How To Stretch Neapolitan Pizza Dough?

Key concepts Chemistry Food science Protein Elastic Introduction Do you remember the last time you baked cookies, bread or cake? Did your baked good turn out perfectly? Or was it a bit too flat or perhaps rubbery and tough, or maybe with clumps of dry ingredients? The problem might have been in how you mixed the dough—or with the type of flour you used. In this science activity you will knead, stretch and punch some pretty remarkable doughs and discover what provides structure and elasticity to your baked goods. Next time you prepare dough for bread, pizza, cookies, cake, pie or any other baked good, you’ll know what to do! Background Wheat flours mainly consist of carbohydrates and protein, with some fiber. They are classified according to their gluten (or protein) content for a good reason. Getting the right portion of gluten (the protein that naturally occurs in wheat) is essential to getting the right texture in your baked goods. Wonder why? From the moment you bring a liquid ingredient (such as milk or water) in contact with wheat flour, the individual gluten proteins in the flour unravel and hook onto one another, creating strong bonds. With time, an elaborate network of interconnected gluten strings forms. This network holds the dough together, giving it its structure. Kneading the dough slowly unfolds the entangled network and aligns the long gluten strings in a stretchy, layered web. A pinch of salt helps as well because it neutralizes electrically charged parts of the gluten, allowing them to better slide along one another. The result is an elastic, stretchable dough that traps gas bubbles. Sometimes a dough can be stretched so thin it becomes translucent, making the network of gluten visible with a magnifying glass or microscope. It is the absence of this intricate gluten network that makes gluten-free baking a challenge. Ready to test and measure your strength against some incredibly stretchy dough? Once you’ve explored the dough, you’ll be ready to bake up a perfect treat! Materials

Vital wheat gluten (This is available in well-stocked grocery stores or health food stores.) Wheat flour (Bread flour is preferable, but any wheat flour is fine.) Gluten-free flour (This could be rice flour, corn flour, a gluten-free baking flour mix, etcetera.) Salt Half-cup dry measuring cup Mixing bowl Tablespoon measuring spoon Spoon Water Clean work space

Preparation

Choose a work space that is easy to clean and can take some water spills. Get all of your ingredients out and ready to use.

Procedure

Combine a pinch of salt with one half cup of vital wheat gluten in your mixing bowl. Add three tablespoons of water and mix, first with the spoon, then with your hands. Add one or two more tablespoons of water, if needed, until the flour sticks together and forms a nice soft ball. It should have the consistency of play dough. Place the ball on a clean spot on your work space. Clean your mixing bowl and measuring utensils then repeat the previous step with one half cup of wheat flour and then again with one half cup of gluten-free flour. How do the different flours feel? Does one stick together better than the other? Knead your gluten dough for three minutes. To knead, start by flattening the ball of dough a little. Then fold the dough over itself and flatten as you end the fold. Give the dough a quarter turn and repeat the folding, flattening and turning. Repeat the previous step with the wheat flour dough and the gluten-free dough. Are some doughs easier to knead than others? You might notice that some doughs fall apart as you try to knead them. If so, just take note and skip kneading that dough. Let your dough balls rest for one half hour. While you wait, look at the nutritional content label of the flours printed on the packages, Which one has more carbohydrates per one quarter-cup serving, and which one has more protein? In a moment you will test how elastic the doughs are and how easily they can be stretched. Elasticity measures how well a material recovers its original form after a deformation. Which dough do you expect to be elastic, meaning it bounces back after you punch it? Which dough do you expect to be starchiest? Do you expect you will be able to stretch any of the doughs paper-thin? Now that you have given the gluten network in the doughs some time to develop, you can put them to the test. Lightly punch your balls of dough—all three with the same force—to evaluate their elasticity. Do you see signs of elasticity in any of your doughs? Can you rank them from most elastic to least, or nonelastic? A second characteristic is stretchiness. A dough that stretches well can trap gas bubbles, providing well-risen, fluffy baked goods. Take a ball in two hands and stretch it out between your hands. Does it stretch easily or does it break instantly ? Do you need to apply force to get it to stretch out or does it stretch readily? Do this with all three doughs. Some pastries require a paper-thin layer of dough. How thin can you stretch out or roll out your doughs? Can you make any of them so thin that you can almost look through them? Looking at your test results, what type of baked good would each dough be good for: cake, cookies, bread, etcetera? Why do you think this is the case? Extra: What would happen if you let the doughs rest for a longer period of time? Would the elasticity or stretchiness increase? Place your doughs in a container or plastic bag and let them rest for a few hours or overnight. This allows the flours to fully absorb the water and the gluten networks to fully develop. Perform your tests again. Do you notice considerable changes ? Extra: Place each dough ball in its own bowl, cover each with water and let them soak awhile. Play with each ball; pinch and knead it a little and see what happens. Carbohydrates will wash out whereas the gluten network will create an elastic ball. After washing away all the carbohydrates, what do you think will be left in each type of dough? Try it out and see if your prediction was correct. Extra: Yeast is a live, single-celled organism that feeds on carbohydrates and provides gases that make a yeast dough rise. In which dough(s) do you expect yeast to be most active: gluten flour, wheat flour or gluten-free? The activity ” Yeast Alive! Watch Yeast Live and Breathe,” from Scientific American can help you create your test. Feed the yeast with water–flour mixtures, let it sit for awhile and see if your yeast colony flourishes. Extra: Gluten has several functions in a dough. It binds ingredients and provides structure to the dough. It creates elastic doughs that do not need a mold to keep their form. It also helps retain moisture and prolongs the shelf life of the baked goods. Gluten-free dough mixes use xanthan gum, guar gum and/or ground seeds to take over these tasks, Can you bake a gluten-free bead and a wheat bread and compare their performance against these parameters? You can also bake two wheat breads, one with cake flour (low in gluten) and another with bread flour (high in gluten) and compare their performance against these parameters.

Observations and results Was the gluten dough elastic and stretchable? Did the gluten-free dough fall apart, showing neither elasticity nor stretchiness? This is expected; it is the gluten network that holds a dough together and gives it elasticity and the ability to stretch.

Combine gluten and water, and a network of long, unorganized, knotted gluten strings will form. Kneading aligns these strings, creating a dough you might be able to stretch so thin you can almost see through it. The more gluten, the more elastic, stretchy and strong the dough will be. Mixing gluten and water results in a dough that almost feels like rubber.

Wheat flour contains 6 to 12 percent gluten, enough to provide a gluten network that holds the carbohydrates together. This dough is elastic and stretchy, but not as strong and tough as the gluten dough. A gluten-free dough, on the other hand, is crumbly; it falls apart easily.
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How long should pizza dough rest after refrigeration?

How to use frozen pizza dough – If you want to use frozen pizza dough to make pizza you have two options. Fridge

1. Place frozen dough in the fridge for 12-24 hours.
2. When ready to use let the thawed dough come to room temperature on the kitchen counter for 1-2 hours before using.

Counter top

1. Take the dough out from the freezer and leave it on the countertop for 4 hours.
2. Let the dough thaw and come to room temperature,
3. Stretch, shape, top with your favorite toppings and bake your pizza,

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How do you stretch pizza dough by hand?

Share your pizza selfies – I love getting photos of pizza selfies! Find me on Instagram to show me your pizza @sipbitego, Want to eat restaurant-style food at home? Subscribe to the Sip Bite Go channel,

▢ 1 pizza dough ball ▢ 1 tbsp flour

Let the ball of pizza dough rise. Let the dough rise 30 minutes to a few hours before working with it. This means, take it out of the fridge and put it in a sunny window so it gently heats up. I learned that trick from my mom growing up. When we were out running errands, she would give me money to run in and buy a few balls of pizza dough from one of our favorite Italian bakeries in town. For the rest of our errands, the dough would sit on the car dashboard and rise beautifully. Prepare the surface. When the dough is nice and plump, almost bursting out of the bag, it’s time to roll. Before you start stretching pizza dough by hand, add about half the flour to a large cutting board and spread it around the board so there is a very light layer of flour on the surface. This prevents the dough from sticking to the board. Lightly coat the pizza dough in flour. Add the raw pre-made pizza dough ball on top of the flour. Flip it over so both sides are lightly coated with flour. Learn how to use flour when stretching pizza dough. This is its own step, because it so important to learn how to use flour properly for working with pizza dough and getting it to form a rectangle or circle shape. Before we go on to the next steps of hand stretching pizza dough, please note that a little bit of flour goes a long way. Flour is your best friend while stretching pizza dough, but only in small amounts. The rest of the flour left after covering the cutting board (about a half tablespoon) should be plenty as you go on to the next steps of stretching the dough. You’ll be adding light dustings of flour to the dough as it stretches, which will prevent the dough from sticking to itself, and shrinking back up into a ball. A little flour helps the dough retain its shape for these stretching techniques. That’s why you’ll see me working it into the dough whenever I stretch the dough in a new direction in the video. Pinch the dough. Stretch the dough first by pinching the outside 1″ in a circular motion to spread it out. This is forming the crust area. I picked up this tip from Chef Hubs who worked in a pizza parlor. You can pick up a little pinch of flour here and there as you pinch the dough. The dough will be sticky, then you’ll pinch with floured fingertips, and it will make that area less sticky and keep it opened up. Once you’ve gone 1-2x around the perimeter of the pizza dough, and the dough starts to open up into a larger shape, it’s time to move inside Push the inside. Stretch the inside of the pizza dough by pushing it against the cutting board from the center, expanding to the edge of the dough. You’ll do this for about a minute, or a dozen or so times, dusting your fingers with flour as you work so the dough keeps its growing shape. You’ll know this step is done when the shape of the dough doubles in width. The dough should start thinning out from a ball to a crust shape. Lastly, picking up the dough and using knuckles. Here’s my favorite part – the grand finale. I like to pick up dough and use my knuckles for the final stretch. It always expands the dough to the right shape. To do this, make two fists and rest the half-stretched pizza dough on top of your knuckles. Expand the shape of the dough by stretching out your fists to widen your hands. Do this a few times, moving your hands outwards from the center. Add flour if needed. If you’re making a round pizza, keep rotating the dough in a circle as you stretch it. For a rectangle or free form pizza shape, keep stretching the dough in one direction so it becomes oblong. At this point, the dough should be fully stretched and ready to par bake for homemade pizza or grilled pizza.

Calories: 247 kcal | Carbohydrates: 48 g | Protein: 8 g | Fat: 3 g | Saturated Fat: 1 g | Sodium: 707 mg | Fiber: 1 g | Sugar: 6 g | Iron: 3 mg
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How do you stretch pizza dough like a pro?

Press your pizza dough before you stretch it. Press the dough down into a large flat disc using the palm of your hand. Next, use the middle three fingers on each of your hands to press the dough out from the center, widening that flat disc into a large circle about 6 inches across and about 1/2 inch thick.
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What is the best surface to stretch pizza dough?

When purchasing pizza dough balls, where exactly should you roll it out? Many of today’s commercial kitchens are equipped with stainless steel countertops for hygienic reasons as much as easy cleanup. But as it turns out, this might not be the best – at least according to some Italians that have been making pizza for generations.

Many in Naples, Italy believe that the only way to properly treat frozen pizza dough is by rolling it out on a marble surface. Marble is preferred because it doesn’t hold onto cold temperatures the same way stainless steel does, and there will be none of the reactions that concern some when stainless steel and food come into contact with each other.

The problem though, is that marble is a big expense for restaurant owners to take on just so they can have authentic Italian pizza dough, Thankfully, it’s one you don’t have to shell out for, even if you don’t currently have a marble countertop in your commercial kitchen.

Simply assign one countertop to be used for rolling out pizza dough, and make sure it’s equipped with the proper materials for rolling dough. That can be marble, but it can also be butcher block countertops, or even just a wooden cutting board placed down so the dough can be rolled out. Of course, we don’t think there’s anything wrong with rolling out your dough on stainless steel.

We just wanted to pass along a bit more trivia, and help for those that like to be completely and totally authentic.
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What to add to dough to make it stretch?

Knead Your Dough Properly – Kneading your pizza dough helps build up gluten. If your pizza dough has not been kneaded for long enough, it may not have had the chance to build up a strong gluten network. When mixing your pizza dough, the flour and water create a chemical reaction that results in a build-up of gluten.
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