Baking pinsa requires practice

Pinsa: Delicious but Tricky

As passionate amateur pizza bakers with lots of experience and an original Italian wood-fired oven Valoriani Baby in the garden, we ventured into Pinsa. It's on everyone's lips, and we've tried it in various restaurants, including Donna Isabella in Rothenbergen. So we had an idea of what exactly we wanted to create. 

First, the Pinsa dough 

To get an easy start, we opted for a Pinsa flour mix. The dough itself is easy to prepare. Due to the high hydration, it is very soft. Since the dough goes into a dough tub in the refrigerator for 48-72 hours after preparation, time does the kneading for us. From now on, we observe the dough in the semi-transparent dough tub with a lid as it develops wonderfully despite the absolutely minimal addition of yeast. 

My heart swells as I take the Pinsa dough out of the fridge after 60 hours. An absolutely fluffy dough with great bubbles, very soft. I can already see the perfect Pinsa in my mind's eye. Onto the work surface with the dough, cut off loaves, shape them oval, and let them rest until they have doubled in volume. That's what the recipe says. 

My hurdle: the consistency of the dough 

Now press the risen dough balls into the desired shape and size with your fingers. Flour the work surface well, as the high hydration of the dough makes it very sticky. Then the dough should go onto the paddle and be pre-baked in the preheated wood-fired oven at 300 degrees. That's the theory. 

In practice, we could count ourselves lucky if the Pinsa arrived somewhat intact on the paddle. However, when putting it into the oven, disaster struck: the very soft dough deformed completely, far from a classic Pinsa shape. In another attempt, we managed to get the flatbreads into the oven with some semblance of form using baking paper, but for this, we seemingly hadn't spread the Pinsa large enough. The Pinsa dough became very thick. 

After this pre-baking for five minutes, the Pinsa should cool completely before being topped with the desired toppings. Here we found ourselves on familiar ground: everyone can put on the dough whatever they like to eat. Then the Pinsa goes back into the oven for another 5-7 minutes. 

Our conclusion: 

Handling the Pinsa dough requires a lot of practice. Even after ten times, handling this highly hydrated dough poses difficulties for us. In terms of taste, the Pinsa is a great change from pizza. The dough is (ideally) crispy and fluffy, delicious, and really doughy. We will keep baking Pinsa and continue to work on the appearance. It's worth it! We're already convinced taste-wise.