In my experience, I haven't noticed a difference. Peter made a separate thread ("Life in Big Bites...") for the recipe I've been using, so I won't repeat it here, but in addition to having the bulk dough rise, I've found that, as that recipe specifies, the dough only needs to sit in the pan for 10 minutes and it spreads easily, so you might not need as many pans as you might think: If you have room for that much dough, you can leave it all in one piece, in the vessel in which you mixed/rose it and break off a chunk, weigh it and spread it out in the pan 10 minutes before you want to dress it. So you might want to try it with your own emergency dough.
If you want separate dough balls, then you could still cut down on the number of trays by putting the balls in those aluminum stackable single-ball things or in the wide dough boxes that the Neopolitan pizza guys use, that hold six dough balls. Well, however you want to handle it (if you do), the point is, with an emergency dough, you might not need any more blue steel pans than are necessary to allow the dough to sit in them for just ten minutes.
Gene
Gene,
I don’t think I am going back to an emergency dough for a Buddy’s clone. As I commented to you before my pizza stand is very small and I would have to get up very early to mix dough before market and I don’t want to have to mix more than one batch of dough on market day because there is only Steve and me working. When the weather gets warmer in our area (can be up to 96 degrees F in the summer inside my market stand) a long day has me tired out. Attempting emergency dough batches also creates more dirty things to wash and Steve or I have to do all the dishes by hand. I also don’t have a lot of room to stack any kind of pans or wide dough boxes in my coolers. Regular dough boxes can’t even be stacked in my pizza prep fridge. I learned that from when I first started making pizza about what else to try instead of dough boxes and Tom Lehmann told me to use food plastic bags for my dough balls. That is what I have been doing for my NY style dough balls since I started making pizza at my small market stand, until now when I started putting the Buddy’s clone dough balls directly in the pans.
On the practical side how would someone manage an emergency dough that is fermented in such a short time, if that the dough only need 10 minutes to rise in a steel pan? I sure don’t know, but would think there would need to be many batches of that dough made each day or the dough would become over fermented. What happens if there are periods of not selling Detroit style pizzas.
Norma,
I would just tell the customers that the cheese is your own secret blend. Why spoil a mystery?
Regarding getting the bake time right, I've been wondering the same thing. These aren't like ordinary pizzas that sit directly on the oven floor and you can pick them up to see if the bottom is done. I suspect that's the reason Buddy's switched to a conveyor oven: You put the pizzas in, sequentially, at one end, each one bakes for precisely the same amount of time, at precisely the same temperature, and pop out at the other end, ready to serve.
Unfortunately, I suspect that you might not have enough room in your stand, plus I hear that those conveyor ovens are expensive.
Gene
I agree it would be better to say the cheese is our own secret blend.
Regarding the bake time, it is something you learn from watching how the doughs bake in the steel pans and also how the cheeses brown on the top. I have been playing around with this formulation for a few months so I have learned somewhat when the Buddy’s clone pizzas will be done. At first I timed them, but now I don’t have to time the bake.
I really don’t know why Buddy’s changed from deck ovens to conveyor ovens, but would imagine they are easier to operate and employees don‘t need to watch the pizzas as closely. I don’t know if you saw in this thread where Peter mentioned what conveyor ovens Buddy’s changed to different times. You are right that I wouldn’t have enough room in my stand for a conveyor oven and I like doing things the old-fashioned way of baking in a deck oven. When I first was thinking about what kind of oven I wanted for my little pizza stand I had considered a conveyor oven, but wanted to bake pizzas in a deck oven after giving it more thoughts. You are right that new conveyor ovens are very expensive.
Norma,
Well, if people love your pizzas so much that you can't keep up, how about opening an actual restaurant?
Gene
I have thought about what happens if I can’t keep up with the Buddy’s clone pizzas and my regular pizzas, but I am far too old to open an actual restaurant. My late husband and I did run 3 other market stands before and also had a concession trailer that we took to other events. I know how much work that was and sure am not going to get into all that work again.
I get tired just thinking about all of that work we did before. I had been toying with the idea of purchasing a food truck but really don’t think I am up for that either.
Norma
