I was happy with the way the Buddy’s clone experiments went yesterday. They were nowhere near perfect, but I think I am making decent progress. At least the 3 attempts tasted very good, the bottom crust are crisp now, and my deck oven works without having to resort to placing the baked pizzas on the deck to crisp them up more.
I used my top deck to bake all three Buddy’s clones. They all baked well at about 536 degrees F. Two of the pans were greased with MFB and the one pan was greased with Canola oil. The two pans greased with MFB did give the bottom crust a little more crisp, but Canola oil was no slouch either.
After the first Buddy’s clone was made, Steve suggested we try not to sauce the pie before it went into the oven and to sauce it afterwards like Via 313 does. I told Steve that isn’t the way Buddy’s does it, but we could try that method since I already had attempted one Buddy’s clone with applying the sauce on after the cheese, than baking that way. The second Buddy’s clone was made with saucing after the bake. 4 ounces of sauce seemed too much when applied that way. In the third Buddy’s clone attempt much less sauce was used and that seemed fine.
I didn’t use any brick cheese this week. AMPI mild white cheddar and my blend of mozzarellas were used. In the 3rd Buddy’s attempt all AMPI mild white cheddar was used. The tastes of the pizzas using these blend of cheeses or cheddar were really good.
I also wanted to see if it made any difference if the dough ball sat out for awhile and then panned the dough to be tempered, or if the dough can be opened cold and then tempered for a little. I didn’t used the Hatco Unit for any of the tempers. The tempers were all done at room temperature. The ambient room temperature was about 75 degrees F. The second and third dough balls, were opened cold right out of the deli case and then left to temper for a little. It didn’t seem to matter if the dough ball tempered at room temperature, or if the dough balls were opened cold. All of the Buddy’s attempts had good oven spring and all were moist and tender in the crumb.
To explain the first Buddy’s attempt the dough ball was taken out of the deli case at 1:58 PM. It was left to temper at room temperature until 3:03 PM. The dough ball was then lightly floured and opened. It was easy to open and then it was placed in the steel pan. The dough tempered in the steel pan until 4:35 PM. It then was dressed and baked.
The weight of first attempt right after is came out of the oven was 1.2888 lb. This Buddy’s attempt did have 8 ounces of the cheese blend and 4 ounces of sauce applied. It can be seen on the dough ball the spacing of the poppy seeds when it was taken out of the deli case and after the room temperature temper. It did double in size before I used the dough ball to make a pizza. MFB was used to grease the pan for the first pizza. It can be seen in the picture of the steel pan how much the pan was greased with MFB. The first bake took 11 minutes 35 seconds.
Norma
