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Oh, those cooking myths!
Whenever you think you have heard them all, there's a new one. In a yeasted dough, the yeast is perfectly fine with being tossed, beaten and generally mangled. The little yeast cells couldn't care less about what you do in the initial stage of mixing and kneading. (That's obviously different when you consider the dough after the ...
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Frozen food does spoil over time. Much slower than even just thawed, sure, but don't expect that something that would spoil within few days at just above 0°C will last with unchanged quality for years at -18°C (even if it were always at that temperature). There are also physical and chemical effects contributing to spoiling of food.
Freezing refers to water ...
60
A lot of it depends on the type of pizza you make. Where I worked we did thin crust pizza, and these were the reasons we tossed:
Speed. Trying to roll or pat out a 17 inch pizza would be very time consuming.
Consistency. Was easier to make the crust a consistent size and shape.
Space. Rolling or patting a person needs the table space 100% of the time. ...
50
A KitchenAid mixer does not have adjustable gearing; at low speeds it’s being run at low power. If run at low power with a viscous, resistant load like bread dough it can end up stalling, either continuously or repeatedly during the knead. This can overheat the motor and reduce its lifetime.
34
Those who favor throwing pizza argue that it is the best way to stretch and shape the dough without risking a puncture or tear. Some claim this extra exposure to the air helps the dough retain moisture, while drying the surface. This improves the crust. ...and of course, there is the show. On the other hand, simply shaping dough on a floured surface ...
31
It's not drastically important in making it workable, it's more important in the texture of the finished result.
When you roll out pastry dough, you are created interleaving layers of fat and the flour/water mix. When you cook it, the fat melts, leaving pockets in the dough, causing it to form flaky layers. This results in a crisp, light pastry.
For this ...
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Gluten is what makes a dough stick together and have structure. Coconut flour has no gluten, so the resulting dough will be a crumbly mess. Intentionally gluten free recipes usually contain any number of special additives to compensate for the lack of gluten.
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Donuts are a deep fried food. The texture of deep fried food is unique and cannot be duplicated by other methods. If you bake doughnut dough, you will get small rolls, which will have a similar aroma, but not the same combination of moist, soft inside and fat-crispy outside. You could bake it, as with any other yeast dough, only nobody will recognize it as a ...
20
There may be a few batters that are sensitive to shocks or loud noises, but most will not be (see Stephie's answer for more detail).
In my household, the real reason for not beating the spoon was always clearly about protecting the dishes, not the food. Mixing bowls can chip, crack, or dent (depending on the material). If the bowl has a lid, then damage to ...
20
Kneading in a bowl is time-consuming and doesn't give as good a result as kneading on a flat surface, however I'll concentrate on cleaning.
First, don't let things dry out, it's much easier to clean when things are moist, if you do let it dry out moisten it and let it soften before you try and clean it. Use cold water as hot water makes starches and ...
20
Alternatively (with respect to @GdD's answer), let it dry out completely. Totally dry dough doesn't stick all that well to many surfaces (glass, plastic, non-stick). It then chips/scrapes off quite easily. If I get it on my oak worktops and don't notice immediately, that's what I do, scraping with a plastic scraper or a butter knife, even a fingernail on ...
16
You can refrigerate all kinds of yeast-bread dough. Right after kneading, before the dough has had a chance to rise, oil the dough lightly, cover with plastic wrap or use a ziplock, and place in the refrigerator. As the dough cools in the refrigerator the action of the yeast will slow down until the dough has reached refrigeration temperature. At that point ...
15
The answer is that there are a range of (natural) sugars in the flour and a range of sugars that can be generated by the yeast by breaking down the starches and other carbohydrates in flour. Yeast are a hardy organism and can metabolize many different carbohydrates to produce sugars for successful growth.
Carbohydrates are chemical compounds composed of ...
14
Yes, preparing discs of dough ahead of time, separated by parchment, wax paper or clingfilm does work. The biggest risk is that the dough tends to dry out a bit, so keeping the whole mass wrapped up in clingfilm and possibly in wide closable containers may be worthwhile.
I don't know how long it would take you to pre-portion 20 pizza doughs; I'm not super-...
14
Ok, this is going to be long. And you just wanted to fire up your oven and slap the sauce on the dough...but bear with me.
Gluten
The Holy Grail of elastic dough that can trap all these nice bubbles: CO2 from the yeast and steam from evaporating water. Fact is, gluten is basically a protein (ok, scientifically speaking not exactly, but close enough). If you ...
14
Could be that your yeast was simply not alive.
You could simply try to bloom the yeast with water and sugar. It should become visibly active within a few minutes.
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Adding inclusions like vegetables, fruits, nuts, and meats to bread loaves and rolls is usually done either during the initial mixing stage or during shaping. When you should add the inclusions really depends on how large the ingredients are and how you want them distributed in the final loaf. When adding inclusions at the initial mix it is advisable to add ...
13
There are plenty of fermentable sugars in the flours commonly used in pizza making. Additional sugar is completely unnecessary.
12
Bull-honkey on the steamers part. All you need is a comal (a.k.a. griddle) for the cooking, and later, re-heating part.
The reason your toritllas get hard after day 1 is due to the baking powder. I know you're saying "but I need that to rise or get soft and chewy". Again bull-honkey.
I make awesome "mission" style tortillas on an every-other-week basis ...
11
Sourdough is a combination of yeast (which provide rising power) and bacteria (which make the starter sour and keep other nasty things from growing in it).
New starters will usually establish strong bacteria growth long before they get strong yeast growth. The bacteria growth will start within the first couple days, which will make your starter begin to ...
11
Let me suggest a totally different approach:
Why not work with the cool conditions instead of against?
You could let the dough proof for a long time, e.g. overnight in the fridge. This allows for a lot less yeast and hence a less yeasty taste, which is usually desired. Also, more complex flavors develop during long proofing times. (There is a reason ...
11
Options
With yeast-leavened dough, there are two approaches you can take:
par-bake
refrigerate
With chemically-leavened dough, you can't refrigerate, but you get a third option:
don't mix. (probably not applicable)
I'll explain all three:
Par-baking
Here, you go ahead and bake the rolls tonight, but only until they're mostly done. You want the dough ...
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If the dough is springing back, it's cause the gluten is still tight. Let it rest for 15-20 minutes, then try again.
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They are most likely "best by" dates, meaning quality may suffer, but they remain safe.
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Flour is mostly starch, and starches are long chains of sugar molecules. When you add hot water to starches they gelatinize and burst, and these gelatinized starches soften the dough. Gelatinization works faster at higher temperatures.
There are enzymes in the flour which break the starch down into sugars, and they work more efficiently at high than room ...
10
As other answers have pointed out, most recipes tend to be calibrated to rise times which assume a temperature of 75-80 degrees Fahrenheit. (Professional baking recipes will actually specify a dough temperature after mixing and a temperature for proofing.)
However, the question also asks "how warm does dough need to be to rise properly"? If, by "properly,"...
10
The skin forms because water evaporates from the surface of the dough. The middle doesn't dry out because the drier dough skin is less porous, and so the rate of moisture loss slows down as the skin forms.
It's perfectly okay to eat it, it's just the same dough but drier. Whether it is pleasant to eat is another matter of course. It won't become unsafe ...
10
I've made 8-10 pizzas a few times for large parties at my house. Unless you have someone to help, you're not going to get to mingle much while you're baking. And even if you have someone to help, you'll need to really work well together and know who's keeping an eye on things and keeping the process moving.
It also depends on your desired pace. I've only ...
10
Rendered pork fat—manteca de cerdo—is our preferred cooking fat
throughout this book. Lard has a relatively high smoke point so it is
ideal for frying, and it provides a richness, dimension, and
distinctly Mexican flavor that you just can't replicate with using
other fats...Vegetable oil is a fine substitute
However specific recipes may really need ...
10
The best thing is to do as your recipe directs it, because there are several considerations that play together here.
First, if you have a very exact recipe where you measure each ingredient and mix together in a mixer, it doesn't matter that much. Just dump it in the mixer and turn on, making sure to scrape or rest as needed until the texture is right.
...
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