Base too dry - any tips?

[sian71]

Hi,

I have made pizza a couple of times in my new castmaster pizza chiminea. Both times the pizzas have been good, but I am striving for a thinner, crispier base that isn't too dry. The last dough I made used 00 flour, semolina, olive oil, honey, salt and water. The second lot of pizzas I made were quite good - thinness wise - but were still quite dry. Does anyone have any tips for a less dry base?

I've tried to insert an image of one of the pizzas, but every time I click on the insert image icon, this - [/img] - appears....

Cheers,

Sian

[webbaldo]

Do them cast things have a grated (like a grill) surface for the pizza to sit on or solid?

If its a grill-like surface, you'd be better buying a cheap pizza stone and sit the pizzas straight on that.

Also for pics, you need to upload your images to somewhere like flickr or photobucket, then put the images address between the two img bits.

[danny]

I find a bottle of beer irrigates the base quite nicely. ;D

How long do they take to cook in this device? I am a total novice but I guess that the extreme heat of a pizza oven means very short cooking times hence the dough does not dry out. Maybe a bit of extra stoking to reduce cooking times?

I have only used a recipe that I found when I searched for 'best pizza dough recipe bread maker' it has a number of additional ingredients to those you listed but met with mrs Danny's approval. And that ain't common!

[tonyb]

I'm struggling to visualise(?) what you mean by dry? I don't think its anything to do with your dough ingredients but you might want to try a more simple classical recipe of flour/water/yeast/salt as a comparison.

The thinner you go the more biscuit like the pizza is going to be, this would be compounded by lower cooking temperatures. Also do you use a rolling pin or stretch the dough?

My gut feeling is that if you want thin pizzas you need very high cooking temperatures, conversely, you need lower temps/longer cooking times for thick 'chicago style' pizzas.

[turkey]

Hi Sian,

what hydration do you mix your dough to, it might just need more water. It should be a very wet dough.

btw the IMG icon / tags is how to display an image from a url so if uploaded to an external host you can link to it with those tags. If you have the file in your pc then you can choose to upload the image here as an attachment, then we should all be able to see it.

[sian71]

Thanks for all the advice. You can put the pizza directly in the chiminea, the bottom of which is like a grill with holes, but I put them in a large pre-heated shallow lasagne-type dish (although I have ordered a pizza stone). The cooking time varied from 4-5 mins to 7-8 along with the heat in the chiminea. The last dough I made was very wet, so I will continue to keep it wet, and I rolled it out with a rolling pin.

Danny - what other extra ingredients do you use?

[danny]

1 1/3 cups water (Or 1 Cup Water and 1/3 Cup Flat Beer for better flavor)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon honey
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons cornmeal
3 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon italian seasoning
1 1/2 teaspoons yeast


Read more: www.food.com/recipe/the-worlds-best-bread-machine-pizza-dough-recipe-131607#ixzz1xciLpu1G

I tossed this into the bread maker and it worked a treat!