My pizza road

[Lukas]

Hello,

For several months I have been trying to make a delicious pizza. I tried a dozen recipes until I found this forum
Made some small dough balls to test (will bake it tonight)
Hopefully my pizzas will get better and better.


Question, how can I make dough bottom more crispy?
 
Usually I do this:
I take out the stone out of the oven (300^oC)  and put stretched dough on it and put the toppings. This way bottom starts baking immediately.  - is this a normal practice or not?

Yesterday I putted topped pizza in the oven with pizza peel --> you can see the bottom is little bit under-cooked..


1 pizza was with chicken and had nice ring around it.. second one was a little bit oily from the overload of the toppings..

Divella Farina 00 flour (10.2 g. of protein)  - ^{is this a good choice for home oven baking?}
64% hydration
2% salt
0.4% bakers yeast - ^{not to much?}

5h @ ~20^oC/68F  + [email protected] ~5^oC/41F + 1h RT before baking.

[Minolta Rokkor]

The normal procedure is to build the pizza on the peel, and launch the pizza on the stone, with the stone in oven. You loose a ton of heat pulling it out.

For crispier crust, add 2% sugar and 2% oil, that should help.

[Pete-zza]

As it so happens, another member asked me the same question about crispiness in an email this morning, and just minutes ago I sent this reply to him:

Most often a high hydration dough can lead to a crispier bottom crust. Tom Lehmann refers to the phenomenon as "Physics 101", which I have referred to and discussed in these posts:

Reply 980 at https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=3944.msg70562#msg70562, and

Reply 8 at https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=29378.msg294901#msg294901

It is also possible to increase the crispiness of the bottom crust by baking the pizza short of the total bake time, let the pizza cool a bit, and then finish the bake. This method was described by a member at Reply 11 at https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=1359.msg12978#msg12978.

Sometimes, using a lower than normal bake temperature and a greater than normal bake time can lead to a crispier bottom crust but the hydration has to be right. Also, some flours may be better than others. For example, you might have a hard time getting a crispy crust if the flour is low in protein, such as cake flour or pastry flour. A bread flour or high gluten flour might be better but, again, the hydration value has to be right. Usually one has to find the right balance between the flour, its hydration, the bake temperature and the bake time. You also don't want to roll the skin out by a machine, which compresses the skin and makes it dense and lets the bottom heat pass through the skin too fast. You want porosity

Peter

[Lukas]

Hi guys,

Thanks for info, will definitely try these tips.

Friday pizza was with 2% sugar.
Bottom is much better.

Had a lot of troubles sliding pizza on to the stone, due to the fact I built pizza on the peel. 
Lesson learned...

[Lukas]

Saturday pizza

62% hydration
3% oil
2% salt
1% sugar
0.7% yeast

Tried this:
Water + sugar + yeast   to dry ingredients.
Mixed everything and waited ~2 mins allowing flour to hydrate.
Then kneaded the dough around 10 minutes and allowed to rest for around 20 mins (covered with wet cloth)
After this I divided into balls and left in the fridge for 30h (5^oC)

Also.. I skipped mozzarella cheese and added it a little bit later (I added it in the middle of baking)


Any comments/suggestions?