What puts the 'chewy' in pizza crust?!
Answers: I make dough in my bread maker for pizza, my recipe makes great bread and rolls but for some reason comes out to "bready" to suit me. I'm looking for a recipe that will give me a crispier crust and a chewy , but tender inside. Any ideas? If you have something for a bread maker that would be great!
There is a lot of interesting food chemistry surrounding your question. I will try to explain what needs to happen to get what you want.
I know exactly what you mean by bready. It is a result of using average protein flour in your breadmaker. The way commercial bakeries get chewy bread (like french bread) or chewy pizza crusts is to use high protein flour. Sometimes they actually add wheat protein called gluten to the dough to make it tougher. I think you can buy gluten but if you use it in your breadmaker you risk straining the motor too much since it takes a great deal of force to kneed this dough. Again commercial bakeries have heavy duty equipment. If you want to try kneeding by hand you could probably do it.
As far crispy goes, once again the commercial bakeries add chips of saturated fat which gives the crust a very tender but crisp texture. You can accomplish close to the same thing using butter or a hard fat like Crisco (although they reformulated Crisco for 0 trans fat and I don't know how well it will work now).
Good luck with you pizza crust. I hope it comes out the way you like it.
PhD Food Chemistry and Nutrition
cook longer and closer 2gether
Try honey? instead of sugar? I hand make mine and use whey instead of buttermilk. Also for the baking pan your making it in, are you useing a pizza stone?
no clue
the longer u cook the pizza in the oven the more crispy/crunchy the crust will get