Pizza Market Place's review and predictions

[DKM]

http://www.pizzamarketplace.com/news_story.htm?i=17906

[Randy]

I've been reading a lot about the take and bake pizzas.
Anybody tryed one?

Randy

[DKM]

No, but I am wondering how they are packaged.

DKM

[Bean]

They are disgusting!  We tried it about 8 years ago and all three of us were sick for days.  That was enough to never try it again even in all the different states we have moved to and out of.

[Lydia]

I've had my fair share of take-in-bake's of both decent and disgusting calibur. They vary in quality just like traditional pizza's.

The packaging varies too. Papa murphy's uses a bake-able paper tray, but most establishments use food-grade cardboard rounds dusted with cornmeal, with or without parchment paper under the prepared skins (Some places offer parchment as an option). These are sealed in high-grade food plastic or shrink wrap.

[BigV]

Take and bake requires what I call a dead dough. 

You have to assume the pizza is going to be at ambient temps for a period of time.  Usually the trip home.  The last thing the customer wants is a fat doughball wilth the toppings rolling off.  You have to make sure the dough is not going to rise.  Hence, dead dough.

The most common packaging is a paper tray that has a curved up lip.  It is designed so the pizza is baked and served with it attached.  They are a bit pricey, but is the only packaging that really works.

I experimented a bit with take and bake a few years ago.  While fresh made sounds good, I found that frozen was the best way to go to keep the flavor up.  Only drawback was long bake times.

A lot of people think they are getting a better pizza because they are baking it at home and eating it right away.  I think slow delivery adds to that mis-conception.  Pizzas that sit in a delivery box too long become damp.  Yuck.

[Pete-zza]

Big V,

I have been experimenting with take-and-bake versions of the Lehmann NY style dough, and your characterization of the dough as "dead" is fairly accurate. Because the doughs are pre-formed into skins, cold retarded, and dressed a day or so later for "the trip home", the doughs can't have a lot of yeast. While I haven't tried using a coated leavening system like WRISE yet, I have tentatively concluded that products like WRISE make sure that the dough will rise when the pizza hits the oven. In the case of WRISE, it is designed to be activated only in the oven. That way, the dough won't rise in the back seat of someone's car for the trip home or if the unbaked pizza sits around too long before being baked. An apparent negative of the leavening systems is that they introduce a different flavor profile to the finished crust that takes some getting used to. 

Peter

[Lydia]

Is the flavor or the WRISE similar too the frozen oven-rise pizzas in the supermarket?

[Pete-zza]

Lydia,

I believe so. In addition to being used in take-and-bake doughs, WRISE is also used in bake-to-rise and other frozen doughs. It is a chemical leavening system made up of a blend of sodium aluminum phosphate (SALP) and baking soda. The flavor residue of the SALP is biscuit-like. I would imagine that the soda also contributes its own flavor residue to the finished crust.

Peter