Clone Wars!

[wucactus1]

Being a college student enrolled at the University of Kentucky we are surrounded by cheap, amazing food and there seems to be two types of food that dominate the scope of variety easily accessed around campus...Burgers and Pizza.  We have 3 locally owned burger joints and 5 pizzerias(Goodfellas, Pazzos, Mellow Mushroom, Slice of Chicago, and Mad Mushroom).  With this said it is easy to fill your stomach for under 8 bucks, but being a student I am perpetually broke and sometimes this 8 dollars is harder to come by then one wight think so I have as I posted before resorted to making pizzas at home, in a home oven, using a stone.  Now as many of you understand this does not mean a reduction in quality by all means, in fact I think my goodfellas clone pizza is just as good if not better now then the actual pizza as well as a couple of the other pizza joints around...Now I have set myself a goal and that is to clone mellow mushroom, pazzos, and goodfellas(already achieved).  I have no moved on to the locally owned  and operated Joint Pazzos.  There dough has eluded and confused me since I have started making pizza...I have just recently nailed there flour(all trumps bromated) down as well as some of the ingredients for the sauce(escalon 6n1 and they had some primo gusto case...sauce or cheese idk?)  They advertise a Wisconsin cheese and Im assuming its grande unless primo gusto cheese is from there...  Slowly the puzzle pieces are falling together but yet one thing is missing and thats their coloration in the dough and crumb...It is a fairly dark brown/tan color that could be molasses, but when I attempted a pizza with 3% molasses it did almost nothing at all, and I don't think they are exceeding 3% because there dough doesnt really have a sweet/"cinnamony" taste too it...It could possibly be dianastic malt syrup/powder?
Needless to say I am obsessed with cloning these pizza to the point where it is cutting into my studying...and funds as I broke down and actually ordered 10lbs of AT Bromated flour from pennmac in hopes of successfully achieving the goal of cloning pazzos pizza...Again please any insight or info on what you think maybe the case would be outstanding...I again cant upload pictures but will as soon as I get the cord...will try but is Pazzo's Url maybe something there will help pazzospizzapub.com

[Pete-zza]

wucactus1,

A liquid non-diastatic barley malt syrup might be what is giving the crust and crumb a tan color. I have tried using barley malt syrup a few times and could see the tan color in the crumb, as I noted in the second photo at Reply 56 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,2061.msg40413.html#msg40413 and also in the photos in Reply 46 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5851.msg55474.html#msg55474. Dry non-diastatic barley malt is somewhat hard to come by in small quantities, so I have not tried that form of barley malt to see if it also colors the crumb.

Peter

[wucactus1]

I really appreciate all your help!  Is this malt additive pretty common within pizzas...The owner of Pazzos was an old Mellow Mushroom manager and Im sure he may have stolen some trade secrets from them, is this in their dough as well as molasses?  Im excited for my all trumps flour to come in and see if the bromate is what its all cracked up to be and the missing component to solving this pazzos riddle, Im sure I wont be disappointed!  As far as your knowledge on sauce...do a lot of pizzerias just use escalon 6n1 right out of the can, plain or do you know if they prescribe to any specific recipe perhaps one on escalons website, if so which do you think is more likely?e

Thanks for your help...Im going to go to whole foods this weekend and get the malt and hopefully my flour will be in early next week so I can make some dough...Im grabbing a slice of Pazzo's pizza tomorrow during lunch(3 dollar jumbo white slice) to save for dinner...Ill see if I cant borrow a camera or something...

[Pete-zza]

wucactus1,

From my reading I have not sensed that barley malt syrup is used by many pizza operators. The same goes for molasses although John Correll, an industry consultant, mentions molasses as a dough ingredient in his encyclopedia on pizza at http://www.correllconcepts.com/Encyclopizza/04_Dough_ingredients/04_dough_ingredients.htm. See, also, the thread on molasses at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1272.msg11417.html#msg11417 and Reply 8 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1468.msg13361/topicseen.html#msg13361. Generally speaking, given a choice, I think that pizza operators would prefer to work with dry forms of ingredients than wet ones, just because of the messiness in working with sticky, gooey things like barley malt syrup, molasses, and honey. But, no doubt, there are old recipes around that call for such ingredients and the pizza operators continue to use them.

It is hard to generalize about what pizza operators use in the way of pizza sauces, even when you know what kind of tomatoes are being used, like the 6IN1 tomatoes you mentioned. I sense from my reading that most pizza operators like to add some herbs and spices to their sauces and some like to combine different types and brands of tomatoes in order to create a signature sauce. When I have tried to reverse engineer pizza sauces, I will sometimes ask the workers at the pizza shop for a sample of their pizza sauce on the side (I tell them it is for dipping the crusts). You can then taste the sauce and examine it for signs of added herbs, which will look like specks in the sauce. People with sensitive palates can often identify the types of herbs used (the most common one appears to be oregano), and also garlic powder, salt, and pepper, which are common sauce ingredients. Sugar added to the dough can sometimes be detected, although some tomatoes, like the 6IN1's, are naturally sweet. Oil in the sauce can often be detected because the sauce has a glossy look to it.

Peter

EDIT (2/1/2013): For an alternative Correll link, see http://web.archive.org/web/20040606220400/http://correllconcepts.com/Encyclopizza/04_Dough_ingredients/04_dough_ingredients.htm