Pizza Blog from pizzatherapy.com

Tim Huff knows his pizza flour. As a Master Baker and Educator for General Mills , he teaches a Pizza Crust Boot Camp. This is put on for free for all of the professional pizza makers. He shows pizza makers how to get the best out of their flour. I had an opportunity to talk dough with Tim and he revealed the biggest pizza dough hydration secret I had ever heard. He explains many pizza makers make the a huge mistake in trying to mix water, dry ingredients and oil at the same time. If you do use oil in your dough recipe, make sure you mix the dry ingredients and water first.  allow the dough enough time to hydrate for about a minute or so. Then add your oil to the pizza dough. Oil and water do not mix. The oil will compete with the water to hydrate the dough and you will get a very inconsistent dough. The secret is  to allow the water to hydrate the dough before you put in the oil. Here is a video that explains everything: Honestly when I make my dough, I do not...

Mitch writes: Hello Albert. I'd like to say thank you for hosting a great website and providing TONS of useful information. (Here's the link: Pizza Therapy ) I am at sea at the moment, but as soon as I return home, I'll be giving your dough a try. The dough recipe that I have been using is this: 2 cups flour (either high gluten or Caputo "00") 3/4 cup warm water 1 package active yeast 2 tsp sugar 1/8 tsp salt 2 tbsp olive oil I would also add some KAF Pizza dough flavor or grated Parmesan cheese. The most frequent problem I would have is the dough would just not rise. I tried everything. 105-110 deg. water by thermometer. Using more sugar, adding all the dry ingredients to the flour first. It was maddening. Finally, I stumbled on the solution to my problem in a book called "The Bread Builders." It was the salt. The salt retards/controls the action of the yeast. Well too much salt stops the yeast completely. Adding the pizza dough...

I recently got a copy of a great video tutorial on how to make pizza created by Bev Collins . It's called "Secret's Inside the Pizzeria". It was a simple guide with easy to understand tips about making pizza. I decided to call up Bev and see if I could pull any more pizza secrets out of her. I recorded the entire call. It was a great pizza conversation. We covered a lot of information. She is an interesting pizzaiolo. First she never had pizza until she was 16. Here first pizza was out of a pizza kit. (Think Apian Way and Chef Boy Ardee...) But somehow she persisted. She studied, she learned. She was tenacious. She didn't give up. Now she makes pizza like a master. Some of the things we discussed were: pizza tools you need the best type of flour to use her take on other pizza ingredients the fact that you can have great ingredients but still not make great pizza It's all about all in the technique. Excellent step by step directions to make dough Some inside...