Pizzeria Luigi in San Diego, CA

[Essen1]

Not to change the subject,but it bugs me that the place is known to be a pigsty.There is no excuse for it.

It would not shock me if the folks making the video,brought in new equipment because the old greasy,or dirty equipment was not ideal for filming.Like Peter said,they had some shiny new stuff there.

How does a place that is known to be a filthy place to eat,pass inspections?
 

Lack of oversight from the San Diego Health Department, I assume.

But I agree, if you're an owner worth his salt and proud of your trade and restaurant the shop should be spic and span. On the other hand, go to any 'authentic' restaurant in your local Chinatown area and you'll see rats, mice and roaches high-fiving each other on the table right in front of you. At least here in SF, no joke.

[selprop]

selprop,

Sounds like you were there when Luigi's had an off day. Two other members of this board had good experiences. You might want to give Luigi another shot just to compare.

Another article about Luigi's & Bronx:

http://thefunfoodie.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/culinary-clash-1-ny-pizza-in-san-diego/

With do respect Off Day,,,,,,,,, not acceptable unclean establishment,,no need for rags with sauce, wet cleaning rags probably for cleaning tables off all being on prep table,,, tables with dried sauce,, crumbs,, not meaning plates or cups.
No excuse for several pies in display for being fully cooked it seemed and dried out when reheating.
I can understand my opinion and my wife's on the pizza as we all know everyone has a different opinion what they prefer or not.
I am not saying Luigi does not have a exceptional product, the proof is in the remarks and following he supposedly has,, which I did not see that day,, prime time,, people out the door not when I went,, as you said Off day,,,
Establishments are serving the public and have a criteria to follow, one being keep your place of business presentable. The customer is always right no matter what. I myself in 38 years of owning several
and dealing with the public with most have always no matter what leaned to their side. If they are unsatisfied they will not return, but the best policy is give them a reason not to discredit you to others.
With all the reviews people leave their is always going to be someone that is not going to be satisfied, hopefully there will be more that are then not. In this case Luigi's in this case has proved  more to the satisfied side than not by far.
But for me to give his establishment a second try to see if it stand up to the reputation and quality. I see no reason. If you came to me and I sold you a house, and did not explain the full contract, and afterwards you knowing because of an incident came up,, would you come back to me. If you came to me for a Haircut and I gave you something totally different than what you asked, because I had an off day  would you come back to me,,, If I sold you a car and gave you a warranty for 2 days as standard,, and a week later the tranny let go would you come back to me.. I am using these scenarios  because these are a few businesses I have now and need to be on top of my game and be upfront and give my clients the best I can as if I was being treated that way. In a few months my mobile food truck will be ready to go out and start serving the public and hopefully I can give the best product I know how to them and get more satisfied reviews than dissatisfied. I started out with WFO being put in and doing a survey and spending time and money and found that the majority would prefer NYP to WFO. So in the middle of my build I changed it. Myself being more comfortable with doing so because myself I prefer NY, I gave the public what they wanted, and hopefully they will follow.
Any one who opens a business or starts one always wishes for the best, it does not always go that way. I am a perfect example. All might sound great on the other side but believe me we all hope for the best and do our best to make it happen as long as the passion is there.
For Luigi he has showed what he can do and he does it very well as we here are trying to clone his perfection that is saying a whole lot. So one person as myself and my opinion does not make or break someone, and no one wants to hear anything negative, buy maybe it helps that person realized there might be a problem and want to change it.
Everyone here has a passion, a goal, a dream. There are always obstacles and ways to get thru them.
If I wake up everyday and have my health I won,, and no matter what happens the rest of the day, I will get thru it. I hope in no way I am offending anyone with my thoughts or words, nothing is meant to be.
The only thing I need to do as always is write a topic that is all correct English which I am not good at, especially my wife being an English Major and correcting all my wording,,, if she sees this before I send it which she won't. I will be in deep do,,,,,,,,,,
In all my ventures I have done,, I have never seen so many diverse people as on this site with all the intelligence in every aspect of life. I applaud each and every one of you, for giving what you have learned and shared. I respect not just one or selected few but all.

Respectfully,
Mark

[Essen1]

Mike,

I took a stab at recreating the seasonings for the Luigi pizza sauce as shown in the video and have set forth the ingredients and quantities below. However, first some comments and suggestions.

In recreating the Luigi seasoning mix, I used my mock-up bowl to weigh the ingredients that are shown in the video as being in small bowls such as those that were shown on the table to the left of the mixer. As noted below with the single asterisk, these are the Greek oregano, the black pepper, the garlic powder and the fresh basil. I did not see any bowls or other containers for the red pepper flakes or the salt, so I did my best to estimate those just by eyeballing them in the sauce container (at 4:12 and 4:16, respectively). What is important to keep in mind about the red pepper flakes is that there is not a lot of it in relation to the amount of tomatoes. For example, if there are four #10 cans of Stanislaus tomatoes in the sauce container in the video, weighing say, 8.5 pounds each, or about 34 pounds total, the scattering of red pepper flakes will have fairly minimal flavor or taste impact. At the 28-ounce tomato can level, it might only be a pinch or two.

There was also one bowl, for the grated Parmesan cheese, that seemed larger than the others in the video, as denoted below by the double asterisks. For example, if you look at the video at about 4:19, you will see that the Parmesan bowl is the only one that Luigi holds by two hands and it also looks large in relation to the size of the sauce container and the other bowls that were used to hold several of the other ingredients. The bowl with the garlic powder also looks large, at 4:18 in the video, but since the bowl of garlic powder is earlier shown on the table I can only assume that it was an odd camera angle or a closer camera shot that made the bowl seem larger.

I also discovered when I was doing my weighings that the weights of ingredients can vary depending on the source. For example, when I weighed oregano from a bottle, which I believe was of the Greek variety, the final value I got was higher than when I weighed dried oregano from my garden. I have what I believe to be a Greek variety of oregano growing in my garden but I always use an Italian (maybe Sicilian) oregano because I prefer it over the Greek variety. What I ended up using was the Greek oregano from the bottle since that seemed to come closest to what Luigi uses and it looks to have the texture and particle size as shown in the video (in the bowl at 4:12 and also at 4:13 on top of the tomatoes). But you should be aware that different dried oregano products can have different weights on a unit volume basis. The same may also apply to the garlic powder.

With respect to the Parmesan cheese, I did not have any on hand so I purchased the cheapest wedge of domestic Parmesan cheese that I could find in the supermarket today. I also checked out the Kraft grated Parmesan cheeses as well as a comparable house brand (a Safeway product). All of the cheese products I looked at, whether grated or not, had the same conversion data, specifically, 2 teaspoons weigh 5 grams. However, the Kraft and similar product have cellulose to minimize caking and also a preservative for flavor retention. The wedge of Parmesan cheese does not have those additives. It is hard to say how much Parmesan cheese is used other than that it looks like there is a fair amount of it by volume. I grated some of my Parmesan cheese into an 8” pie tin until the amount looked like what is shown in the video and got 60 grams, as noted below.

I also didn’t have any fresh basil on hand and the supermarket I went to didn’t have any either. So, I did the next best thing. When I got back home, I went out into my back yard where I have a bountiful crop of weeds growing. I found one weed in particular that had leaves of the same general size, shape and thickness as fresh basil leaves. I gathered several of them, chopped them into pieces of the same size as the chopped basil in the video, put them into my mock-up bowl to look like the chopped basil leaves shown at 4:22 in the video, and then weighed them. As a final step, I compared the weed version with real fresh basil and found that their weight/volume numbers were quite similar. The number I ended up with for the fresh basil is 7 grams. The good thing about fresh basil is that even if you are a bit heavy with it, it doesn’t usually hurt anything. By contrast, with the dried oregano, and also with the garlic powder, you have to be careful as not to use too much. As a result, it might be a good idea to add the dried oregano and garlic powder gradually in stages until the desired taste profile is achieved.

With the above as background, here is the seasoning mix I came up with. If you need help converting weights to volumes for a sauce batch based on a 28-ounce can of tomatoes, let me know.  I have shown the weights of ingredients for a sauce batch using a 28-ounce can of tomatoes in parenthesis. If the seasoning mix works out, it should then be possible to come up with a baker’s percent format.

Red pepper flakes: 3 grams (a pinch or two between the thumb and forefinger)
*Greek oregano leaves: 8 grams (0.4 grams)
Salt: 11 grams (0.55 grams)
*Black pepper: 3 grams (0.15 grams)
*Garlic powder: 30 grams (1.5 grams)
**Grated Parmesan cheese: 58 grams (2.9 grams)
*Fresh, chopped basil: 7 grams (0.35 grams)
Total seasoning mix weight = 120 grams (9 grams)
* denotes that the ingredients are in small bowls of same size
** denotes that the bowl seems larger than the other bowls

Remember that the above numbers (the ones not in parentheses) are in relation to four #10 cans of Stanislaus tomatoes. If that assumption is wrong, then the numbers will have to be revised if we are able to get the correct amount of tomatoes. If my numbers are anywhere near correct, then I think that you can see that Luigi’s sauce is not particularly highly seasoned.

Peter

Peter,

I assembled the sauce early this morning for tonight's bake and the numbers you posted are right on the money!

I used two 28oz cans of 6 in 1s and therefor doubled the amounts. I rounded the numbers up...

Greek Oregano:         1 gram
Sea salt:                    1.1 grams
Black pepper:             0.3 grams
Garlic powder:            3 grams
Parmesan cheese:     6 grams
Fresh Basil:                1 gram

and two pinches of red pepper flakes.

This is an excellent tasting sauce. It tastes very fresh, slightly sweet with a nice touch of oregano and garlic.

[Pete-zza]

I assembled the sauce early this morning for tonight's bake and the numbers you posted are right on the money!

Mike,

I'm glad that the numbers worked out for you. I tried my best to eyeball and weigh the ingredients carefully but when you are working from volume measurements taken visually from a video, you can't always be sure that the weighings are correct. It would be interesting to know if Luigi weighs any of his ingredients. I would think that it would make sense to make up a standardized seasoning mix for the pizza sauce using weights, but for the fresh basil, which would be added at the end as shown in the video. The only thing we saw weighed in the video was the dough balls.

I am pretty certain that Luigi uses the same grated Parmesan for the sauce as is put on the tables of his pizzeria for his patrons. That would be a foodservice quality grated Parmesan cheese. A typical Kraft grated Parmesan would be a reasonable substitute in a home settiing. Adding a better quality Parmesan cheese would be an improvement but it might have a different flavor profile over the inexpensive Parmesan pizza that Luigi no doubt uses.

I hope that the sauce tastes as well on the pizza as out of the bowl.

Peter

[chickenparm]

Peter,Is there no sugar used in this sauce?

I know some places will use a little.Just wondering.

Mike,If you can,let me know how the sauce tastes the next day or 3 if you keep it in the fridge that long.
Im curious if the acidity changes much or if the flavors increase.
 

[Pete-zza]

Peter,Is there no sugar used in this sauce?

I know some places will use a little.Just wondering.

Bill,

No sugar is shown in the video as being added to the sauce. Remember, however, that Luigi uses Stanislaus fresh-pack tomatoes that are naturally sweeter than most canned tomatoes that are not of the fresh-pack variety.

Peter

[Essen1]

Mike,

I'm glad that the numbers worked out for you. I tried my best to eyeball and weigh the ingredients carefully but when you are working from volume measurements taken visually from a video, you can't always be sure that the weighings are correct. It would be interesting to know if Luigi weighs any of his ingredients. I would think that it would make sense to make up a standardized seasoning mix for the pizza sauce using weights, but for the fresh basil, which would be added at the end as shown in the video. The only thing we saw weighed in the video was the dough balls.

I am pretty certain that Luigi uses the same grated Parmesan for the sauce as is put on the tables of his pizzeria for his patrons. That would be a foodservice quality grated Parmesan cheese. A typical Kraft grated Parmesan would be a reasonable substitute in a home settiing. Adding a better quality Parmesan cheese would be an improvement but it might have a different flavor profile over the inexpensive Parmesan pizza that Luigi no doubt uses.

I hope that the sauce tastes as well on the pizza as out of the bowl.

Peter

Peter,

I really need to buy one of those small digital scales for small measurements below 1 gram. That's the main reason I had to round the numbers up except for the black pepper, which I basically eyeballed using 1/8 tsp which still might not be accurate.

As far as the Parmesan goes, I actually used a local brand, Marin Cheese Co., and is in fact grated Pecorino Romano which has a slightly more intense flavor. But I also have the Kraft on hand which I'll try with the next batch. I like the idea of a seasoning mix for the sauce and since you already posted the numbers previously, it'll be easy to measure and add to the sauce.

Let me see if I can put together a Baker's Percent version of it, using the sauce amount as a 100% value?! 

[Essen1]

Peter,Is there no sugar used in this sauce?

I know some places will use a little.Just wondering.

Mike,If you can,let me know how the sauce tastes the next day or 3 if you keep it in the fridge that long.
Im curious if the acidity changes much or if the flavors increase.
 

Bill,

I am sure I can, and will, let you know how the sauce is tomorrow and three days from now.  

I'm also certain that the flavor will somewhat intensify once the herbs and spices have released their full potential.

[PizzaEater101]

Peter,

I really need to buy one of those small digital scales for small measurements below 1 gram. That's the main reason I had to round the numbers up except for the black pepper, which I basically eyeballed using 1/8 tsp which still might not be accurate.

My digital scale does not do fractions of grams, just whole numbers.  What scale can any of you recommend that is good for measuring . (point) measurements in grams?  I just wing it and I do pretty well but I'd rather be more accurate with a scale than can do fractions.  What I mean is if it calls for .25 that's 1/4 of a gram. 

[Essen1]

My digital scale does not do fractions of grams, just whole numbers.  What scale can any of you recommend that is good for measuring . (point) measurements in grams?  I just wing it and I do pretty well but I'd rather be more accurate with a scale than can do fractions.  What I mean is if it calls for .25 that's 1/4 of a gram. 

PE101,

I just bought this one...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012LOQUQ

Measures as low as 0.01 grams. That's probably as low as it gets.

[norma427]

I tried to figure out how to blend KASL with an all-purpose flour to get a targeted protein of 13.5% on the Mixed Mass Percentage Calculator at  http://tools.foodsim.com/ and I am not still getting how to work the Mixed Mass Percentage Calculator to mix flours to get the right protein. 

This is the formula I did on the Expanded Dough Calculating Tool. I used a bowl residue of 1.5%  Now if I can just figure out how to use the Mixed Mass Percentage Calculator, I guess I will try a Luigi’s #1 attempt.  I guess I will also add a pinch or a little more of Vitamin C to the dough formula.

Norma

[scott123]

Norma, to hit a target of 13.5% protein for that formulation (308 g total flour)

253 g KASL
55 g Generic All Purpose Flour

[norma427]

Norma, to hit a target of 13.5% protein for that formulation (308 g total flour)

253 g KASL
55 g Generic All Purpose Flour

Scott,

Thanks so much for helping me understand how to use the Mixed Mass Percentage Calculator.  I was making it harder than it is.  I wasn't sure what to do with the Mixed Mass Percentage Calculator.  I kept putting different numbers in different places and was getting all fouled up. 

Norma

[scott123]

No problem Norma It's not the most intuitive of calculators- it took me a few minutes to figure out as well.

[norma427]

No problem Norma It's not the most intuitive of calculators- it took me a few minutes to figure out as well.

Scott,

I never tried to use the Mixed Mass Percentage Calculator before, and I sure didn’t understand where the numbers were supposed to be put.  I could find the kinds of flours I wanted to mix, and had the first mass of the total amount of flour to be used in the right place, but didn’t know where to add the targeted 13.5%  protein.  I guess since my understanding of math is limited, that is why I had all the problems.    At least now I will be able to understand how to use November’s tool.

Thanks again! 

Norma

[Pete-zza]

scott123, thanks for helping Norma on this one, especially since I offered to assist her in the use of the Mixed Mass Percentage Calculator.

Norma, since you have the King Arthur all-purpose flour, do you want to take a stab at coming up with the numbers using that flour instead of a generic all-purpose flour?

A couple of other points about the tool. The two pull-down menus are the same and you can select the two ingredients using either sequence (but keep the A-B blocks below in order). If it so happens that the ingredients you are using are not listed in the pull-down menus, you can enter the protein values in the two % blocks below the pull-down menus (you have to select the two blocks by checking them). In some cases, one of the ingredients might be listed in a pull-down menu and the other is not. In that case, you can use a combination of pull-down menu and one of the % blocks.

Peter

[PizzaEater101]

PE101,

I just bought this one...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012LOQUQ

Measures as low as 0.01 grams. That's probably as low as it gets.

Mike, thank you very much for the link to that scale.  That price is really low too in addition to the increments the scale can do.  I will buy that one. 

[Pete-zza]

If Mike tells us that he likes the clone Luigi pizza sauce on an actual pizza, I should be able to come up with a set of baker's percents for the Luigi clone sauce. I didn't think to convert my ingredient weights to volume measurements but, had I chosen to do so, my numbers would most likely have differed from those used by others with their specific set of ingredients, especially those from other suppliers. However, it does make sense for each person to do such conversions to simplify making the sauce in the future with the same ingredients, or for scaling purposes. This is one of those instances where, in a home setting, people are used to--and may prefer--volume measurements rather than weights, especially when the numbers are on the small side.

Peter

[Essen1]

Mike, thank you very much for the link to that scale.  That price is really low too in addition to the increments the scale can do.  I will buy that one. 

PE101,

I looked at other scales, too, but this one got really good reviews and for the price it's probably worth it. Also comes with a 10 year warranty.

[Essen1]

If Mike tells us that he likes the clone Luigi pizza sauce on an actual pizza, I should be able to come up with a set of baker's percents for the Luigi clone sauce. I didn't think to convert my ingredient weights to volume measurements but, had I chosen to do so, my numbers would most likely have differed from those used by others with their specific set of ingredients, especially those from other suppliers. However, it does make sense for each person to do such conversions to simplify making the sauce in the future with the same ingredients, or for scaling purposes. This is one of those instances where, in a home setting, people are used to--and may prefer--volume measurements rather than weights, especially when the numbers are on the small side.

Peter

Peter,

Tried the sauce last night on two pies. The sauce is dynamite. It had a bunch of hours, from 9am to around 8pm, to mature a little and the taste was exceptional.

However, I noticed one thing though over the course of the day...the sauce got a little thicker each time I checked and by the time I used it I had to add 1/4 cup of water to thin it out. Maybe that should be taken into consideration when coming up with a Baker's Percent conversion. More testing might also be in order.

But all that aside, the sauce is extremely good. Even my neighbor and his girlfriend, who received the first Luigi clone (Mona Lisa) last night, commented on it..."...sweet, nice touch of garlic, oregano and basil. Very fresh tasting."

Now to the pies themselves.

Crust was very good. I still need to get the thinness right but it had a nice structure, was easily foldable and made the same sounds you can hear in the video when the neighbor's GF bit into it. While I was over there, he put the Luigi video on his laptop to compare and noted that it was an identical pie except for the thickness of my crust, which was too much.

The bottom of the crust was nicely browned with a few dark spots and had a really nice crunch when you bit into it. The rim was also moderately browned compared to the pizza that came out of the pro oven. I need to go easier on the cheese, though, which brings up the question of how much Luigi actually uses, at least in his video.

I will make a few tweaks and see what happens with the next bake. The sauce, however, is pretty much set.