Hello All,
I have been facing a challenge for a while now that I think takes an advance level of ingredient knowledge to help with.
I make NY style pizza and have a basic ingreident composure of 57% water, Pillsbury Balancer Hi Gluten, oil, salt, sugar, instant dry yeast. When hand stretching, I would make the dough and let it sit in the walk-in box overnight to be used the next day.
I introduced a heated press (Cuppone Pizzaform) and noticed that the pizza crust was getting tough/chewy 10-15min after bake. After many trials, I was able to mitigate this by lowering the yeast and keeping in the walk-in box for 2 days instead of 1. Making the fermentation period 48 hours has tremendously helped this process.
Now I am getting into the business of wholesale pizza (served hot and ready to eat) to schools. I am ramping up close to 7k pies a week next year and growing. due to volume, I need to purchase higher volume equipment and make the process more efficient.
I have purchased an AM MFG pizza production press that can press 600 16" pizzas per hour. The owner stated that, to his knowledge, none of his clients do a refrigerated ferment period. They do MIXING > DIVIDE & ROUNDING > REST APPROX 1 HOUR > HEATED PRESS.
I understand the yeast needs to be increased for this to work, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how this can be accomplished and resulting in a NY style pizza crust.
I am very unfamiliar other then online research with conditioners, softeners, etc. I have recently been reading up on protease enzymes and believe this may be a start in the right direction.
Does anyone else have experience with heated presses and mitigating this toughness?
