Pizza Dough for an Outdoor Pizza Oven Recipe

I’ve been making pizza for almost 40 years, and in spite of everything that point I believed I had my dough formulation dialed-in. Greater than a decade in the past I developed a recipe for a New York-style pizza dough for Cook’s Illustrated magazine, which was a giant hit and served because the jumping-off level for dozens of subsequent pizza and flatbread recipes. Whereas most of my pizza recipes are optimized to be used in dwelling ovens that may’t exceed 550°F, I’ve baked them frequently in blazing scorching wood-fired ovens, the place they’ve labored splendidly. That all the time made sense to me since, typically talking, with all else being equal, the warmer and quicker you cook dinner a flatbread, the higher it comes out, because the inside stays moist and tender whereas the outside will get properly browned and charred.

Which is why I used to be stumped after I began baking pies in an Ooni Koda tabletop out of doors fuel oven—which simply achieves wood-fired-oven temperatures of 800-900˚F—and so they stored burning earlier than the toppings and underside have been absolutely baked. I don’t imply that they charred, thoughts you. Charring—or leoparding, because the constellation of irregular dark-brown spots on the rim of a well-made pie are generally referred to—is an effective factor, including welcome Maillard and caramelization taste to the crust. What I am speaking about is extra like incineration, the place the rim could be solidly black and unpleasantly bitter in giant swathes, oftentimes as a result of they actually caught on fireplace because the pie baked.

At first I assumed that it was person error on my half, or a flaw in how my explicit oven labored. However then I remembered all the opposite individuals making great, not-burned pies in comparable tabletop ovens on my Instagram feed. Which made me surprise: Why would my doughs bake fantastically in bigger wood-fired ovens however burn in compact tabletop ones like my Ooni after they each heated to equivalent temperatures?

It didn’t take lengthy to comprehend that the distinction got here all the way down to just one factor: dimension. In a wood-fired oven, the hearth is nestled in a single nook of a large, tall area, leaving a great deal of room for the pies to cook dinner at a secure distance from it. In a tabletop oven, the pizza sits simply inches from the hearth, which suggests it is subjected to a ton of intense warmth, with no place to go to flee from it.

Eradicate These Elements for Excessive-Temperature Baking

To determine what I used to be doing incorrect, I made a decision to succeed in out to a few of these tabletop pizza oven consultants for recommendation. If they may make it work, then I wanted to seek out out why straight from the supply. Nearly to a one, they informed me this: Keep away from including something to the dough past the 4 elementary components of any bread—flour, water, salt, and yeast—or the pies will burn.

Then it was apparent: That New York-style pizza dough recipe I discussed above, the one which had launched numerous others, was the place I’d first gone astray. That’s as a result of along with flour, water, salt, and yeast, it comprises just a few further elements: sugar, oil, and—in later iterations and in a number of spin-off recipes—one thing referred to as diastatic malt powder. 

All three of those elements are important elements in a pizza dough that’s meant to be cooked at a a lot decrease temperature in a house oven, the place pizza takes awhile—8 to 12 minutes or so—to brown, as a result of: 

• Sugar promotes browning, because it’s sugars—added or naturally discovered within the dough’s flour—that caramelize within the warmth of the oven.
• Diastatic malt is an enzyme that converts the starches in flour to sugar, and is usually added to doughs to make sure that there may be all the time sufficient sugar within the crust for good browning.
• Oil serves to maintain the completed pizza tender, because it lubricates the gluten community to maintain it supple, even after a comparatively lengthy bake. 

However the mixture of all three of these items is dangerous information when the pies cook dinner in simply 2 minutes: Sugar and diastatic malt each present an excessive amount of “meals” for caramelization, and oil—along with its impact on tenderization—promotes warmth switch from the oven to the pie, rushing up browning once more.

I ran a collection of checks to verify my suspicion. I made doughs with and with out every of those elements, and in each case, the pies containing the “further” components have been vulnerable to burning earlier than the toppings and/or underside have been absolutely cooked. (I additionally timed how lengthy it took every pie to cross the road between charred and burned, and the one one which lasted longer than 2 minutes was the one with out all of the add-ins.) 

The 4 Elementary Elements

As soon as I ditched these amendments to my system, the remainder was straightforward, particularly since there have been solely 4 elements to think about, and since the rest of my pizza dough chops have been stable:

Flour: I landed on a medium-high protein flour right here, one like King Arthur all-purpose—with about 12% protein—as a substitute of bread flours, that are nearer to 13%. The protein share determines the quantity of gluten that forms in a dough and thus the feel of the completed pizza. That is as a result of with out oil to tenderize the dough, high-protein bread flour produces a pizza that is a bit robust. Lowering the protein barely helped to revive the misplaced tenderness. (That stated, if you happen to don’t have entry to King Arthur all-purpose, bread flour is the subsequent neatest thing.) 

Water: The proportion of water in a dough additionally has a profound impact upon the ultimate texture of the pie, since water, like oil, additionally lubricates gluten. So extra water is usually higher if you need a young, not-tough dough. However an excessive amount of water could make a dough sticky and hard-to-handle, so there is a restrict, particularly if you happen to’re making an attempt to create a system that is straightforward for rookies and consultants alike. I ended up with a 67% hydration dough (or 67g of water for each 100g of flour), compromise between ease of dealing with and most tenderness. One be aware: I really choose 70% hydration myself, although that dough is usually a contact arduous to deal with. I provide directions within the notes under if you wish to enhance the hydration when you’re snug with this dough.

Yeast: Nearly all of my pizza doughs are cold-fermented, that means they spend at the very least just a few days within the fridge earlier than use (extra on why under). Due to this I exploit a tiny quantity of yeast—0.4%, or simply 1/2 teaspoon for 3 to 4 pizzas price—to keep away from runaway fermentation. 

Salt: Most breads, pizza included, include between 1.5 to 2.5% salt; I like a excessive share of salt in my pizza doughs—2.2% on this case—because it ensures the crust has the strong taste it wants to face as much as toppings which are (usually) intensely flavored . 

As for the mechanics of dough mixing, kneading, and the preliminary fermentation, it’s all fairly simple. You utilize a meals processor to shortly combine the dough, minus the salt, and then you definately let it relaxation for 20 minutes. This step, often called an autolyse, helps passively develop gluten in order that the dough doesn’t overheat throughout machine kneading. Then you definitely add the salt and knead the dough within the machine till it’s well-developed, which takes about 30 seconds. 

After that, you place the dough in a bowl and permit it to proof at room temperature till it is puffy, which takes about an hour or two, which provides fermentation a jumpstart earlier than you divide the dough, form it into balls, and transfer the balls into the fridge. 

The Advantages of Chilly Fermentation

Chilly fermentation is a elementary approach for dough-making for just a few key causes:

Taste: Chilly fermentation develops a complexity of taste within the dough {that a} quick fermentation cannot, because of the types of flavorful compounds that type solely when a dough proofs at low temperatures. (At increased temperatures, these compounds get transformed absolutely to carbon dioxide, the fuel that provides bread carry.) 

Straightforward Stretching: This sluggish fermentation provides the dough time to loosen up, which makes it straightforward to stretch out into a pleasant spherical disk with out the dough preventing again. Not solely does this assist enhance the look of your pies, it retains them tender, as a result of an overworked dough yields a tricky, chewy pizza. 

Comfort: Whereas this technique does require superior planning, you may make pizza anytime inside a 3-day window as soon as the doughs are within the fridge, solely an hour or two after you pull them out. 

The recipe makes 4 225-gram dough balls—sized to make 10-inch pies, which I believe are a great diameter for a smaller (12-inch) oven—or three 300-gram dough balls, sized to make 12-inch pies in a bigger (16-inch) oven. 

I strongly suggest that you just cold-proof the dough in particular person containers—just like the 7-inch plastic takeout container pictured above—reasonably than side-by-side on a rimmed baking sheet. This helps to stop the dough balls from kissing each other, which can make them arduous to separate with out tearing, nevertheless it additionally means you possibly can deal with every ball as gently as attainable, which can aid you to keep away from overworking the dough earlier than you form it.

You need to use this dough to make any form of topped pizza you need, however I’ve additionally developed 4 recipes that particularly name for this dough, which you’ll find on the hyperlinks under: