Pizza dough question ??

[MadMedik]

When making pizza dough, must you always let the dough rise? Are there recipes for making dough where you can make it, flatten/shape it, add ingredients and cook? Or must it always go through the "rise" phase before cooking. Sometimes I feel like I woild make pizza but don't have time or desire to have it rise first?

MadMedik

[wilburpan]

After reading the recent thread on pizza dough recipes, I did some Googling and ran across this alternative pizza dough recipe by Peter Reinhart. It’s not a make and bake recipe, but it says that you can make the pizza dough, divide into balls, and freeze it for up to three months, so that should reduce some of the time it takes to make a pizza. 

[amir]

The main reason to allow dough to rise is to develop the gluten. Gluten is what makes dough stretch. It's present in flour but needs mechanical forces to develop. Some of the development occurs as you knead the dough, but a lot more develops with the micro action of the yeast. That's why recipes ask you to flatten a risen dough; it's not the air you want, it's the developed gluten. It's important to knead the dough to develop some of the gluten first. Without this kneading action the yeast would simply create air that would scape without being trapped within the dough and allowing further expansion and further development of the gluten.

I'm not sure if there is any way to skip this and still get a good crust. If u find it, let us know.

[Cookie]

Cook's Illustrated has a 75 minute pizza dough that is pretty good.  If that is 'quick' enough, PM and I'll dig it out and get you a copy.  It takes my KK at least 75 minutes to get heat soaked to 550F where I like to cook pizzas, so would think it'd work.

[MadMedik]

thanks for the replies guys.   I  saw  one  guy in  the internet  do what looked like    a  make and bake  recipe, but  for  it was  internet program  and  they tend to speed things up...but it made me think that it would be nice.   Thanks  for your comments.

[tony b]

I use this book for my bread and pizza dough.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Artisan-Bread-Five-Minutes-Revolutionizes/dp/0312362919/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418062243&sr=1-1&keywords=15+minute+artisan+bread

[dstr8]

Although I have not made pizza dough without even a short rise period I would guess you'd end up with something akin to cracker crust (all things being equal).

 

You might be able to get away without kneading, there are plenty of "no-knead" dough recipes on the net, but you'd need to use softer wheat flour. Whereas my Neapolitan style pizza dough needs 10-12 minutes machine kneading using KA bread flour @ 12.7% protein (higher protein content/harder wheat).

 

Further, assuming you might not be aware, you can (as I do with my pizza dough) make the dough and then let it "condition" in the refrigerator for up to 1-week.  Then just remove the pizza dough balls from the refrigerator about 2-3 hours from when you want to make pizza and you're good to go.  This method also amps up the dough flavor so its a "win-win"...