Secrets From Inside The Pizzeria

Plastic bags work well when you have to fit the dough into small spaces in the refrigerator, but this storage method often results in misshapen doughs, which are harder to make round. Also, if the dough is not stiff enough, it will tend to pancake and lose gasses in a bag. So I prefer to put doughs into containers with straight sides for better gas retention – it is also easier to tell when the doughs have risen to double in size.
Dough – It’s in the Flour and Technique
The New York thin crust pizza is made from a lean dough formulation – which means it has very little except water, yeast, salt, and flour. The dough formula looks similar to a French loaf formula.
Basic Lean Dough Formulation for 16-inch Pizza
1/4 -1/2 teaspoon dry yeast
1 cup water
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon oil
Flour – about 3 to 3 1/2 cups to make a stiff dough
You may look at the recipe and think it doesn’t look much different from a hundred others you’ve seen. Ah, but ... it is the flour and technique that lift it to the sublime!
Tom Monaghan, former owner of Domino’s Pizza, always talked about Domino’s secret sauce. I found that curious, until one day he slyly said to me, “Bev, the secret is not the sauce; it’s the dough.” Yes, anybody can duplicate a basic dough, and recipes are a dime a dozen.
A big change from bread making you will see in the thin crust pizza method describe in this book is that the dough is refrigerated at least 2 days before using.

The rice flour is just for dusting the dough ball when ready to use.

I am sorry Julie, the book says it is no good to freeze this dough. It does say it last in the frig up to a week or so. Have not try that yet. Again the biggest factor is the right flour.

To make New York style pizza, choose the hard spring wheat. This wheat will have protein ranging 14% and above as compared to bread flour around 12-13% and all purpose flours about 10-11% which are good for cakes and cookies. Spring wheat is grown mostly in Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana, and into Canada.

Also do not use a rolling pin. Just form your pizza out by hand, and use rice flour for dusting when forming out your shap, the rice flour is supposed to make it more crispy. Good Luck

If you have any more questions just email me.

Mike