Where's Randy's recipe?

[basetwo]

Hey all...

I've been doing searches and going through many of the forums looking for Randy's recipe.  I see that others have commented on it and made conversions, etc. but I can't seem to find the original recipe.

I originally found this forum by searching for Papa John's type pizza and think I might have what I'm looking for with the posted sauce recipe and the "American Style" dough recipe, if I can find it.

Now that I've been reading, I'll have to try some of the other's as well.  Right now I just have a pizza stone and a two pizza pans, one perforated, the other solid, so I'll have to get some other pans for Chicago-style, etc.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Pete-zza]

basetwo,

When I was experimenting with Randy’s recipe, I incorporated one of his most recent versions at the opening post at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1707.0.html. In other versions, Randy occasionally makes slight changes to the amounts of the other ingredients, such as the amount of water, sugar, etc. One such version appears at Reply # 19 at  http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1698.0.html.

Peter

[basetwo]

Peter,

Thanks.  I had seen your "revisions" and had wondered where the original was or what you had derived your trials from.   That second post has what looks to be a simple recipe, so I think I'll start there and then try your modifications also.

Brian

[basetwo]

OK, I've made dough using the recipe Randy posted.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find a scale in time, so I'm sure the flour and water measurements weren't quite on.  I had a 5 lb. bag of flour so I tried to divide it as evenly as I could into 5 separate bags to get the 16 oz. of flour.

After finishing the 12 minutes in the kitchenaid mixer the dough was really sticky.  I formed a dough ball, although it didn't retain shape very well.  I put it in a gladware container and now after an hour in the fridge it has spread out to the edges of the container.  Is this normal?  Did I need to knead the dough longer?

Brian

[Pete-zza]

Brian,

Randy's recipe calls for a lot of yeast and very warm water (above 120 degrees F). Plus a lot of sugar/honey. As a consequence, you will get a fast rise with a lot of volume expansion, even while the dough is in the refrigerator. So what you have seen so far is normal for a dough made from a recipe like Randy's. If you can post a photo of the dough, we should be able to tell whether you can expect to encounter problems when you are ready to shape the dough into a skin.

Peter

[basetwo]

OK, here's my pics.   I added a knife to the side so you'd have a sense of scale.

[basetwo]

Also, the dough had risen enough to touch the top.  Last night I noticed that with the container sealed, it was really pressurizing in there, so I lifted a corner to relieve the pressure.  I wasn't sure in the recipe if "lightly sealed" was a typo for "tightly sealed"

As a suggestion, if it is just supposed to be lightly sealed, I'd make an edit to the recipe and say that the container is to "covered, not sealed" or something similar.

[Pete-zza]

Brian,

That's great. Thanks.

From the photos, the dough does look to be on the wet side. When made in strict accordance with Randy's recipe, the finished dough will have a firm, smooth outer skin with virtually no surface blemishes. And you will be able to handle it without the dough sticking to your fingers.

You may be able to "dry" the dough some when you are ready to work with it to make a skin by using a moderately floured work surface. I would place the dough on the floured work surface, gently flatten the dough into a round shape by pressing down on the dough, dust the top of the dough with a bit of flour, and press down with the fingers to spread the dough outwardly. That will absorb some of the flour from the work surface. Then turn the dough over and repeat the process. Between dusting the dough and pressing it into the floured work surface, you should be able to overcome the wetness. It's not the perfect solution because adding raw flour at this stage is far less preferable than adding it at the outset and letting it participate fully in the fermentation process.

Randy's recipe calls for using equal amounts of flour, semolina and cornmeal on the bench while shaping the dough into a skin. I do this and, in addition to adding a nice flavor touch to the finished crust, it also helps to absorb some of the moisture in the dough as the "blend" permeates the outer surface of the dough as it is shaped. If you have semolina and cornmeal, you might want to use them along with the flour as your "bench flour". BTW, I do not recommend that you knead more flour into the dough to overcome the wetness. That will in most cases toughen the dough and make it overly elastic and hard to shape into a skin. As a result, you will have to let the dough rest for some time to have the gluten relax enough to facilitate shaping.

Peter
P.S. In the future, you may want to use a round container. It will help keep the round shape for the dough and be a bit easier to handle later.

[basetwo]

Yeah, there's quite a bit of condensation on the inside of the container.  Also, I forgot to mention that I'm at roughly 5400 ft. in elevation (Colorado) so I'm wondering if that'd make a difference in what I should be doing.

I'll have to see if I can get to the store to get Semolina and corn meal, that wasn't mentioned in the directions I printed out.

So, do I understand you correctly that after the 12 minutes of kneading if it is still wet and sticky I'm to let it rest for a while before trying to shape the dough?  Should I use less water to begin with?

Thanks for the help.

Brian

[Pete-zza]

Brian,

I read your new member post and, after noting that you live in Colorado, passed on some thoughts on high-altitude baking.

It isn't absolutely necessary to use the flour, semolina and cornmeal blend. I have made doughs with and without the blend. I just thought that the blend might work a bit better than flour alone in absorbing some of the excess wetness in the flour.

When I commented about not kneading in more flour to overcome wetness, I was referring to the dough at the stage where you have it on the work surface and are getting ready to shape it into a skin. At that point, kneading the dough (i.e., to add more flour to overcome wetness) will usually toughen the gluten structure so that the dough can't be easily shaped. As a result, the dough must be allowed to rest until the gluten relaxes enough again to permit shaping. Sometimes this can take up to a few hours.

When the dough coming off of the dough hook is too wet, that is the time to add more flour to produce a drier dough. The dough can then go into your container and into the refrigerator.

In due course, should you decide to add pizza making to your list of serious hobbies, you will perhaps want to invest in a good digital scale to weigh flour and water. That will usually overcome most problems with dough wetness/dryness.

Peter

[basetwo]

1 hour ago I got the dough out, flattened it, folded it over once and then formed it back into a "ball".  Below is a pic showing how it looks right now.

I'm wondering if there are any tips I should be aware of for forming the skin a few hours from now, what temperature I should bake it at, and also if I should pre-cook the italian sausage I'll be using on the pizza.

Thanks for all the info so far.  I'm hoping I can get to the point where I'm showing my kids how to do this and we can have a fun time making pizzas.

Brian

[Pete-zza]

Brian,

From your description thus far, it appears that you have not been following Randy's recipe exactly. For example, it is not clear whether you used high-gluten flour and whether you refrigerated the dough, or for how long. Also, you haven't indicated whether you plan to make one 16-inch pizza or two 12-inch pizzas, as recommended by Randy. Unless you have a 16-inch stone, you may be limited to two 12-inch pizzas, which I assume your stone can accommodate. As between a stone and pans, I personally would go with the stone and preheat it for about an hour at around 500 degrees F. The stone should be positioned on the lowermost oven rack. I recommend that the sausage be precooked a bit, to about the pink stage.

When you are ready to make a skin, flatten the dough ball on your work surface and, using your fingers, press down on the flattened dough, starting at about the center, and work your way toward the edges so that the dough forms an increasingly larger radius. When you have gotten out to about 8-10 inches, you can lift the skin and, using partially closed fists under the skin, stretch the dough outwardly a little at a time. Gradually "flick" the dough from time to time to reposition it over your hands as you do the stretching but being careful not to work the center of the dough too much (which can cause the center of the dough to develop thin spots or even holes). When the skin has been stretched out to the final diameter, you should dress it on a peel dusted with flour, cornmeal or other release agent. Dress the pizza, and deposit it on your preheated stone by giving the peel a quick jerk forward so that the dressed pizza slides off of the peel and onto the stone. Before doing this, be sure the pizza is not stuck to the peel (which can happen if the dough is wet). To test for this, just shake the peel a bit to be sure that the pizza slides.

Randy's recipe specifies around 8 or 9 minutes total bake time if I recall correctly. You should watch the color of the crust. If it browns too fast, you can move the pizza up a rack position in your oven.

Good luck.

Peter

[basetwo]

Heh... I didn't see your post until the pizza had already been consumed.   

I have more pics and other observations on my experience that I'll share when I get a chance, I have some errands to run right now, though.  I did TRY to follow the recipe, and I'll give more specifics later as well on what I did from start to finish.  Maybe my trials can help others who are new to making pizzas as well.

Brian

[basetwo]

OK, here's what my first pizza looked like out of the oven.  When I grabbed the dough to start forming the skin, I noticed that the outside was VERY dry and you can see the result was the edge of the pizza looked "crusty" instead of smooth.  The bottom of the pizza was undercooked, but that should be easy to fix next time.  I'll post my thoughts shortly.

[basetwo]

OK, so here's where I started from...

Try this simpler recipe to get your feet on the ground.  I promise you it will give you a bakers window.  Then you can go Pete's recipe.

16 oz Bread flour

9.8  oz Water by weight(warm 120deg.  F

1 TBS  sugar

1 TBS Honey

1 Tablespoon  Classico Olive Oil or vegtable oil

2  Teaspoon Salt

1 1./2 teaspoons bread machine yeast

Mix flour sugar and salt.  Put yeast and half the flourmixture  in the mixer.  Mix the honey and oil into the very warm water.  Pour mixture into bowl and place mixer using dough hook on stir for about 2 minutes.  Stop mixer. Add the rest of the flour, then set mixer to stir until the dough pulls from the sides of the bowl then stop mixer for 5 minutes.  After the 5 minutes, go to speed 2 for 12 minutes.   On a lightly floured surface shape into a ball  Place in the refrigerator in a lightly sealed container coated with olive oil overnight or up to three days.

Remove 3  hours before panning
Remove from the fridge and flatten then fold, then shape into a ball using wet hands.
Makes a 16-18” pizza or two 12” pizzas

Randy

.
.

We were going grocery shopping, so I thought I'd see what I could find at the Super-Walmart. 

FLOUR USED:  For the flour, I bought Gold Medal "Better for Bread" flour.  It was the only flour that even remotely mentioned bread.  Upon reflection, what Randy and Gold Medal mean may be two different things.  I do seem to recall that someone mentioned high gluten flour = bread flour.  This is an area where I could probably use clarification.

YEAST USED:  Walmart had Fleischmann's BreadMachine Yeast, so that's what I used.  I think I actually got this part right.     

I also looked for any sort of scale to weigh things out, but came up empty handed.


At home making the dough...

Since I couldn't weigh out water (had no scale) I just tried to get as close to 9.8 fl. oz. of water I could.  I know that a fluid ounce of water doesn't quite equal an avoirdupois (av.) ounce, but it is close.  (1 fl. oz. = 1.0435 av. oz.) so I was off about .4 oz. when it was all said and done.  Also I didn't have any way to take that fine a measurement.

The mixing procedure itself was very precise and easy to follow especially since I have a KitchenAid Professional 5 mixer.

As discussed earlier, the dough came of the hook rather sticky and too wet.  I did go ahead and stick it in the fridge so it could rise overnight.


The next day...
About 15 hours later, I continued with the directions.  About 3 hours before I would form the dough into a skin, I removed it from the fridge and it's container, flattened the dough out, folded it in half once, and then pushed it back into a ball.  I did this on a surface with some flour spread out over it to mitigate some of the wetness observed earlier in the day.  The final result is pictured above.  I left it out on the counter for the 3 hours until I was to press it out.  Again, upon reflection, I'm not sure that I was supposed to have the dough in a completely sealed container, or that I was supposed to leave the dough sitting on the counter for that long, since I didn't have a smooth dough to press.  Here the directions weren't real specific.  The dough had dried areas that made it look the the cracked surface of a dry river bed or something.  Maybe that's due to the lack of humidity in this area?

I did use my fists to stretch the dough out and placed it on the 16" pan to finish pushing the dough out to the edges.  The dough had a roughly uniform thickness throughout, although next time I think I'd like it thicker on the very edge and thinner in the middle.  I baked the pizza at 475 degrees for 13-14 minutes.  Pictures of the final product are given above.  The bottom of the dough wasn't browned at all except maybe along the edges, but otherwise the pizza tasted acceptable.  I'm thinking of using the stone next time, although it's only 15" across and I don't have a peel to use to transfer the pizza to the stone.

[Pete-zza]

Brian,

Actually you followed Randy's directions better than I first believed. I suspected that you might not have a peel although I wondered since you said that you had a stone. I also guessed that you didn't have a pizza screen. That's an item you might want to consider buying to have on hand for future pizzas. It works very well with Randy's American style pizza and it is very inexpensive. If you do a search on this forum you will find a fair amount of information on screens and places where they can be bought.

I had forgotten that the recipe you used called for bread flour. An earlier recipe--the one I based my experiments on--called for high-gluten flour. High-gluten flour has a slightly higher protein content than bread flour, such as the one you used, but there's no reason why you can't get a decent American style pizza using bread flour. If you have a high-gluten flour, such as the King Arthur Sir Lancelot (KASL) flour, so much the better. Unfortunately, you will not find high-gluten flours at the retail level. If you can find a local distributor willing to sell to you, and you are prepared to buy a 50-pound bag, you can go that route. Otherwise, the remaining choices are to buy directly from King Arthur or from an intermediary (you can get some names if you look at the "50-lb. bags of King Arthur" thread).

I suspect the reason for the undercooked crust was the use of the pan with a dough that is thick by relative standards, and weighing around 27 ounces by my estimation. There appears to have been sufficient top heat since your photo shows the cheeses browning. I think the oven had a hard time providing heat on the bottom to bake the crust before the toppings were done. Next time, you may want to use the stone (you will have to get a peel or put together a makeshift transfer mechanism) and make two 12-inch pizzas on the stone, or buy and use a pizza screen. A 16-inch screen will work for both the 16-inch and 12-inch pizza sizes. I think you will get better results using either of these alternatives over a pan. In either case, I would use a higher oven temperature than the one you used, if such is possible.

As far as your dough management is concerned, you might want to put the dough directly onto a countertop or other work surface when it comes out of the refrigerator. I usually dust the work surface and the top of the dough ball lightly with flour and cover it with a sheet of plastic wrap to keep the surface from drying out and forming a crust. I have found 2 hours of counter time sufficient for me here in Texas where it is very warm, but there's no reason why 3 hours should be too much. Over time, you will discover whether altitude is a problem to contend with in your overall dough management. 

With a few changes along the lines mentioned above, I think you should be able to improve your pizzas. Having a good digital scale in due course should allow you to reduce potential problems involving the flour and the water.

Peter

[basetwo]

BTW thanks for all the help. 

I think now it's a matter of trial and error mostly.  Hopefully this weekend I'll do another one or two, and I'll see what I can justify spending to get a few pizza screens at least, and maybe a scale also.

I'll post with my experiences on the next round. 

Brian

[Lydia]

I was looking through my "modern Baking" periodical and saw a new add with Papa John endorsement. Maybe a similar one has appeared in PMQ.

Jerry Ayala, development manager is praising the G. Cinelli- Esperia Corp. machines (mixers) that have capacities ranging from 132 to 1000 pound batches. Specifically designed to endure "North American High Gluten content flours that are based on 50% absorption.

quote from John Ayala

"No matter how tough, the dough that comes out of these mixer is a vastly suprior product, no spiral or panetary mixer we've used in the past can compare. The dough is mixed homogenously; it has volumne and texture like nothing I've seen before. Needless to say, the pizza dough quality his improved noticeably - our customers love it. Hard to believe we could make a great product even better with a mixer!"

Has anyone who eats Papa Johns on a regular basis, noticed an improved dough?

What is the difference between North American High Gluten Flours from other high gluten flours?

Can we assume that Papa John's is using a 50% hydration?

Any clue about what "mixed homogenously" means regarding dough production?

[BigV]

I don't know about north american high gluten vs. other high gluten, but I do know a bit about mixers.

I've burned up a couple of used Hobarts.  As the dough reaches the end of the kneading the mixers will slow down a bit.  That strain burns them up pretty quickly.

When I bought my last mixer I bought a new one and Hobart has a "P" designator on the one I bought.  It is specificly for pizza dough.  It has a bigger motor and stronger gears than a standard mixer.  Specificly for handling the heavier dough.

The term homogenously refers to the even distribution of the ingredients.  You need to have everything mixed without over kneading. 

I'm sure John Ayala is speaking the truth.  You don't get where he is by being dishonest.

[Lydia]

Big V

Welcome to the board
and thanks for the response