Question

How can I achieve a lighter dough when making pizza dough.

I am making it by hand and not using a bread machine. I found some Vitamin C at
Lakeland Plastics which claims to make dough lighter. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you very much for your help.

Answer

There would be a couple of options on this one. You can add baking powder at 1% of the base flour weight as well as yeast, but note that although this will lighten the product it will also soften the crust.

You could put a flying sponge down by putting 20% of you flour down with all the yeast and enough water to make a creamy batter and put it to one side for 45 mins. Then introduce this to the balance of the ingredients and process as normal.

Or make the dough 24 hours before you need to process the pizza. Stand in bulk for 1hour then scale off into your required dough ball and shape up. Place into a well floured sealed tub and place into your fridge for 24 hours then take out and pin out and prove for one hour at room temperature then top and bake.

Hope this helps

Happy Baking

Clive