Starting a business in the food industry is always a viable career path. Not only can you work as an employee in some of the top kitchens in the world, but you can also build your own restaurant to become your own boss.
But as you work your way up the ladder and become a professional chef through culinary school, you can still try to earn a living with your love for food. One particular type of offering you can try is pizza.
This snack can be traced back during prehistoric times and was believed to have been made with bread cooked on hot, flat stones. Roughly 1,000 years ago, it became a popular snack and appetizer in Naples, Italy, where it was called “focaccia” and eventually evolved as pizza during the 1600s when tomatoes were discovered.
Fast forward to the present; pizza is now one of the most preferred foods across the world. In fact, a Gallup poll revealed that children aged three to 11 years old prefer pizza over other food groups served during lunch and dinner.
Want to learn how you can make better pizza for business and personal consumption? Read on to know the secrets in making your own mouth-watering version of this famous snack.
4 Secrets to Making Better Pizza
Cooking pizza is not rocket science, but it is not as easy as most people think it is. While you can buy ready-to-cook pizza bread and just put any toppings you like, preparing tasty pizza requires ample knowledge.
To help you out, here are four tips and tricks you can try to transform your average pizza into one that is worthy of selling:
1 – Cold-ferment the pizza dough
Cold-fermenting is a process that entails leaving the dough inside the refrigerator as the yeast works on the carbohydrates within it. This technique helps boost the flavor of pizza, as well as its browning characteristics.
To start, let the dough rest at room temperature after kneading. After an hour, put it inside the fridge to ferment in bulk.
Then, cut off pieces of the dough when you need to make pizza and work them into a ball. Let it rest for another hour to reach a warmer temperature before you begin rolling or stretching them out.
Remember that cold-fermenting dough is best done for 24 hours, but never more than two days. Once you do this, the yeast should be able to break down more starches in the dough and improve the bread’s texture into something lighter and more tender. It also helps enhance the flavor and adds more depth to the pizza dough.
2 – Work the dough without a mixer
The reason why pizza dough needs to be kneaded before cooking is so that it would develop proteins that provide bread its structure. This is known as gluten. Aside from manual kneading, you can also use appliances like stand mixers and food processors to develop gluten at a much quicker pace.
If you don’t have the energy to knead through a bulk of dough or access to appliances that can help you make dozens of pizza, you can try the No-Knead method. With this technique, you can make a dough with enough gluten for outstanding pizza.
Start by stirring all the ingredients together in a bowl. Then cover it up with plastic wrap and set aside overnight. The following day, your dough should be ready to proof, shape, and stretch.
3 – Top it wisely
Aside from the dough, the other component that makes pizza such a unique food choice is the toppings. While you can toss just about anything on your pie, choosing the toppings wisely makes for a better pizza.
Aside from the cheese and sauce, it would be best to keep the number of toppings to a minimum. Also, remember to balance the flavors you’re adding to your pie by limiting your toppings to two or three. The key is to ask yourself whether each item you’re adding complements the other ingredients you’ve already added.
Remember that pizza is better if it’s a synergistic whole rather than a mishmash of everything.
4 – Smolder your pizza
Ever wondered whyby the pizza parlors have better tasting pies than those prepared at home? One thing that separates artisan pizza from home-made ones is the temperature of the oven.
You see, pizzerias use hotter ovens because high temperatures lead to oven-spring, a phase in baking where vapor and air bubbles rapidly expand inside the dough. This causes the pizza bread to become airy.
This is also why hotter ovens create mouthwatering doughs that are slightly charred and crisp on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside.
A Final Word
Making better pizza is a feat that can be achieved with research, practice, and a lot of trial and error. While this way of learning does work, you can study how to deliver artisan pies that customers will surely love more efficiently by taking pizza-making lessons.
