What Is A Pizza Dough Docker?

Making a pizza is really not that hard. It only requires a lot of practice and only certain tools that can come in handy if you want to make the results even better, enter the pizza dough docker.

Pizza Dough Dockers are small rolling pins with spikes that are usually rounded on top and a handle for ease of rolling.

One of the main problems in cooking pizza is the uneven surface on your dough which might cause unevenly cooked doughs and even toppings for that matter.

Dough dockers help in making your pizza even by creating poked holes or dents that allow heat and the toppings to settle evenly on the surface of your dough.

It is not always needed but it does help when you want an evenly cooked pizza as it creates the right spaces to make the dough rise lower.

 

Pizza Dough Docker

A Pizza Dough Docker is some sort of a rolling pin with a comfortable handle and spikes that run through the entire length of the rolling pin.

The most common pizza dough dockers measure 4 to 6 inches and are found in most households that are using such utensils.

For some professionals, they use a foot-long pizza dough docker in order to lighten up the job by running a single pass through a large pizza dough.

There are also 1-inch pizza dough dockers for smaller recipes such as pitas and tortillas. The foot-long dockers are only used for mass production since they only need to be passed through the dough once.

 

What does it do?

Pizza Dough Dockers are used for docking, obviously. Docking is the process of creating holes or dents on your dough.

These dents or pokes create small vents to prevent the dough from rising too large and prevent blistering from bubbles that the yeast in the dough creates during the cooking process.

To put simply, the dough docker creates uniformed dimples to prevent the dough from over-inflating and creating a huge bubble when heated.

Docking also lets the moisture escape by letting it seep through the holes and onto the baking stone to be seared or used as steam to make the crust fluffier inside.

 

How does it happen?

When the pizza dough is heated, the water molecules inside the dough tend to make it rise by creating steam that has a hard time escaping the dough.

This air will create a bubble that lifts the dough out of the heated surface, thus making an uneven finish on both the dough and the toppings in case you are making a pizza.

The dough docker takes this problem out by creating space for the steam to escape, therefore, leaving no bubbles in the dough.

 

How to use a Pizza Dough Docker

Using a pizza dough docker is as simple as a rolling pin, only you do not need to pass it through the dough several times. 

All you need to do is to make sure that you have kneaded your pizza dough as evenly as you can with no thick parts or holes in it.

Once you have flattened the pizza dough, then you can take the pizza dough docker and run once on the surface of the pizza dough.

Make sure that the dough is covered with evenly-spaced holes before putting the cheese and toppings of your pizza and then you can start cooking.

 

Alternatives

If you are still unsure about what docking does, imagine people using a fork to poke holes on pizza dough. They usually say that it is for the dough to breathe.

A fork is one of the most common alternatives for dough dockers but sometimes the spaces that the fork creates are too tight making the air bubbles stuck in one place.

 

 Docking Pizza Dough

Pizza doughs are the most common dough to be used with docking. This is to create an even finish on the dough and the whole pizza itself.

However, it is not the only thing that the pizza dough docker can be used. There are other doughs such as pastry, tart, and flatbreads that require docking for the same reason.

Pie crusts are also a common dough where you can find docking. This is where forks are used and the docking can be seen on the side usually to close the pie.

 

Conclusion

Pizza Dough Dockers are commonly used in restaurants mainly because they are great for speed, evenly balancing the finish on the dough, and for its repeatability.

However, you can use pizza dough dockers on your homemade pizzas to give it a professional look and make them evenly cooked for you to enjoy.

Pizza dough dockers are a small utensil that does not cost much so what else could hinder you from improving your pizza-making game?

Pizza Dough Dockers are great for starters since they usually create a perfect finish on your crust. Further on, when you are making pizzas for a long time, docking will also help.

It eases the job by removing the guessing part of docking by giving you evenly poked dents or holes on your pizza dough.