Pizza Today - February 2025 - 39

BAKING: Let's face it, there is no
better crust to embrace an extremely hot
oven than a thin crust. But you don't
have to do a 1100 F, coal-fi red bake to
get a crisp crust. I've found that a good
500-600 F makes a wonderful crust
when your dough skin is properly unhydrated,
cured, aged, and docked. In a
conveyor oven, the use of a pizza screen
is a must because a pan captures too
much steam between the crust and steel.
Thin-Crust Pizza Dough
Here is a thin-crust pizza recipe that
incorporates more oil and cornmeal
into the mix with a mixable 50 percent
hydration. It calls for a direct mix and
no bulk fermentation and getting it into
the refrigerator fast is very important to
increase fl avor.
270 grams flour (2 ¼ cups)
135 grams cold water (½ cup)
40 grams oil (1/3 cup)
7 grams salt (1 tablespoon)
5 grams cornmeal (¾-1 tablespoon)
1 gram yeast (1/3 teaspoon)
Add the flour, cornmeal, yeast, salt
and oil into the mixer and mix on high.
When the oil has incorporated into the
flour, slowly add the water. You will have
to stop the mixer several times to bring
the dough together with your hands, and
it will probably not adhere into a cohesive
dough ball. This process may take
up to 12 minutes mixing time.
Bring the dough mass out onto the
table and push together with your hands.
You will end up with a 500-gram dough
ball.
Slice this dough ball in half to make
two 250-gram dough balls.
Ball them up and place on an oiled
tray. Place in the walk-in refrigerator for
up to five days and nothing less than 3
days. This will build the character the
thin crust will need.
On the sixth day, take the dough balls
and sheet them on the lowest setting on
your sheeter. If you are hand rolling, this
JUNE 2017 / PIZZATODAY.COM / 39
will take a long time, but both should be
approximately rolled out into a 15.5-16.5inch
round. Use plenty of flour during
this rolling and in between sheeting rolls.
Place a 14-inch pizza screen on top
On Thins
and Needles
of the sheeted dough and using a pizza
cutter, cut the residual dough off the
edges. This will be approximately 6.5
grams, which will only account for 2 % of
the dough.
Again, flour the dough skin and place
on a pizza liner or parchment paper.
(Note: cheap wax paper will absorb
hydration and not be a good vehicle to
separate skins.)
Place the second dough skin partially
on top of the first. This will facilitate the
dry air to hit as much of both skins as
possible.
Let these pizza skins sit on the tray for
2 days before coming again to sprinkle
flour on them and rotate.
On the fifth day, take the skins from
the tray, dock them and sauce and
cheese them.
Bake the pizzas in a 550 oven for only
6 to 8 minutes for a crispy, thin crust.
JOHN GUTEKANST owns
Avalanche Pizza in Athens, Ohio.
The sordid history of thin crusts
goes back to 522 AD, when Darius
the Great's nervous soldiers were
said to bake thin, flattened bread
on their shields with cheese and
dates the day before battle. The
Berbers in Tunisia mixed wheat,
flour, water, and oil to create a very
thin pastry called Borek which
was the beginning of unleavened
Bric dough used by many modern
chefs as a flatbread for items like
famous French Brick a l'oeuf, and
Daniel Boulud's Wild Mushroom
Tarte Flambee'. In 1925, New
Haven style pizza originated by
Frank Pepe and originally sold
from a cart were called " Tomato
pies. " Now this style is baked in
coal-fired ovens and finishes with
a wonderful crunchy char.
http://www.PIZZATODAY.COM
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