All Dough is Not Created Equal

Posted by Carrie Grosvenor Apr 5, 2006

I went to a small gathering on the weekend to celebrate a friend's belated birthday. It was very casual, with eight people in attendance. This gentleman's wife loves to feed everyone, and she always comes up with some great little appetizers.

This time she had a tray full of little balls that looked like bread, with a big dish of marinara sauce in the center. Picking one up, I was surprised at how heavy it was; that is, until I bit into it. It was pizza crust! And so incredibly yummy. Perfectly crisp on the outside, and nice and doughy in the middle. Another woman and I set about trying to pry the cooking method out of our hostess.

We were unsuccessful in our efforts, unfortunately. The hostess is one of those people who doesn't like to share her recipes, which is a personal pet peeve of mine. We figured that she must have somehow fried the balls in oil though to achieve the extraordinary crispiness.

When I got home, I decided to experiment a little and see what I could come up with. Now I know that this woman had made her own pizza dough from scratch, but being short on time I took a short cut. I bought both a bag of pre-made fresh pizza dough, as well as a tube of the refrigerated stuff.

Back at home, I rolled both types of dough into 1-inch balls and baked them at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes, turning them every so often to brown evenly. The tube dough was done by this point - the other dough took another 4 minutes or so. They were pretty tasty as they were, but nowhere near as good as the ones I'd had a few days before!

I heated up some oil in both the frying pan and the deep fryer. The tube dough soaked up far too much oil in the deep fryer, and browned almost instantly in the frying pan. The prepared dough fared much better in both - I only left them in the deep fryer for 30 seconds, and they came out nice and crisp. The frying pan took a bit longer, and the crisp outside was uneven as was the golden color.

Next time I try this out, I'll make the dough from scratch!