So I made two very recent changes to my pizzas that have made a huge difference in my opinion . The first is obvious.
For the first time, I noticed that my jar of yeast said “refrigerate after opening.” I have been using the same yeast for the better part of a year and a half without ever refrigerating it. I can’t say it was completely dead, but I went ahead and bought new yeast and the difference is huge. The dough has so much more life to it when it is proofing, and the crust has a much more distinct flavor and structure to it. Not to mention how much it rises in the oven.
The second change is that I’ve begun to approach a “less is more” strategy with the cheese. I use both a low moisture whole milk mozzarella as well as part skim. I started adding just enough cheese to evenly spread out on the pizza while avoiding the urge to get smother it. The difference has also been extremely noticeable. My pizzas are less soggy and greasy and the flop test has been nearly perfect.
The yeast issue seems obvious , but it’s funny how such little changes can make such a huge difference!
I follow Dave’s pizza oven on social media for my recipes. I highly recommend him. He’s awesome and always responds to my DMs despite having a large following.
I used a 24 hr dough recipe for both of these pizzas. They were cooked on a pizza steel at 525° (the max temp my oven goes)
I used a combo of bread flour and AP flour. (70% bread flour, 30% AP), 2.5% salt, 0.06% yeast, 62% cold water, 2% olive oil, and 2% honey
by TheNickIntheNorth