The Pizza Therapy Forum and Pasta Therapy Forum

[pizza]

Marisa writes:

"I have a question for you, do you have a dough recipie for pizza
that includes using honey? if so, what's the difference between
using it or not?
thank you again for your help.
I'm just in the business plan stages of opening up a pizza place,
it's a very looooooong process and I'm doing this all on my own!
argh!! It is fun though!!!
hope to hear from you soon."

Can anyone help Marisa?

My latest thoughts on this came from Brian Spangler of
Apizza Scholls.
(from Legends of Pizza Volume 2:
http://pizzatherapy.com/volume2.htm)

"You don't need sugar or honey for a good pizza dough..."

Any other thoughts or comments to help Marisa?
_________________
"Pizza on Earth...Good Will to All!"
Visit: http://pizzatherapy.com
http://pizzatherapy.blogspot.com/
http://legendsofpizza.com/blog

[Vince120]

Hi Marisa,

Well you really don't need honey or sugar for dough but hey, why not! Your asking so I'll tell you...
Sugar or just about any sweetner does 3 things in pizza dough. 1 is to spur the yeast to ferment faster, not always a good thing since yeast has a performance profile and with a sugar it will end it's gas production that much faster. 2 is flavor, honey, raw sugar, molases, maple syrup can all be used. 3 is color/browning, not only the physical color of the various sweetners but sugar will brown and eventually burn at hotter oven temperatures. Below are some great additions to pizza dough I've seen and used over the years (you can google these to find them):
Dough Enhancer
Pizza dough flavoring (herbs/garlic etc.)
Shredded onion
Riced baked potato
Various cheeses from ricotta to grated parmesan
Olives (finely chopped)
Dough relaxer
Italian 00 flour (personal fav)

So, hope this helps and good luck with your business!

Vinny

[blizriz]

thank you, this info is extremely helpfull!!
i always thought sugar had to go into the dough.
i'm already learning so much from this site!!

now, this leads me to another question,
what are the neccesary ingredients to dough?
is the salt a neccessity too?

thank you again for your help!!!!
i really do appreciate it.
~marisa

[Vince120]

Hi Marisa,

Technically, salt is not necessary. Make dough without it and you'll never forget to put it in! Salt does a couple of things in dough, 1 is it stabilizes the action of the yeast (and can also kill it if added in the wrong amount or at the wrong time). Another thing salt does is to interupt the gluten strands that give the dough strength. Without some interuption, the dough would be more like rubber than dough. Salt also accents flavor from the yeast and other ingredients, without salt the dough would be extremly bland. The Italians figured out a long time ago what must be in dough:
Flour
water
yeast
salt.

Sounds pretty basic but think about the different types of each ingredient and the possibilities are almost endless. For instance, I use spring water for dough, tap water contains some amount of chlorine for disinfectant, very detrimental to yeast.

Have a pizza kind of day!

Vinny