Mellow Mushroom Pizza found in Atlanta and surroundin areas...Recipes?

[Ev]

Dear Norma,

I plan to make a pie with this dough tomorrow night!  You mentioned that you cook at 500 in your home oven, and 525 at the market.  can you tell me why?  Is it because the temperature is limited in one?  I will be cooking in a home oven that can get up to 550-ish.  You mentioned that one should be careful so that the bottom doesn't get overdone...  I will probably cook at 500, but i'm just curious as to why you use different temps in the different ovens.

Pete and Ev - what temps do you all cook at?

Thanks!   

 I bake at 550 in my electric  oven. I've never really timed it. Probably 7 or 8 minutes, until it looks done.

[Pete-zza]

Pete and Ev - what temps do you all cook at?

CDNpielover,

I have tried several different methods for baking MM clone pizzas but I found the best method for my standard home electric oven is to preheat my Cordierite pizza stone for about an hour at around 500-525 degrees F on the lowest oven rack position. Usually it takes around six or seven minutes to bake the pizza. If I put a lot of toppings on the pizza, I might lift the pizza on to the top oven rack position for about a minute to get more top heat to more fully brown the top crust and to melt the cheese better.

For some reason, MM stores seem to have baking issues. Diners are often told that the pizzas are "made to order" (many of the MM stores even have signs that say that) and that they should therefore expect long waits to get their pizzas. Unfortunately, to the dismay of many of their diners, that can mean as much as an hour, and sometimes even longer, even for a 10" pizza (based on Yelp reviews I have read). When I visited the MM store in Florida, I was told that the oven temperature was around 550 degrees F, and that a typical bake time might be around 10 minutes, depending on how many pizzas are in the oven at one time and how often the doors are opened and closed. In an MM video at

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvixfngmz-g&amp;feature=related" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvixfngmz-g&amp;feature=related</a>

, the pizza maker (Dustin) says to bake the pizza at 475 degrees F for 20 minutes. I have never been able to approach that time in my oven. I think the best I could do in that regard was around 10-11 minutes, and that was at around 475 degres F. I have read MM Yelp reviews from all around the country, and oven problems and bake times seem to be a common problem, and one that engenders a lot of complaints from diners. One reviewer sarcastically said that it took so long for his pizza to arrive that he was about to start chewing the edge of the table.

Peter

[Pete-zza]

I sifted the Power flour, added the oil to the water in the mixer bowl, added the sifted Power flour, salt, and IDY.  I mixed on speed one, while adding the Homemaid Molasses product, until I thought I had about the same color as the MM small dough ball.  I don’t think there will be enough of the Homemaid Molasses product in the dough to give much sweetness to the crust because there was only 31.25 gram of the Homemaid Molasses added until I thought the dough looked the right color.  The plastic container I used for the molasses I weighed first and it weighed 10.76 gram.  After part of the molasses was taken out of the container it weighed 35.73 gram, which I then subtracted 10.76 grams from.  That left 24.97 gram of the Homemaid Molasses in the plastic container which I then subtracted from 56.22 gram to get the figure of 31.25 gram I used in the dough.

Norma,

The 31.25 grams of the Homemaid Molasses that you indicated changes the baker's percent in the MM clone dough formulation given at Reply 1229 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3940.msg169585.html#msg169585 to around 10%. That is even lower than the 11% you used previously and where the dough and crumb seemed to me from your photos to be considerably lighter in color compared with the other molasses products we have tried. It was that difference that drew me back to the Homemaid Molasses.

I went back to my notes and to the Homemaid Molasses specs and depending on whether I use 20 grams or 21 grams for a tablespoon of the Homemaid Molasses, I get 13.2-13.86 grams of sugars and 15.4-16.17 grams of carbohydrate. If I use the Homemaid Molasses specs where the sugars are given in a range, the sugars are about 13-15.75 grams (again depending on whether I use 20 or 21 grams per tablespoon). By comparison, the Steen's product, which I recently used to make an MM clone dough, at 18%, has about 15 grams of sugars (and about 14 grams of carbohydrates). The Brix number for the Homemaid Molasses is 79-80, which is typical for molasses, and for the Steen's it is 75.6, but the difference is apparently due to the higher water content of the Steen's product. Since the color of my dough with the Steen's at 18% was lighter than just about all of my prior experiments, I thought for sure that the Homemaid Molasses could be used at levels higher than the 11% you previously used.

I guess at this point we should await the results and go from there. If the Homemaid Molasses is ruled out of contention, then that would seem to suggest that MM is using something like the Steen's product. If it weren't for the blackstrap molasses in the Golden Barrel Supreme Baking Molasses, I think that product would be a possible contender. Like the Homemaid and Steen's products, it is a "fancy" molasses, it has sugars at 13.4 grams per 20-21 grams per tablespoon (that number would be higher if no blackstrap molasses were used), carbohydrates at 15 grams per tablespoon, and a water content of 20% (just like the Homemaid Molasses). 

Peter

[Chicago Bob]

Dear Norma,

I plan to make a pie with this dough tomorrow night!  You mentioned that you cook at 500 in your home oven, and 525 at the market.  can you tell me why?  Is it because the temperature is limited in one?  I will be cooking in a home oven that can get up to 550-ish.  You mentioned that one should be careful so that the bottom doesn't get overdone...  I will probably cook at 500, but i'm just curious as to why you use different temps in the different ovens.

Pete and Ev - what temps do you all cook at?

Thanks!   

CDNpielover,

On page 50 you can see where I cooked one at 550 for about 7 mins.  I think you will be right where you want to be using your 500 degrees.    Enjoy!

Bob

[norma427]

Norma,

The 31.25 grams of the Homemaid Molasses that you indicated changes the baker's percent in the MM clone dough formulation given at Reply 1229 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3940.msg169585.html#msg169585 to around 10%. That is even lower than the 11% you used previously and where the dough and crumb seemed to me from your photos to be considerably lighter in color compared with the other molasses products we have tried. It was that difference that drew me back to the Homemaid Molasses.

I went back to my notes and to the Homemaid Molasses specs and depending on whether I use 20 grams or 21 grams for a tablespoon of the Homemaid Molasses, I get 13.2-13.86 grams of sugars and 15.4-16.17 grams of carbohydrate. If I use the Homemaid Molasses specs where the sugars are given in a range, the sugars are about 13-15.75 grams (again depending on whether I use 20 or 21 grams per tablespoon). By comparison, the Steen's product, which I recently used to make an MM clone dough, at 18%, has about 15 grams of sugars (and about 14 grams of carbohydrates). The Brix number for the Homemaid Molasses is 79-80, which is typical for molasses, and for the Steen's it is 75.6, but the difference is apparently due to the higher water content of the Steen's product. Since the color of my dough with the Steen's at 18% was lighter than just about all of my prior experiments, I thought for sure that the Homemaid Molasses could be used at levels higher than the 11% you previously used.

I guess at this point we should await the results and go from there. If the Homemaid Molasses is ruled out of contention, then that would seem to suggest that MM is using something like the Steen's product. If it weren't for the blackstrap molasses in the Golden Barrel Supreme Baking Molasses, I think that product would be a possible contender. Like the Homemaid and Steen's products, it is a "fancy" molasses, it has sugars at 13.4 grams per 20-21 grams per tablespoon (that number would be higher if no blackstrap molasses were used), carbohydrates at 15 grams per tablespoon, and a water content of 20% (just like the Homemaid Molasses). 

Peter

Peter,

Thanks for figuring out the calculations that using 31.25 grams of the Homemaid molasses puts me back to around 10%.  That is low amount.  I could have tried to add more of the Homemaid molasses, but was trying to get about the same color as the leftover MM dough ball. 

In figuring out how you get the numbers for the grams of sugars and grams of carbohydrates for the Homemaid molasses in comparison to the Steen products I am completely lost, but do understand your color of your dough was lighter using the Steen’s product at 18%, than just about all of your prior experiments. 

If guess I will await the outcome.  As I had posted before, I could not see any differences in the color of the Grandma’s Original Molasses and the Homemaid Molasses when looking at both of them.  I could always try to add more of the Homemaid molasses in another attempt and see what happens.  The dough with the Homemaid molasses was sitting on my kitchen table for over an hour and a half, until I wrote up my post, uploaded the pictures, then resized them.  The dough appear to be a little lighter when I went to do the balling after your post to just let it go.  I don’t know if while the dough was sitting on the table if the flour in the dough absorbed more of the color of the Homemaid molasses or not.  The dough was also starting to ferment because I had a higher dough temperature than I normally do from adding the Homemaid molasses slowly, combined with the longer than usual time before balling and freezing.

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

I say just proceed with the MM clone dough as it is. The reason why I calculate the amounts of sugars and carbohydrates is to get the best match with the MM Nutrition Facts. I usually start with an estimate of the amount of molasses and then do a lot of iterative calculations where I change values until I get everything to balance. I want the amount of the molasses (along with the right amounts of sugars and carbohydrates) and the formula hydration to be such that the total amount of water in the dough, including the water in the molasses and the moisture content of the flour, comes to about 40% of the total dough ball weight. I also try to get the "adjusted" hydration to be around 55% or so and the "effective" hydration to be a few percent higher (by the amount of the oil).

In the meantime, we will hopefully get CDNpielover's results. The Crosby molasses product he is using has a higher sugars content than most molasses products. The sugars are actually close to the Steen's product. What I am most interested in seeing is whether the color of his dough and crust is darker than an MM dough and crust.

Peter

[FLJohnson]

Peter,

I have been loosely following this thread for about a month and have made a couple of good pizzas using the information on the MM clones. What a great thread!

I haven't read all the posts, but I was curious about your efforts to standardize the sugar sources for sucrose equivalents. I think you are attempting to substitute one sugar source for another by keeping the sucrose contents the same. Is this correct? (Perhaps I don't understand the term "sucrose equivalency.")

Fred

[Pete-zza]

Fred,

I'm glad that you are enjoying this thread. For me, it's been like a dozen new revelations a day.

I originally came up with the idea of "sucrose equivalency" as a way of relating the sweetness of molasses to sucrose, or ordinary table sugar. I picked sucrose because pretty much everyone knows what sucrose tastes like and its degree of sweetness. As you may know, ordinary (generic) molasses, such as the Grandma's and Brer Rabbit retail brands of molasses, contains three sugars: sucrose (a disaccharide), fructose (a monosaccharide) and glucose (also a monosaccharide). You can see the percents of each at the bottom of Reply 4 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1272.msg31890.html#msg31890. By using the relative sweetness chart at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Relativesweetness.png, I have tried to convert each of the sugars in molasses to an equivalent amount of sucrose. I found that if the sum of the equivalency values in relation to the amount of flour in a given MM clone dough formulation was somewhere between 6% and 7%, then it was highly likely that the finished crust would be noticeably sweet. As it so happens, that value would pretty much coincide with a dough with about 6-7% sucrose.

More recently, I have not been doing the above calculation because I have been working with products like the Steen's 100% Pure Cane Syrup that are not usually called "molasses" but are deemed to be comparable or equivalent (some do call them molasses). Since I do not have the specs for the Steen's product, and have not been able to get that information from Steen's, and the amounts of the sugars, I have not done sucrose equivalency calculations for that product. Recently, however, I saw from the specs of another molasses product, called Homemaid Molasses, which is a commercial molasses from Domino Specialty Ingredients, that the Homemaid Molasses comprises 29-39% sucrose and 29-39% invert, which is a form of sugar that breaks down into glucose and fructose. I have not yet had a chance to see how those numbers convert to sucrose. The reason for the wide range for the sugars in the Homemaid Molasses is because there are multiple suppliers of the sugars to Domino and the numbers are different for the different suppliers.

Since I came up with the sucrose equivalency test on my own, I have no idea as to its legitimacy. However, I have applied it consistently from one product to another and it seems to work and to be a useful tool. Having used the tool for some time, I now have a general idea as to how much molasses or pure cane syrup is necessary to achieve noticeable sweetness in a finished MM clone crust, so I don't have to run the test each time.

I think our members who have been active in this thread would be most interested in hearing more about the results you have achieved using the information from this thread.

Peter

[CDNpielover]

Just finished cooking and eating my first MM pie - a "Fiery Hawaiian" like that from Dominos pizza.  It was a success, especially considering that I've never had a real MM pizza, and that this was my first experience with this dough.

I used corn meal in place of bench flour - is that what others have been doing?  I am not too sure whether I used too much corn meal or not - it was definately very noticable when eating the pie.  Is that normal?

I'm pretty sure I overcooked this pie.  The bottom was way too dark for my liking...  It didn't taste like carbon, but was definitely almost black.  Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of that, although you can kind of see it in the "side vies" pics below.  The rim and crust were also pretty tough and chewy (although i'm not sure how the cornmeal contributed to that).  I baked on a stone on the bottom rack with the oven set to 525 F (the stone was about 590-600 F).  I baked for 8 minutes, perhaps about 30 seconds longer as I was hoping my dang broiler would kick on (which it didn't) to better brown the cheese.  

I REALLY like how the rim on this pie just puffs right up, and the melted butter with garlic and parmesan are just killer on that rim!  A couple of VERY big bubbles did form along the rim; is that normal?

I read above that others have commented on the sweetness of the crust - this is something that I didn't notice.

Next time, I will definitely cook at a lower temperature, and probably for a shorter time.  I might also try cooking on my 15" perforated pan, as I am not very good sliding pies off of my peel and onto my stone which is probably only 16" ijn diameter.   The dough did slide off just fine, but it still makes me nervous haha!

[CDNpielover]

some pictures:

[CDNpielover]

more 

[norma427]

CDNpielover,

You did a great job on your first clone “Fiery Hawaiian” MM pie!   

You are right that corn meal is used in place of bench flour.  I don’t use a lot of cornmeal to open the MM doughs or very much on the peel.  I used just enough on the peel so the pie will slide easily into the oven.  I haven’t noticed the cornmeal when eating a real MM pie or the clone MM pies I made.  I am not sure if you used too much corn meal or not.  I use toasted cornmeal, but am not sure what kind of corn meal you tried, or if it really matters.

I think you might have over baked a little if the temperature of your pizza stone was between 590-600 degrees F and your bake time was about 8 minutes. 

I also like how the rim puffs up and how the melted butter, garlic, and parmesan go together.  I am not sure about your big bubbles.  They could be just from how you pressed your rim out, before stretching.  I also have gotten some big bubbles, but wasn’t sure why they appeared during the bake.

I wonder since you posted that you didn’t taste sweetness in the crust, whether you are going to have some of the same problems as some of the rest of us, in that the amount of Crosby’s molasses needs to be upped.  I also had the same problem with the Homemaid molasses earlier in this thread and might have the same problem again on Tuesday.  Your crumb does look very light.  Was it really light in color or was it just lighter in comparison to your rim?  I also wanted to ask you what color you dough ball looked like after you mixed and balled it. 

In my opinion the MM clones are the easiest pies to slide off onto the pizza stone.  Don’t get nervous, you did well. 

Thanks for posting the pictures and welcome to another MM clone pizza maker on this thread.   

Norma

[CDNpielover]

Dear Norma,

Thanks so much for your feedback!  I think the crumb looks light because of the lighting or my camera flash.  I just looked at the slices in the fridge, and they are definitely darker than the other pies i've made.  the dough was a nice tan/caramel color.  I wish I had taken some pics of it, I will take pics of the dough from my next one.   

[Jet_deck]

I wanted to share pictures of the MM pizza i had.  I think the forums version looks much better.
>> The pizza was a couple days old at this point<<

[norma427]

I wanted to share pictures of the MM pizza i had.

Gene,

Thanks for sharing the photos of the MM pizza you had.  The MM crumb does look lighter than most of the attempts I tried.

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Just finished cooking and eating my first MM pie - a "Fiery Hawaiian" like that from Dominos pizza.  It was a success, especially considering that I've never had a real MM pizza, and that this was my first experience with this dough.

I used corn meal in place of bench flour - is that what others have been doing?  I am not too sure whether I used too much corn meal or not - it was definately very noticable when eating the pie.  Is that normal?

I'm pretty sure I overcooked this pie.  The bottom was way too dark for my liking...  It didn't taste like carbon, but was definitely almost black.  Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of that, although you can kind of see it in the "side vies" pics below.  The rim and crust were also pretty tough and chewy (although i'm not sure how the cornmeal contributed to that).  I baked on a stone on the bottom rack with the oven set to 525 F (the stone was about 590-600 F).  I baked for 8 minutes, perhaps about 30 seconds longer as I was hoping my dang broiler would kick on (which it didn't) to better brown the cheese.  

I REALLY like how the rim on this pie just puffs right up, and the melted butter with garlic and parmesan are just killer on that rim!  A couple of VERY big bubbles did form along the rim; is that normal?

I read above that others have commented on the sweetness of the crust - this is something that I didn't notice.

Next time, I will definitely cook at a lower temperature, and probably for a shorter time.  I might also try cooking on my 15" perforated pan, as I am not very good sliding pies off of my peel and onto my stone which is probably only 16" ijn diameter.   The dough did slide off just fine, but it still makes me nervous haha!

CDNpielover,

I think you did very well for the first time.

I agree with everything that Norma has said about the bake time and temperature. On the matter of the top crust bake to get more cheese browning, instead of using the broiler you might just want to move the pizza off of the stone onto a higher oven rack position. I have not used the broiler on any of my MM clone pizzas. There is plenty enough heat at the top of the oven to do the job without having to use the broiler. However, if you find over time that using the broiler does a better job, then you might use it. I might also add that in most of the photos I have seen of MM pizzas, the cheese is not overly brown. I think that part of the reason is that many of the MM Specialty pizzas--which are among the most popular in MM's stores--have many toppings, and that keeps the cheese from getting much browning. I personally like the cheese to retain its natural white color.

With respect to the cornmeal, that is what I use and the amount is what sticks to my dough. I don't taste it in the finished crust although I can see signs of it.

On the matter of bubbling, from the timeline I put together from your recent posts, it looks like you made and froze the dough on Wednesday night, defrosted it on Friday, and made a pizza out of it on Saturday night. I don't recall reading how long you allowed the dough to warm up at room temperature before using and what that temperature was. Frozen dough balls don't get much fermentation (it is zero fermentation when in the frozen state), and it is common for bubbling to occur when the fermentation has been brief. In fact, the only fermentation takes place during the defrost period (and it takes a long time for the dough to completely defrost) and the temper period. When I have experienced bubbling in an MM clone crust, the bubbles have been soft and they sometimes deflate on their own or I simply pierce them with the tip of a kitchen knife. You can also get bubbling if the dough is overproofed or overfermented. Your dough wasn't old enough to experience that type of bubbling. Next time, you might try two days of defrosting. In one of the videos that Norma and I saw, the owner of an MM franchise said that their MM dough took two days to be ready to use. I personally like three days because that allows for more fermentation. But two days is also good.

The sweetness problem has been a vexing one. Trying to get the proper balance between dough/crust color and sweetness with existing brands of molasses, including some from commercial sources, like the Homemaid Molasses from Domino Specialty Ingredients, has been a real challenge. It is also hard to advise on these issues because it is not possible to get a reliable benchmark color against which to compare our efforts. Different cameras and different lighting conditions are just too variable and unreliable. For that reason, I have been using a brown coffee filter for color comparison purposes. In Norma's case, she has a sample of a real MM dough so she is in better shape than the rest of us. However, seeing photos of the your next iteration of an MM clone dough might at least tell us if you are clearly too light or too dark with the color.

Good luck on your next MM clone.

Peter

[CDNpielover]

Dear Pete,

I should have been more descriptive about my dough procedures.  It was in the freezer for 24 hours, refrigerator for 48 hours, and warmed on the counter at room temperature (about 70 F) for a bit over 2 hours.   

[norma427]

I mixed a color test clone MM dough ball today, to see how close the color of the MM clone dough I am using is compared to the frozen dough ball from MM.  I didn’t do that test before, because I didn’t think about it last week. I did the test for color from the formulation I am using that Peter set-forth at Reply 834 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3940.msg161938.html#msg161938  but I used KASL flour which I normally do.

The dough looks shaggy because it was just taken out of the mixer, but the color of the clone MM dough ball doesn’t look too far off from a real MM dough ball, at least in my opinion.  I took the picture in natural daylight so maybe the colors of the two doughs could be seen better.

Today when I was at the supermarket I looked at Lyle’s syrup again to really see what color Lyle’s syrup was.  It is very light in color, unlike the molasses products we have been trying.  Lyle’s golden syrup comes in a glass container so I could see the color. Lyle’s golden syrup looks like the picture under the Production heading on this link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_syrup  I would have bought a glass container of Lyle's to test, but it was rather expensive for a small glass container, and I didn‘t know it using Lyle’s for tests would help this thread or not.  In the future in someone wants me to do tests on the Lyle’s syrup for a clone MM dough I will buy a glass container.

Norma

[DNA Dan]

Have you considered adding white sugar or non-diastatic malt powder to the dough formulation? On my tongue malt powder imparts almost the same or more sweetness to the dough as regular table sugar.

[Pete-zza]

Have you considered adding white sugar or non-diastatic malt powder to the dough formulation? On my tongue malt powder imparts almost the same or more sweetness to the dough as regular table sugar.

Dan,

From its founding in 1974, and to this day, Mellow Mushroom has said that there are no refined white sugars in its dough or sauce. And the only sweetener used in the MM dough is molasses.

I tried a combination of Grandma's Original molasses and Eden barley malt syrup in an MM clone dough formulation and the barley malt did not contribute much to the overall sweetness. As you can see at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Relativesweetness.png, maltose has a relatively low sweetness factor compared to sucrose.

I believe that Norma has samples of malt products from Malt Products Corporation but has not to date used them in MM clone dough formulations. Maybe when this project has been concluded, we can consider some kind of dough formulation that might benefit from the malt products.

Peter