Learning how to make constant dough adjustments in a new environment
My journey as a female entrepreneur began a few years ago, but my first restaurant just turned three months old, and boy, has it felt like years within those few months. For as many times I have heard how hard opening a restaurant is, you never really get it until you do it and do it solo. At this point in my career, making pizza is still a challenge but when it comes to certain recipes, they are like muscle memory. There are recipes that I use that will forever be embedded in my repertoire like mother sauces. They are the foundation of everything I do.
When I first sat down to build my menu, I thought to myself, “keep it simple and keep it streamlined.” I knew that offering multiple styles and being the only person with all the answers was going to be tough. So, I chose a recipe that I knew I loved, and I knew would perform well without having to think too hard about it. My objective at the beginning was to put out a product that I was proud of but one that I knew I and the rest of my team could execute. With four styles, execution and repetition at volume was going to be the biggest hurdle. Although I knew my base dough recipe backwards and forwards, consistency was my hardest challenge. I was working in a completely new environment and every day was different since I had no history of previous years to work from.
I first started testing recipes months before I opened, and during that time it was winter and on top of that I was the sole person in the restaurant with no other equipment turned on, so cold was an understatement. My dough was rising at a snail’s pace, and everything took longer to do. I didn’t have a proofing cabinet, so my pan pizzas were taking ages to proof, so I developed a process that was easy but very involved because of timing. When I opened the restaurant, we had a system to work around the cold without a proofing cabinet, but it was a struggle. We adjusted the yeast, the timing of how long the dough sits out at room temperature, how long it stayed in front of the oven, inside the oven, etc. It was a process, but it worked. Training the staff was hard because they were taking direction well, but explaining the whys without getting too long-winded or relying on “because I said so” was challenging. We figured it out and opened with a line around the block every day, but I was getting no sleep because the dough required constant attention.
A few weeks went by, and the proofing cabinet was ready. The process I once had was long and involved to counteract how cold the ambient temperature was, but it was now obsolete. I had to completely redo our rising process and adjust the amount of yeast in the dough because we were now working with warmer temperatures. The proofing cabinet has been a godsend. We make three different pan pizzas with different rise times and do about 30 to 50 of each on regular days and more on the busier days. So having the proofing cabinet gives me more control over the entire process, and it quickens the total time, so I am ready to go by the time the restaurant is ready to open for lunch.
You would think the stress would stop there, but then the main walk-in refrigerator got an overhaul and because our main fridge is where we also keep our kegs, the temperature has to stay below a certain point, or the beer doesn’t pour well. Having a cold fridge is amazing and the health department will love you for it, but too cold of a fridge and flavorful dough using high protein/high gluten flour is not exactly a perfect combination without some tweaks. So, there I was having to go back to the drawing board once again. My dough was too cold, and it wasn’t rising. Even though the dough had been sitting in the fridge for 24 hours and sometimes up to 72, the dough looked as if it had just been made. Have you ever tried to stretch dough that’s just been made? It’s not that easy and it doesn’t cook well. So here I was tweaking my dough recipe once again to now include a combination of cold and warm rising times. Although this was a frustration, blending cold and warm proofing time has done wonders for my dough. As you learn more about fermentation, you learn that cold and warm temperatures influence flavor production and you can coax certain flavor profiles out of your flour that you wouldn’t normally get with dough that goes straight into the fridge and then pulled out right before use. But that’s a discussion for another time.
At this point I thought I was set but the restaurant gods had more in store for me. After being open for two months, my ventless dishwashing machine finally arrived. For a restaurant with 120 seats, I was hoping every night my dishwasher was going to hang in washing every dish by hand. When the machine arrived, we all did a happy dance. The happiness only lasted for so long as once again I was having to tweak my dough. My prep area and dish area are all within the same large basement downstairs which is great in theory. The dish machine is ventless, but it is not foolproof in capturing all the steam output after each cycle. We all know how hot dish machines get and put together the steam and the heat from this machine and the proximity to my mixer and dough area I was back to the drawing board on my dough procedure and yeast percentage.
Alas, I can say the drastic surprises that alter my dough have slowed down. But I know the next challenge and dough tweak is just a matter of time. I have been open for three months and have changed my recipe countless times. Opening a restaurant is hard enough, but doing so with a product that is as temperamental as a toddler can add to the stress, but having the basics of fermentation under my belt has reminded me that there’s always a solution. I just need to be ready to pivot at any moment. Get comfortable being uncomfortable!
Laura Meyer is the owner of Pizzeria da Laura in Berkeley, CA.
