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Pressed, Sheeted, or
Hand-Tossed:
All Doughs are not created
equal...
By Tom Lehmann -
The Dough Doctor

There seems to be a lot
of confusion out there in pizza land over the use of
dough forming equipment and procedures.

It seems that an awful lot of
people are of the opinion that you can use whatever
forming method you want to use, or that suits your
needs, and produce the crust characteristics that you
want in your finished pizza. Nothing could be further
from the truth. It seems that each and every crust
forming method or procedure imparts its own unique
characteristics to the dough, which in turn, affects the
finished crust characteristics.

Many times I have used the
example of standing between a pair of railroad tracks
and looking down the tracks into the distance. What you
appear to see is the tracks coming together, much in the
same way as we might view the use of a sheeter and a
dough press to form our dough. They appear to produce
the same product. But, like the railroad tracks, when
you get to the spot where you thought the tracks
converged, they are still separated. The finished crusts
from the different forming methods are not alike as they
had originally appeared to be. This is not the result of
magic, or dough formulation, but it is the result of the
unique properties imparted to the dough as a result of
the forming method itself. Each and every forming method
imparts its own unique characteristics to the dough,
none is any better or worse than the other, but they're
all different, and that's what we've got to
remember.

When selecting a forming
method to use, you've got to ask yourself what
characteristics do you want in the finished crust? Then,
you can look at the different forming methods and choose
the one that will come closest to providing those
characteristics.

I am providing below, a list
of the different forming methods along with the general
characteristics that each method imparts or contributes
to the finished crust. By matching the sought after
characteristics to those provided, you should be able to
make a well-informed selection of the type of forming
method best suited to making your particular
crust.

Sheeting/Sheet and
Die Cut:

This forming method
involves the use of a dough sheeter to form dough balls
into flat dough pieces for use as pizza crusts. It may
also involve the

use of large dough sheeters
for producing an endless ribbon of dough from which
individual pizza skins are cut out using special
circular cutting dies. This forming method generally
produces a crust with thick, heavy internal cell wells.
This is created by the way the dough passes through the
sheeting roll(s), disrupting the gas cells, and
degassing the dough along the way. If this dough is to
be used to create an open cellular structure, it must be
allowed to proof (rise) for a period of time (20 to 70
minutes) between the forming and baking stages. As the
dough passes through the sheeting roll(s) it receives
additional work, much like additional mixing. This work
has a tendency to further toughen the dough through
gluten development, which can result in unwanted
snap-back, or dough shrinkage after forming. This may
need to be addressed through the use of certain
additives containing dough-relaxing materials such as
L-cysteine, glutathoine, deodorized vegetable powder, or
sodium metebisulfite. If one of these materials is not
used, the formed dough piece may need to be set aside
for 10 or 15 minutes, allowing it to relax a bit, and
then passed through the sheeter again to bring the
shell/skin out to full diameter.

One type of crust comes to
mind when I think about sheeting. This is the old,
cracker-type crust. You know which one I mean, this is
the one where you will have a lap of crumbs after eating
your "crispy" pizza. I was raised in Chicago, and during
my youth, this was the predominant type of pizza made
there. You can still find it there, but you've got to
look for it. It just isn't everyplace like it used to
be. The thing about this type of crust is that it's made
from a low water absorption dough with a high protein
(typical pizza) flour. The resulting dough is extremely
tough and difficult to shape. Add to this, the fact that
the dough is usually formed very thin, and then folded
once or twice, and reformed again. This makes for a very
tough and difficult dough to form by any other method,
except for sheeting.

Sheeted doughs are created to
be flat across their entire surface. With this in mind,
the finished crusts also tend to be somewhat flat,
lacking a high, rolled, or raised edge unless it has
been mechanically formed into the dough piece. In many
cases, sheeted crusts exhibit a uniformly flat, poker
chip appearance unless allowed to proof for a short time
after forming.

In the world of large,
wholesale production, there is a method of producing
pizza crusts by the sheet and die cut procedure that
does not create these characteristics. This method is
commonly known as the "stress free" production method.
By this method, large blocks of dough are deposited onto
the forming line, and very gently reduced in thickness
by means duplicating hand pressing and rolling of the
dough. When formed on this type of equipment, the pizza
crusts will exhibit a mix of the physical properties
between cold pressed and hand made procedures discussed
below.

Cold
Pressed

Cold pressing of the dough
requires that the dough itself be very soft and
"flowable". This is achieved through the use of high
water absorption, high finished dough temperatures (90û
to 100ûF), and generally the use of reducing agents such
as L-cysteine, glutathione, deodorized vegetable powder,
or sodium metabisulfite. Because the dough is so soft at
the time that it is pressed or formed, there is little
degassing of the dough. This results in finished crust
characteristics such as a bread like internal crumb
structure, very uniform gas cells distributed throughout
the entire crust give the crust a very uniform internal
appearance.

Due to the soft nature of the
dough, it is almost impossible to achieve any type of
well-defined raised edge to the pizza crust when using
this forming method. Also, because of the soft dough
characteristics, it must be pressed out upon a pan or
baking tray. These pans/trays are characterized with a
series of raised, circular ridges on the bottom. These
ridges help to grip the dough after pressing, reducing
the amount of snap-back. Because the dough must be
pressed out and baked on the same pan, that pan is also
coated with oil to facilitate release of the baked
crust. This oil on the pan actually gives the crust a
unique fried bottom characteristic that is impossible to
achieve by any other forming method where the dough is
not baked in a pan or tray.

Cold pressing is a very
popular forming method for focaccia bread, where the
uniform, round cell structure is desirable, and the soft
dough contributes to a uniformly flat cross section,
much like that of a giant hockey puck. In almost all
cases where the cold press is used, the dough is pressed
twice to ensure that it is the full diameter of the pan.
It is then allowed to proof (rise) for anything from 20
to 60 minutes to achieve the desired crust
height/thickness.

Hot
Pressed

Hot pressing on the other
hand, utilizes a dough press that has a heated head and
in some cases also a heated bottom plate. The
temperature range that the press operates at is
generally in the range of 300û to 400ûF. Dwell times
(the time that the dough is held under pressure) can run
from six to 12 seconds. Some of the presses even have an
adjustment allowing you to vary the pressing force
applied to the dough, typically, a force of 800 to 1200
PSI is used for pressing most crusts.

One of the nifty features of
the hot press is that some presses allow you to form the
dough with a very well defined raised edge. Because the
dough is exposed to the heat of the press head, this
raised edge is locked into the crust by the development
of a dry, leathery skin. I'm on record as referring to
this as an "exoskeleton" of the pizza crust before
baking. This dry surface also allows the dough to be
handled very easily after pressing without the need of a
pan or tray. Because only the outer surface of the dough
piece is heated by the press surface, the formed dough
piece can still be set aside and allowed to proof (rise)
if desired. If you want to make an oven-rising type of
pizza with a raised edge, this is the preferred method
of dough forming.

Some hot presses have only
the top head of the press heated. Dough formed with this
type of press will have to be put onto a tray or pan
after pressing since the bottom of the dough piece is
still raw and somewhat sticky. One great advantage of
this type of press is that dough for thick crust pizza
can be pressed directly into the pan. The heat from the
head will pre-heat the dough slightly, to help speed up
the final proofing (rising) of the dough before
baking.

Formulas for hot pressed
doughs will usually contain some reducing agent similar
to the cold pressed doughs, but the desired dough
temperature of the hot pressed dough is like that of a
regular pizza dough, in the range of 80û to
90ûF.

The finished crust
characteristics imparted by hot pressing include an
open, somewhat coarse internal cell structure that many
people find to be very desirable. This cell structure,
while open and coarse, is also quite uniform throughout
the crust which, tends to result in more uniform baking
characteristics for the finished crust/pizza. When a
press with both a heated top and bottom is used, the
resulting dry skin (exoskeleton) formed on the dough
piece, imparts a unique crispiness to the surface of the
baked crust that cannot be achieved by any other forming
method. This dry skin also helps to control the browning
of the crust, allowing the crust to be baked longer, or
at a slightly higher temperature to develop a crispier
texture. This aspect is especially beneficial with those
formulas containing higher amounts of sugar where crust
browning takes place so fast that a sufficiently thick
crust cannot be formed and the baked crust loses its
crispiness soon after the pizza is removed from the
oven.

Hand
Formed

Crusts that are formed by
hand receive the least amount of work, or punishment of
any of the forming methods. While it may not always seem
so, this is the most gentle forming method there is.
Very little gas is expelled from the dough during the
forming process, and very little work is put into the
dough, resulting in less shrinkage or snap back in the
formed crust. The necessary soft dough characteristics
for hand forming are achieved through water absorption.
Higher absorption levels provide the softer, more
extensible dough characteristics necessary for hand
forming. Occasionally, water alone may not be
sufficient, so a small amount of a dough relaxer such as
L-cysteine (PZ-44) might be called for.

Hand tossing of the dough
isn't just for showmanship, or to give your customers
something to watch while their pizza is being made. It
serves a very functional purpose. The spinning action of
the dough helps to create the desired round, circular
shape, and the air flow over the dough surface helps to
dry the dough for improved handling properties (ever try
to toss a sticky dough? It ain't a pretty sight). That
same drying of the dough also forms a bit of a skin on
the surface of the dough, which helps to achieve a
crispier crust characteristic.

The main characterizing
features of a hand formed crust are a light, "airy"
texture due to the fact that the dough was not degassed
to a great extent during the forming process. The crust
will have a relatively tender eating characteristic due
to the gentle stretching of the dough during forming.
The internal crumb structure will be characterized by
relatively large holes scattered throughout the crumb.
Overall, the crumb will be very non-uniform. This
non-uniformity is at least partially responsible for the
unique crispiness and flavor associated with hand formed
crusts. The outer edge of hand formed crusts will almost
always be lighter, and higher than that of crusts formed
by any other method, again, this is the result of the
dough not being degassed, or the gas not being
redistributed, during the forming process. The
non-uniformity of hand formed crusts is what makes these
crusts so unique. No two are alike.

Now you've got the low-down
on the different forming methods. Take a lot of care
when choosing the forming method that you want to use.
It will influence many of your finished crust/pizza
characteristics.

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