1]

I believe salt can have an antioxidant effect on lipids.

[The Dough Doctor]

Peter;
Since the sodium complexes with the wheat proteins, thus strengthening them (omit the salt from a dough formula and you will see the effect of the salt) by adding the salt late in the mixing/dough development stage you allow for faster gluten development which allows the dough to be stretched faster over the roller bars/agitator bars of the horizontal bread mixers used in wholesale frozen dough production. It is this stretching (much like kneading but much more forceful) that exposes more of the dough to air within a given period of time which can oxidize the beta carotenoid pigments as well as strengther the gluten structure in the exact same manner as the addition of a fast acting oxidant (ascorbic acid) would. This was actually commercialized by the old Continental Baking Company back in the 1970's in their fatigue dough method for making bread. By this procedure the dough was mixed using the delayed salt method but instead of adding the salt short of full gluten development it was instead added somewhat after full gluten development. This was done as the proteins can carry more water if they are opened/uncoiled through over mixing (the same can be accomplished by using an autolyze but a wholesale production has neither the space, equipment or time to allow their doughs to set and hydrate for even a few minutes much less 30 to 60-minutes). In this regard the over mixing of the dough accomplishes the same thing but in a matter of just a few minutes, doesn't require any investment in equipment or space. They found that the doughs made in this manner were overly soft, extensible and sticky but they discovered if they opened the mixer bowl to allow air to enter and displace some of the carbon dioxide and tumbled (mixed at low speed) the dough for a couple of minutes before discharging it from the mixer it would tighten back up again due to the further oxidation of the proteins making up the gluten and all was good. They now had a dough with additional absorption (more than could otherwise be achieved) that also handled quite well through the make-up equipment (divider, rounder, sheeter and panner). Now, how does all of this relate to the article cited, I have a theory. The first thing to keep in mind is that both pan bread and commercial frozen pizza doughs are mixed to full gluten development while all pizza doughs are mixed to a point of development significantly short of full gluten development as this helps to promote the desired open, porous crumb structure characteristics, the same can be said for French bread doughs too. By putting the salt into the dough right up front the dough is much tighter and tends to get kneaded as the agitator drives through the dough but not stretched over the mixing arms or dough hook as the dough is too tight to do so, whatever the case may be, this results in less of the dough surface being exposed to air (oxygen) so there is less oxidation of the dough and a greater tendency to under mix the dough with regard to gluten development. That same "natural" oxidation condition created by mixing a soft dough would also tend to oxidize the beta carotenoid pigments from the flour (they use oxidation, bleaching as it is referred to as) to remove the beta carotenoid pigments at the flour mill so the end effect is similar.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

[Pete-zza]

Tom,

Thank you again for expanding my knowledge about producing frozen dough. That leads me to ask if any of the techniques you have discussed, such as the late addition of IDY and salt, have application to frozen dough made in a home setting. As background and as a frame of reference, you might take a look at the following post that I composed back in 2005 when I attempted to take everything I had learned up to that time about making frozen dough and to apply that knowledge to your NY style dough formulation:

Reply 272 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=576.msg17428;topicseen#msg17428

Peter

[The Dough Doctor]

Steve;
The addition of IDY to the dough rather than as a dough ingredient is the preferred method to add IDY but I don't recommend this manner for home bakers since you must use a mixer and that mixed must exhibit decent mixing action upon the dough (lately we've seen some cases where a very suitable mixer was used but the dough size was either too small for decent mixing action or the gap between the agitator was too great and mixing action suffered. For this reason I have always recommended for any home baking where a mixer will be used to add the IDY as an ingredient right on top of the flour and where the dough will be mixed by any method without a mixer it should be pre hydrated before addition to the dough water (once hydrated it can safely go into cold water without a problem). When the IDY is added to the dough it should be added at or after the point where the flour has pretty well hydrated, in the case of a pizza dough this normally means about 2-minutes after the oil addition when using the delayed oil addition method of mixing. If the dough is being machine mixed by any other method you just want to be sure that the dough can mix for a minimum of 4-minutes after the IDY is sprinkled onto the dough surface.
In reading your report on the development of the frozen dough the only other thing that I can add is that it is well known that doughs with lower water activity Aw tend to exhibit better yeast survival than like doughs with a higher water activity Aw. In both bread and pizza formulations there are only two ingredients which can be added to reduce water activity in the dough, these are salt and sugar. You can't reduce the dough absorption sufficiently to impact the Aw in the finished crust. Based on this I would speculate that the addition of the honey that you added probably helped with the yeast survival to some extent, that's the good news, the bad news is that if you use either of these ingredients at levels sufficient to impact Aw the flavor of the finished crust will also be impacted. For this reason, whether it be in large scale or small scale freezing of dough I always take the stand that the salt and sugar levels should be maximized without adversely impacting the flavor of the finished crust. Several years before my retirement from AIB I noticed that crusts made from frozen dough that had been over fermented and re-rounded then allowed to rest again until the dough balls could be easily opened into skins always exhibited super flavor characteristics. This lead me to doing a little research for an alternative method for working with frozen dough when making pizza crusts. The method that I came up with (You've probably seen this before) is to fully slack out the dough in the cooler/fridge until the internal temperature of the dough balls is at the same temperature as the cooler, then remove the dough balls from the cooler and place at room temperature (70F ) for 1-hour, then place back into the cooler/fridge for a 24-hour cold fermentation period. What this accomplishes is to bring the dough balls to a constant temperature from which to bench mark the time from (the temperature of the cooler) the 1-hour at room temperature allows the dough to begin warming and the yeast to begin to activate a little, then the 24-hour cold fermentation period serves to develop the flavor and textural properties that we have come to expect in a pizza crust. Think about that for a minute, we just took a frozen dough ball and turned it into something that looks a lot like how we manage and cold fermented dough. Keep in mind that this was done using a commercial frozen dough ball, if you are using a commercial frozen dough puck (yep, they make them that way now) or if you're using your own home made frozen dough pucks you will need to work on the 1-hour out of the cooler aspect. This should be pretty easy to do as all you will need to do is to monitor the internal temperature of the dough puck and once it reaches something in the 60 to 75F range (you'll need to see what works best in your own fridge) put it back in the fridge for 24-hours. For a home made dough handled in this manner you MIGHT be able to hold the dough longer than 24-hours in the cooler (cold fermentation) but when using a commercially made frozen dough I've not had the best success holding it more than 24-hours as it tends to become overly soft, probably due to the use of L-cysteine or glutathione (dead yeast) in the formula to help with the long mixing times associated with frozen doughs.
I saw that you were having a problem getting the dough temperature low enough, that is not uncommon outside of a commercial bakery because they use horizontal mixers with 1,500 to nearly 2,000 pound dough capacity, as I said earlier, these mixers are specifically designed for mixing the super tough/stiff and cold frozen doughs. They have direct expansion jacketed mixing bowls which are used for cooling the dough, in fact if the mixer is stopped while the refrigerated jacket is still turned on or if it is turned off within 2-minutes of stopping the mixer there is a good chance of freezing the dough to the inside of the mixing bowl. Here's a trick that a good friend of mine and I worked on some time ago, use dry ice to help keep the dough cool during mixing. VERY CAREFULLY (repeat that 100 times), USE FULL EYE AND SKIN PROTECTION (repeat that 200 times)  place the piece of dry ice in a folded heavy weight towel and using a hammer break up into small granular pieces and begin adding it to the dough while it is still mixing (BE CAREFUL), you can get a rough idea of how much dry ice you have added by back weighing the original piece, once you know how much you needed to achieve the targeted finished dough temperature you can add that to your dough management procedure for frozen dough. We do this commercially but not with dry ice, we use compressed carbon dioxide, make a horn (like that used on a CO2 fire extinguisher, to blow the CO2 snow into the dough while its mixing. It is interesting to not that for whatever reason we were never able to reduce the dough temperature using CO2 but we were able to very effectively maintain the dough at any cold temperature (within reason) we needed for making frozen dough. This method is in limited commercial use today to help control finished dough temperatures in very hot bakeries where chilled water and a refrigerated bowl are just not sufficient to achieve the targeted finished dough temperature during only very brief periods of time (CO2 is expensive as a processing tool).
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

[The Dough Doctor]

Hey Peter; How do you like your new name "Steve"? Sorry about that, our air conditioning went out this afternoon, it's down to 90F as I write this at 10:44 p.m. I'm sweating, thinking about trying to sleep tonight and tomorrow it will be at the century mark with an abundance of humidity, oh, by the way, a new circuit board won't be available until Thursday or Friday!!!!
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

[norma427]

Tom,

I have been making frozen dough balls at market for my customers.  So far they are working out good, and my customers do like them.  Usually within one or two weeks of making them they are purchased.  The freezer at market doesn't defrost.  Peter helped me learn how to make them.

Norma