Pizza dough resting time
This may be a silly question but - I'm planning to double or triple Milk Street's pizza dough recipe (https://www.177milkstreet.com/recipes/pizza-dough). The recipe instructs to bring the dough up to temperature by putting the dough in small bowls within other bowls with warm water. The number of bowls in action could quickly get completely silly.
If I just take the dough out of the refrigerator a bit earlier - will that be fine? I hate to miss some critical step.
Thanks!
Comments
Hi Mitchell - Thanks for your question! First, keep in mind that, as it's written, the recipe yields (4 )12-inch pizzas so you would be looking at making 8-12 pizzas at once if you were doubling or tripling the recipe. That's a lot of pizza! :-) If you want to double or triple the recipe to freeze the dough you would only have to do the warming step for as many pizzas as you would be cooking at one time. Warming the dough at room temperature likely will not work here. That is because, in most homes, room temperature is not more than 70 degrees so the dough would never reach the 75 degrees that is required in the recipe. Since the temperature is so critical here I would be concerned it would get too hot if you tried to warm an oven and create a "proofing box" for the dough as an alternative. Therefore, warming the dough in warm water is, in fact, a critical step. This dough is so great and easy to work with, though, I think it's well worth the effort! Best, Lynn C.
Thanks! We got an accessory for our kamado grill that turns it into a pizza oven and we were having a pizza party to celebrate. I ended up only doubling the recipe - and still had more dough than I needed :-) I did put the dough in bowls but I made larger water baths with roasting pans to keep it to only a little crazy.
It worked perfectly. Best pizza dough I've ever made. Lots of superlatives about the pies from our guests as well.
Thanks!
Can you put the ziplock bags with the refrigerated dough directly in the bowl of warm water ?
Hi Zachary - I spoke with the recipe developer, Diane Unger, and she says "no." That's because the dough will stick in the bag as it warms in the water. You can either use a plastic deli-style container to ferment and warm the dough - it won't stick in the deli container in the same way - or simply transfer the dough to a bowl before warming. Good luck!
When I was working with a dozen or so pies, I did put the ziplock bags directly in the warm water and used my sous vide container and immersion circulator to keep the water at the desired temperature. It worked - however, Lynn and Diane are right that the result is much better when using a container rather than a bag. The dough was easier to work with, had better expansion, etc. We couldn't tell if there was a taste difference. For smaller quantities of 1-4 pies, following the recipe as written has given me the best results.
Thanks for your insights, Mitchell!