Author Topic: Papa John's Pizza (Read 24255 times)

Randy · « **on:** October 22, 2007, 06:51:34 PM »

We have a few request to have a clone recipe for Pappa John's pizza. My American style is a perfect match and most find it even better than Pappa John's

I am posting my original recipe because it is best match, If you follow the forum you will see many different versions but this is a good place to begin.

Randy
Notes: You can use KABF but the high gluten flour will give you the best pizza.
Harvest King works well but still short of the KABF and KASL

16 oz High Gluten Flour (Hard Red Spring Wheat)

9.7 oz Water by weight(warm 120deg. F)

2 TBS raw sugar

1 TBS Honey

1 Tablespoon Classico Olive Oil

2 Teaspoon Salt

1 package SAF Perfect Rise or Gourmet yeast

Mix flour and salt. Put yeast and half the flour in the mixer. Mix the sugar and honey into the hot water. Pour mixture into bowl and place mixer using dough hook on stir for about 2 minutes. Stop mixer. Add Olive oil and the rest of the flour, then set mixer to knead. Knead for 6 minutes stop mixer for 5 minutes then start mixer back on knead speed for 6 more minutes. If the dough is sticking to the bottom of the bowl add a tablespoon of flour or more until the dough patch beneath the ball is say the size of a silver dollar. You may need to add water. Finish knead on a lightly floured surface and shape into a ball Place in the refrigerator in a lightly sealed container coated with olive oil. for overnight up to three days.

Remove 3 hours before panning
Remove from the fridge and either divide dough in half on a slightly wet marble or counter for two 12” pizzas or leave whole for one somewhat thicker 16” pizza. Work each piece of dough into balls with wet hands. Let rest for three hours

.
If using screens Preheat oven to 500 deg F Mix together an equal mixture of Semolina, flour and cornmeal. Liberally coat the dough ball and marble with the mixture. Shape dough and place on pizza screen and add what you want. Cook for 6-8 minutes on lowest rack in oven and WITHOUT a pizza stone.

Randy
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eric22 · « **Reply #1 on:** November 10, 2007, 04:56:56 PM »

Love your posts Randy.

Your the man

TronCarter · « **Reply #2 on:** December 21, 2007, 10:28:06 AM »

Randy,

Thanks for the post(s). I tried another version of your recipe that called for slightly less salt, 9.9 oz of water and 1.25 teaspoons of SAF. I have the big brick of SAF, can you tell me how much is in the packet that you used for this recipe? Is it still 1.25 t ?

Tron

Pete-zza · « **Reply #3 on:** December 21, 2007, 12:39:27 PM »

Tron,

I have several packets of the SAF Gourmet Perfect Rise yeast and, for the inner child in you, it is 0.25 oz. (7 g.), or 2 1/4 t.

. You should be able to use the SAF Red IDY the same way.

Peter

jerry bark · « **Reply #4 on:** January 16, 2008, 08:36:12 PM »

Hello Randy,

I wanted to let you know that i tried this recipe and it turned out really well.

Not quite the perfection that i am after, but close enough that it will be next time.

Thanks for posting a great recipe.
Jerry

TronCarter · « **Reply #5 on:** February 29, 2008, 08:08:31 AM »

I have made this recipe a few times and like it overall, but have found that it is a bit too chewy for me. I follow the mixing instructions in my KA 600 on speed 2 for 6 on, 5 off, 6 on. Am I kneading too much? or should I adjust the ingredients to make it less chewy?

Pete-zza · « **Reply #6 on:** February 29, 2008, 09:13:27 AM »

TronCarter,

This is somewhat generic advice, but if you are using high-gluten flour as called for by Randy's recipe, you can reduce the chewiness by switching to a softer flour, like a bread flour or a combination of high-gluten flour and all-purpose flour (or some other soft flour). Alternatively, if you are using Randy's recipe to make two 12" pizzas rather than a single 16" pizza, you can shorten the bake time so that the crusts don't have a chance to dry out too much and become too chewy. Another possibility is to use a higher bake temperature and a shorter bake time, which will also keep the crust from getting too dry too fast by retaining more of the moisture in the dough. This is likely to work better for the 12" size than the 16" size because of the thinner crust. Doing this with the 16" size might result in uncooked areas because of the significantly greater crust thickness. As you can see, you will perhaps have to tailor what you do to the size of pizza you are making.

Normally, adding more sugar and oil to the dough will have the effect of making the crust and crumb more tender but Randy's recipe already calls for using those ingredients in high amounts. So, I perhaps wouldn't touch those ingredients. Ideally, you want to stick as closely as possible to Randy's recipe and dough preparation and management steps.

Peter

Randy · « **Reply #7 on:** February 29, 2008, 05:49:37 PM »

Peter's post is dead on right. Of recent times I have been using bread flour and have very good success with both King Arthur and Harvest KIng.

Randy

TronCarter · « **Reply #8 on:** March 05, 2008, 07:48:01 AM »

I have been using KABF but perhaps I am cooking too long. My oven goes to 550 and I usually bake on middle rack for 7 minutes and the broil for a few minutes until the top is done the way I like it.

For what it's worth, I tried a batch with only one 6 minute knead cycle and didn't notice a difference between it and the normal two cycle batches.

Pete-zza · « **Reply #9 on:** March 05, 2008, 08:18:44 AM »

TronCarter,

What size pizzas have you been making and what amount of dough have you been using to make those pizzas?. Knowing that information, it may be possible to better diagnose your problem. The thickness factor for Randy's 16" pizza is greater than for his 12" pizzas.

Peter

TronCarter · « **Reply #10 on:** March 06, 2008, 08:12:18 AM »

Either I use the entire dough ball and make a 16", or divide the dough in two and make two ~10-12 inch pizzas. Last night I made the second of two 10-12" pizzas with 6 day old dough and it turned out much softer. I only cooked for 6 minutes at 550 and then broiled for a few to crisp the top a bit. I don't know if the shorter cook time was the sole reason it was softer (surely it contributed), or if the shorter knead and longer cold storage had anything to do with it.

Earlier, in another thread I believe, Pete-zza mentioned that there are a lot of lurkers here, or people that try the recipes and don't post their results. I would like to encourage everyone to post their results, good, bad, or indifferent. I'm a scientist and in my world there is no such thing as a "bad" result. If you tried something new and it didn't work out, or you didn't like it, it is still a result that the rest of us can learn from. We can learn just as much, if not more from a failure as we can from a success.

Randy · « **Reply #11 on:** March 06, 2008, 08:53:38 AM »

I was just thinking of about your using the broiler to finish the top of your cheese. I designed this recipe to brown the crust before the cheese browns. Try cutting the sugar and the salt in half. That will slow the crust browning.

Randy

TronCarter · « **Reply #12 on:** March 06, 2008, 09:18:42 AM »

Ok, I need to make another batch tonight for the weekend. Do you mean cut the salt and just the sugar in the raw in half, or the honey too?

Randy · « **Reply #13 on:** March 06, 2008, 10:08:04 AM »

where it calls for two tablespoons of sugar, make that one.
Where it calls for two teaspoons of salt make that one. If the flavor falls off too much then go with 1 1/4 teaspoons salt.

The point is, now that you are an experienced pizza maker using my recipe, start making some changes to match your taste and have fun doing it. Keep notes so you go back if you went too far in changes. I add revision numbers to my recipe file names and that really helps. I have many in the double digits.

TronCarter · « **Reply #14 on:** March 06, 2008, 10:45:48 AM »

Ok, I will post my results. Thank you.

Pete-zza · « **Reply #15 on:** March 06, 2008, 11:00:43 AM »

TronCarter,

Another approach you can take is to simply convert Randy's recipe to baker's percent format and select a desired thickness factor and pizza size. You can then use the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html to spit out all of the ingredient quantities. If I were using this approach, I would select a thickness factor of 0.13 and a pizza size of 14", both of which I believe are quite typical with a Papa John's pizza.

I have a lot of conversion data for the various ingredients used in Randy's recipe if you need help in doing a conversion such as noted above. Or, if you'd like, I can do it for you.

FYI, PJ now uses a proprietary flour blend that has a high protein content. The cheese, although 100% mozzarella cheese, is also a proprietary blend, which I think is supplied by Leprino's. I believe that PJ is also using a fresh-pack tomato, quite likely the ones from Stanislaus (because of the presence of citric acid in the sauce). Randy is spot on in terms of using high quantities of sugar and oil. I have seen a few PJ dough ingredients lists, and there is no doubt in my mind that they are using high levels of both sugar and oil (but no honey). I have read of a supposed "secret ingredient" in the PJ dough, such as flaxseed oil or meal, but I have not been able to find anything on that ingredient. It could be a smokescreen.

Peter

TronCarter · « **Reply #16 on:** March 08, 2008, 06:41:54 PM »

I made the dough on Thursday with half the sugar and half the salt. I made a 10" pizza with half of it today and am quite pleased. The crust actually tasted a bit better than my original recipe batches and it has quite a bit less chewy texture (but still some chewiness, which is great). I did have to go back to 7 minutes on bake and about 1 min on broil. I will also mention that I like my pizza to be a little darker on top than what the average person likes. I think if a restaurant were serving my style pizza it would be considered at the very dark end of "still acceptable" without being "burned".

I have a theory as to why the original recipe is a bit tough the way I cook it. I think there is still a substantial amount of sugar in the dough that the yeast hasn't eaten yet and since I cook mine a bit longer it goes past the browning stage and starts to caramelize the sugar a bit leads to the very chewy texture and a bit of an off taste. Lowering the sugar solves this problem and lowering the salt made no taste difference, but makes my doctor happy.

Randy · « **Reply #17 on:** March 09, 2008, 07:57:24 AM »

Glad we could help.

Adam T · « **Reply #18 on:** March 13, 2008, 09:53:11 AM »

This is a great recipe, thanks for sharing it.

I would like to resize this recipe for a 14" pizza using the Expanded Pizza Dough Calculator.
Would the following be an accurate listing of bakers percentages and thickness factor for this recipe?

(2) Round 12" pizzas
PJ Pizza thickness factor = .13

Flour (100%):      461.34 g | 16.27 oz | 1.02 lbs
Water (60.6%):    279.57 g | 9.86 oz | 0.62 lbs
IDY (1.6%):      7.38 g | 0.26 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2.45 tsp | 0.82 tbsp
Salt (2%):      9.23 g | 0.33 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.92 tsp | 0.64 tbsp
Olive Oil (6%): 27.68 g | 0.98 oz | 0.06 lbs | 6.15 tsp | 2.05 tbsp
Sugar (5.5%):      25.37 g | 0.9 oz | 0.06 lbs | 6.36 tsp | 2.12 tbsp
Honey (5%):      23.07 g | 0.81 oz | 0.05 lbs | 3.3 tsp | 1.1 tbsp
Total (180.7%):     833.64 g | 29.41 oz | 1.84 lbs | TF = 0.13
Single Ball:     416.82 g | 14.7 oz | 0.92 lbs

Pete-zza · « **Reply #19 on:** March 13, 2008, 01:26:28 PM »

Adam T,

I have been waiting for someone to try a thickness factor of 0.13. In due course, I am likely to do it myself once I have a better feel for the dough formulation that PJ may be using.

I'm not sure how you got your numbers. The dough weight for a dough ball for a 14" pizza using a thickness factor of 0.13 should be equal to 3.14159 x 7 x 7 x 0.13 = 20.01 oz.

When I first converted Randy’s dough recipe based on a calculated dough batch weight of 28.40368 oz., I got the following, using the expanded dough calculating tool:

Flour (100%):
Water (60.625%):
IDY (1.5625%):
Salt (2.46093%):
Olive Oil (2.97618%):
Sugar (5.27343%):
Honey (4.62499%):
Total (177.52303%):

453.6 g | 16 oz | 1 lbs
274.99 g | 9.7 oz | 0.61 lbs
7.09 g | 0.25 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2.35 tsp | 0.78 tbsp
11.16 g | 0.39 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2 tsp | 0.67 tbsp
13.5 g | 0.48 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3 tsp | 1 tbsp
23.92 g | 0.84 oz | 0.05 lbs | 6 tsp | 2 tbsp
20.98 g | 0.74 oz | 0.05 lbs | 3 tsp | 1 tbsp
805.24 g | 28.4 oz | 1.78 lbs | TF = N/A

When I used the same baker’s percents as given in the above table, but using a pizza size of 14” and a thickness factor of 0.13, I got the following:

Flour (100%):
Water (60.625%):
IDY (1.5625%):
Salt (2.46093%):
Olive Oil (2.97618%):
Sugar (5.27343%):
Honey (4.62499%):
Total (177.52303%):

319.59 g | 11.27 oz | 0.7 lbs
193.75 g | 6.83 oz | 0.43 lbs
4.99 g | 0.18 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.66 tsp | 0.55 tbsp
7.86 g | 0.28 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.41 tsp | 0.47 tbsp
9.51 g | 0.34 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2.11 tsp | 0.7 tbsp
16.85 g | 0.59 oz | 0.04 lbs | 4.23 tsp | 1.41 tbsp
14.78 g | 0.52 oz | 0.03 lbs | 2.11 tsp | 0.7 tbsp
567.34 g | 20.01 oz | 1.25 lbs | TF = 0.13

In practice, I would also use a bowl residue compensation factor of 1.5%, which I did not do in either of the above formulations. In your case, if you want to make two 14” pizzas, you would double the amounts in the second table. The tool will do it for you if you use the exact same numbers as used in the second table but specify two dough balls rather than one.

I look forward to your results should you decide to try the formulation with the thickness factor of 0.13.

Peter