Pizza is not always about the texture, it also has to look palatable with all the colors from the pizza toppings and the crust. One problem when I started making pizzas was why isn’t my dough browning?
This is a common mistake with beginners. My favorite pizza toppings are often cooked quickly, but the pizza crust is undercooked that seems stretchy instead of it being a crispy pizza crust and airy on the inside.
It can also be because of too much sauce or water on the pizza. It can ruin your pizza night as the crust will not hold the whole pizza, which is pretty common for first-timers.
There are many reasons behind a pale pizza crust, and I will be sharing them with you and the solutions that can be done to put better colors on the crust the next time you cook.
If you see that the pizza crust has a golden brown color, you automatically assume it is a crispy brown crust on the outside and airy on the inside. So it is also important to consider the color of the crust.
It is easy to make a great pizza dough recipe once you have practiced cooking pizzas several times. However, you might still encounter problems that can cause the crust to stay white and pale.
In this post, I have the most common reasons and mistakes that you might have made, causing the pizza crust not to turn brown. There are also simple solutions that you can follow so read on.
The best part of a pizza is the dough since it holds the rest of the ingredients. You would want just enough water or moisture on it so the result does not turn out to be a softer crust or a soggy pizza.
Reasons Why Your Pizza Crust Did Not Turn Brown
The Oven Temperature Might Be Too Low
Aside from the processing and ingredients used on your homemade pizza, the most important part of the cooking process is the oven temperature.
The pizza needs to be cooked at a much higher temperature as it is the main factor in making your pizza dough golden brown.
You need to get your pizza oven to the highest temperature it can get before cooking the pizza in it. This can be easily achieved by using professional ovens or pizza ovens.
The key to attaining higher temperatures is to allow the pizza oven to preheat before putting the pizza inside it, and this will heat both the surface and the air inside the pizza oven.
High temperatures allow the raw pizza dough to rise quickly and develop that brown color that you want. It can also create a crispier crust on the pizza as the air pockets on the dough get puffed.
This is one of the best ways to make dough golden brown without making any changes in the pizza recipe.
Cooking the pizza should also be done in a short time. If you are using a pizza oven that can reach up to 900+ degrees Fahrenheit, it should take about 2 minutes to cook the pizza.
The timer will only change if you use a home oven with a much lower temperature. You need to cook the pizza longer to develop the brown color and the crispy pizza crust.
The Cooking Process Is Too Short
The pizza crust becomes brown because of a process called the “Maillard Reaction”. This is when the sugar and starch in the dough react to heat exposure.
That means that you need to let the dough expose itself to high heat to get a brown color on it. If you cook the raw dough too quickly, it might not rise or react to the heat enough to change color.
Of course, this depends on the temperature of the oven you are using. For pizza ovens that can reach high temperatures, there is no need for the pizza to be cooked for too long.
The problem comes when you use a regular home oven. Home ovens or conventional ovens usually reach a maximum temperature of just 500 degrees Fahrenheit, low for pizzas.
If this is the case, then that is when you will need to cook the pizza for longer than the standard 90 seconds for Neapolitan pizzas. The timer can sometimes go up to 7 minutes for the pizza to cook.
At 500 degrees Fahrenheit, your pizza crust should start browning at 5 minutes. It will take a little more to cook the entire pizza but around 5 minutes, you should see the color change.
You Might Have Used The Wrong Pizza Recipe or Ingredients
Cooking the pizza is just half the process. You need to make sure that you prepare the pizza dough properly and that starts with selecting the right ingredients for a great pizza recipe.
The ingredients you use depend on the pizza oven. The best flour to use on a pizza is 00 flour to make the best pizza dough, only if you will cook the pizza in a pizza oven.
If you are using a regular home oven, you are not giving the dough enough time and heat. Tipo 00 flour is used to cook on brick wood-fired pizza ovens at a very high temperature.
So if you use the best flour, which is a Caputo 00 flour on the pizza, and cooks it in a home oven, you might see that the pizza crust is not turning brown until you use a pizza stone.
You may not get the leopard spotting unless you use the broiler method.
The best type of flour that you can use when you cook pizza in a home oven is all-purpose flour, and this will brown easily if you cook it at lower temperatures and with a longer cooking process.
It is important to use just enough water and wet ingredients on the pizza to make a browner crust and to be able to keep a thin crust as well. The same goes with heavy toppings.
The Dough Might Be Overfermented
While it is hard to over ferment 00 flour, you can do this with all-purpose flour. It is when too much flour is exhausted and the active dry yeast or instant yeast will no longer let the dough rest and rise, instead, it shrinks down.
The sugar inside the dough is what makes the perfect pizza crust brown. If you over ferment the dough, too much sugar will be exhausted by the active dry yeast, therefore, preventing the crust from turning golden brown.
There is a peak where you will see the dough rise to almost double its original size. Once it reaches that size and starts to shrink down, you might be dealing with overfermentation.
Luckily, you can easily solve this problem by kneading the dough again before shaping it on a floured surface. It is best to avoid it as it can be a task to recover from this, so let the dough rest and rise just right.
You Did Not Use The Right Equipment
Aside from the pizza peel, pizza oven, and the pizza itself, it is important to use the right pieces of equipment when cooking your pizza to get the right color or browning on the pizza crust.
The best way to cook pizza is to have a floor or a surface with a mass that can retain high heat. If this sounds familiar, you know that I am talking about a pizza stone/baking stone and you should get one.
A pizza or baking stone is usually made from ceramic, clay, or cordierite. These materials are perfect for absorbing high heat from the hot oven to create a balanced environment and a hot surface.
The hot cooking surface cooks the perfect pizza crust well by vaporizing the excess moisture from the dough. This is how to brown the bottom of the crust effectively in the oven.
There is also an alternative to pizza stones which is the pizza steel. These cooking surfaces can absorb heat much faster than pizza stones and they conduct heat from the oven even better.
Pizza steel and pizza pan are also great alternatives for pizza stones. Pizza steels are more durable and can retain heat well.
Because of this, the pizza stone gets hot enough to brown the bottom of the pizza. If the pizza stone does not get hot enough, the moisture will stay on the pizza crust and make a soggy pizza.
If you just used parchment paper or a cookie or baking sheet when cooking your pizza, then it might be the reason why it did not turn brown. So make sure you use the right equipment when cooking pizzas.
How To Make Sure The Crust Turns Brown?
There is not a lot that you can do to turn the pizza crust cooked into a golden brown delicious crust. You can, however, prevent the crust from staying pale when it is cooked by:
Brushing The Crust With Oil
If you have a pastry brush, you can use it to sort of glaze the edges of the crust with olive oil. You can also use oil if you use a pan or a cast-iron skillet to cook the pizza.
Melted butter can also be an alternative to olive oil. This gives the pizza crust more flavors that blend well with the pizza sauce and the pizza toppings while also getting the golden crust.
This is one of the best solutions to get a golden crust on the pizza bottom.
You can do this before putting the pizza sauce and pizza toppings on the dough, and then again halfway through cooking. Though, I recommend that you just leave the pizza alone when cooking.
Ferment The Dough Longer
Just before the point of overfermentation, make sure that you prolong the proofing process of the dough at room temperature. This is to make sure that the sugar in the dough is worked just right before cooking.
Ocerproofed pizza dough is also bad so make sure that you look after it or set a timer when proofing the dough.
We have mentioned above that you should not over ferment the dough but prolong it by making sure that you do not exhaust too much sugar and gluten in the flour.
Once the dough is doubled in size, give it another 10 minutes to ferment at room temperature to develop the sugar properly. From there, you are sure to have a golden brown finish on your pizza crust.
Hopefully, these tips would help you get a brown pizza crust.
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