Pizza dough failure

13Jan08

Well, if all of the bread turned out perfectly, I would never learn a thing. Usually, I don’t experience catastrophic failure in the bread realm; I can generally make it work through some tricky bit. Not this time, however. I’ll give the recipe and point out the several possible points of failure. I’m pretty sure that the problems were mine, and not Peter Reinhart’s, since he is the expert here. Enjoy.

Pizza Napoletana, from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice

Makes 6 6-oz. pizzas

4 1/2 c. unbleached high-gluten, bread, or all-purpose flour, chilled

1 3/4 tsp. salt

1 tsp. instant yeast

1/4 c. olive or vegetable oil (optional)

1 3/4 c. ice-cold water

Stir together the flour, salt, and instant yeast in the bowl of a mixer. Mix in the water and optional oil with the paddle attachment until the flour is absorbed. Switch to the dough hook and mix on medium speed for 5-7 minutes, or as long as it takes to create a smooth, sticky dough. The dough should clear the sides of the bowl but stick to the bottom. If the dough sticks to the sides, sprinkle in some flour until it clears the sides. If it’s not sticking to the bottom, dribble in a tsp. or two of cold water. The finished dough will be springy, elastic and sticky, not just tacky.

Sprinkle flour on the counter and transfer the dough to the counter. Prep a sheet pan by lining it with parchment and misting the parchment with oil. Using a metal dough scraper, cut the dough into six equal pieces. Sprinkle flour over the dough, and, with dry and floured hands, round each piece into a ball. Transfer the dough balls to the pan, mist them with oil, and slip the pan into a food-grade plastic bag.

Put the pan into the refrigerator overnight to rest the dough (or up to three days). You can also freeze the dough balls: dip them in oil and place each one in a separate zippered plastic bag. Keeps up to three months, and move the dough to the fridge the day before you want to use them.

On the day you plan to make the pizza, remove dough balls from refrigerator two hours before making the pizza. Dust the counter with flour, then mist the flour with spray oil. Place the dough on the counter, sprinkle with flour, and dust your hands with flour. Gently press the dough into 1/2″ thick disks, about 5″ in diameter. Sprinkle the dough again with flour, mist with oil, and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Let rest for two hours.

At least 45 min. before making the pizza, place a baking stone in the oven and preheat the oven as hot as possible (usually 550° in home ovens, up to 800° if possible). If you do not have a baking stone, use the back of a sheet pan, but do not preheat.

Generously dust a peel or the back of the sheet pan with semolina flour or cornmeal. Make the pizzas one at a time. Dip your hands in flour (including the backs and knuckles) and life one piece of dough by gently getting under it with the pastry scraper. Very gently lay the dough across the backs of your fists and gently stretch it by bouncing the dough in a circular motion on your hands, carefully giving it a little stretch with each bounce. If the dough sticks, put it down on the floured counter, re-flour your hands, and continue to shape it. Once the dough has expanded outward, move to a full toss (as shown on page 208). If you have trouble tossing the dough, or if it keeps springing back, let it rest for 5-20 minutes so the gluten can relax, and try again.

When the dough is stretched to your satisfaction (about 9-12″ in diameter), lay it on the peel or pan, making sure there is enough semolina or cornmeal to allow it to slide. Lightly top it with sauce and then with your other toppings (less is more).

Slide the topped pizza onto the stone (or bake directly on the sheet pan) and close the door. Wait two minutes, then take a peek. If it needs to be rotated to bake evenly, do so. The pizza should take 5-8 minutes to bake. If the top gets done before the bottom, you will need to move the stone to a lower level in the oven before the next round. If the bottom crisps before the cheese has melted, move the stone up.

Remove the pizza from the oven and transfer to a cutting board. Wait 3-5 minutes before slicing and serving, to let the cheese set.

Sounds great, right? Difficult, maybe, but with plenty of explanation to ease you over the rough patches, although no power in the ‘verse will get me to throw pizza dough in the air when I’ve spent a day and valuable fridge space to get it to that point. I have enough trouble with volleyball, let alone something I care about.

So I made a half recipe, since I don’t have space in my freezer for lots of individually wrapped dough balls. In the long-ish pre-recipe commentary, there seemed to be a great deal of anxiety about how strong this dough was, and how well it would resist stretching. Knowing that high-gluten or bread flour would only make things worse, I chose to use the all-purpose flour. And, again, there seemed to be anxiety about not letting the dough get too dry (“sticky, not tacky”), so I kept it on the wet side. Here is how it looked in the mixer:

Okay, so maybe a little bit wet, but I figured that would be better than too dry, right? It was clearing the sides. After cutting and refrigerating, it looked like this:

Dough had not really risen at all, but I was able to convince myself that it was because it sat under the cooling element all night. At this point, I knew something had gone terribly wrong– the texture was all wrong, and I mentally prepared myself for a delicious dinner of wild mushroom pasta rather than wild mushroom pizza. Or, in the case of complete and utter failure, the kind that would flatten me spiritually and emotionally, I could always have some chana masala and naan delivered.

When I got it to the counter, dough rebound was not an issue. In fact, I could not keep it from spreading very thin.

This was just the “set on the counter and pat into a ½” disk” stage, not even getting to the stretching stage. And still, no rise. I began boiling pasta water.

Once I topped the thing (I was perhaps too stubborn at this point), I was not able to slide it off the peel and onto the stone. Toppings began to spill onto the stone, smoke began to billow, and my fluent cursing could be heard in the next apartment. I took a deep breath, moved the remaining toppings to a pan, and, after clearing the burning food from the stone, decided to try baking just the dough. I was still curious about what came next.

What came next was, essentially, a matzoh with mushroom and herb shreds on top. Very flat, not much flavor, but still worth eating. Certainly not ideal, or even particularly desired, but, well, edible.

So what went wrong here? First, halving the recipe may have caused some of the trouble. Sometimes recipes just don’t scale well. Also, I weighed my ingredients for the first time (new food scale! Hurray!). Not sure if this was a factor, but maybe. I’m pretty sure that all-purpose flour is probably not quite right for this recipe, despite assurances that it would be just fine– I’ll use bread flour next time. And I’m pretty sure that the yeast failed, since rising did not occur. Too much contact with the salt (salt kills yeast)? Not sure what happened there. And finally, I think I was a little freaked out by all of the tension over rebounding dough and let it remain too wet to make a decent bread. I should know better, but it just went badly this time around.

Anyway, the mushroom cracker/matzoh was still fun to eat, and I did not lapse into a deep funk over the experience, although there was much apologizing to my ever-patient partner (and blog photographer!), who also seemed to like it. End result? If the dough feels really wrong, it probably is.

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