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

[tonymark]

Cory, your pie looks good.  I enjoy a sweet pie.  Try blue cheese, pineapple, red sauce and mozz.  After baking, add some high quality aged balsamic vinegar.  

As for you starter, 40% is a lot of starter.  I am not surprised about the strong sourdough taste.  I typically use about 18%(baker's) and cold ferment for 1-2 nights.  I like the Varasano spreadsheet calculator because it is set up for using a SD starter (http://www.varasanos.com/Dough/PizzaRecipe.xls).  Here is my typical dough for 4 pizzas.

Ingredient    Grams    Bakers %   Total %
Flour            743.98    100.00%   56.58%
Water    420.09    56.46%   31.95%
Starter    131.50    17.68%   10.00%
IDY    -      0.00%   0.00%
Salt            19.43    2.61%   1.48%
           1,315.00              100.00%

   

[rcbaughn]

Thank you Peter and Norma! The flavor was awesome and the texture was good, but I think I might have slightly over baked it. I think I need to cut down my cooking time, I have been doing it on 460 for about 16 mins, and sometimes the crust comes out a bit stiff after sitting and cooling. Are the crusts really fluffy and tender on y'alls attempts? It may be the formula I am using as well, but I do still enjoy it very very much. And Norma, I am sure the flavor would be even better with a name brand starter. I can only imagine how good it would be.

And Peter, I am sure I will use IDY and ADY probably quite frequently in the future. My big big problem with pizza making is the overnight fermentation. I usually am not thinking ahead and have to work with a same say dough, and commercial yeast is pretty nice for those times since you have to use a high high amount of starter in a 4-5 hour dough and it still isn't as fast as commercial yeast can be. Like you said they're all tools in the pizza arsenal. Some recipes just wouldn't be proper using a sourdough starter.

I do have a question for you though Peter. Are the flavors more pronounced and texture any different in an overnight or several day refrigerated sourdough crust vs. one that would use a lower percent of starter and go from anywhere between 12-24 hours at room temp? I am very interested in using my starter with room temp only applications. All my doughs seem to come out better when I do not refrigerate them and use only room temp rises, and that includes the commercial yeast doughs I've worked with. I may be doing something wrong though in my attempts, but all the refrigerated ones have come out extremely slack and usually end up stretching way too thin in the center, while the room temp ones stretch out amazing and have much less spring back when I place them on the peel to dress.

And Tony, thank you so much for the topping idea, all I need to try that out is the bleu cheese since I ate the entire block that was leftover last night..... Ha. And pineapple is one of my favorite things with canadian bacon so I bet with bleu cheese it would be phenomenal. I am a sucker for a good pork product though. And yeah, I am looking forward to working with lower percent starter recipes in the future and seeing how they turn out, I just need to get the whole starter and fermenting time-concept down.

[Pete-zza]

I do have a question for you though Peter. Are the flavors more pronounced and texture any different in an overnight or several day refrigerated sourdough crust vs. one that would use a lower percent of starter and go from anywhere between 12-24 hours at room temp? I am very interested in using my starter with room temp only applications. All my doughs seem to come out better when I do not refrigerate them and use only room temp rises, and that includes the commercial yeast doughs I've worked with. I may be doing something wrong though in my attempts, but all the refrigerated ones have come out extremely slack and usually end up stretching way too thin in the center, while the room temp ones stretch out amazing and have much less spring back when I place them on the peel to dress.

Cory,

That is a difficult question to answer, particularly if it is in respect of a Mellow Mushroom clone dough where you are the only one to date to use a natural preferment for that dough. However, it is possible to get an overly slack dough whether you are using a natural preferment for a room-temperature fermented dough or a cold fermented one. Under the right conditions, the enzymes and acids can attack the gluten structure in either case, rendering the dough slack and maybe even wet or clammy. It all depends on the DNA of the starter culture and its degree of readiness, how much preferment is used and how long the dough is fermented, either at room temperature or in the refrigerator (or possibly a combination of both), and the temper time and temperature when you are ready to use the dough. One of our members, pizzanapoletana (Marco) took a stab at trying to correlate a room-temperature fermented dough with a cold fermented version and, as noted at Reply 9 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3057.msg25932/topicseen.html#msg25932, he opined that it would take 3-4 days of cold fermentation to achieve comparable results to his room temperature version. That was with respect to a particular dough formulation so some other formulation can yield a different correlation time period.

With natural starters and preferments, I personally think the best approach is to use them with a standard dough formulation (maybe an MM clone dough formulation in your case) until you have mastered their use rather than jumping from one dough formulation to another, especially if you are trying to convert an existing dough formulation that uses commercial yeast to one using a natural starter or preferment. I think your learn more from that approach and retain what you learn better. To me, its like learning one language, and learning it well, rather than trying to learn say, five languages essentially simultaneously and in a random and piecemeal fashion.

Peter

[rcbaughn]

Peter, I am making a batch of the natural starter dough tonight and I am going to have two dough balls after splitting it up. At what point did you go about freezing the dough in your last attempts? Was it right after splitting, or did you let it rise a bit before placing in the freezer? My plan was to make my dough, let it double, punch down and divide, then proof one for tonight and place the other one in the freezer. I didn't know if I needed to freeze the dough before I let it rise any though instead of after the first rise. -Cory

[Pete-zza]

Cory,

I make only one dough ball at a time and I go to the freezer right after it has been made. I also tried resting the dough for a brief period before freezing but can't say that I noticed a difference. I don't have any idea of how Mellow Mushrrom does it in its commissary.

Peter

[rcbaughn]

Thanks so much Peter, I'll just divvy up the dough right after mixing and freeze the one and let the other one double before I ball it. I am interested to see the effects of balling on this dough while using starter. I'm not adding any vital wheat gluten either to see how that affects the taste and texture since I haven't made a pie since Scott pointed out that in his opinion it changes the flavor in a negative way. Guess I'll find out tonight whether I'll continue using it or not. Thanks a lot for the help Peter.

[rcbaughn]

Well I had my first crust failure with the Mellow recipe using my personal starter last night. It wasn't the dough's fault, or the starters, but mine I feel. I seriously have huge reservations about refrigerating dough of any kind, ADY, IDY, or starter leavened. I have never ever ever ever ever had good results doing so and that is a bit of a let down since so many recipes call for it! The only lift I got on the cornicione was between the very bottom layer and the rest of the dough from the heat of the stone, so a paper thin layer at the bottom and the rest of the dough sitting densely above it with a pocket of air seperating. The rest of the pie was very dense too, nothing like my other Mellow pies with have turned out absolutely wonderful.

I guess this isn't the place to be discussing the regiment of refrigerating sourdough recipes, but I was pretty bummed since the pie had so much potential. (Gulf shrimp, red onions and artichoke pesto) The only thing that really brought the night up was the new metal peel that finally was shipped to me for retrieval. You can really hold a pie close to the broiler towards the end with it like no other piece of kitchen equipment. I think everyone who bakes pies on a regular basis in a home oven should invest the money in one, it really does make everything easier and made the whole experience much better, even though it didn't turn out that well.

-Cory

[tonymark]

You need a really rocking culture to get a good cold fermentation to be successful.  I have made over a 100 cold fermented pizzas and have had at least a dozen come out on the poor side.  I am sure someone could send you a good culture, but you should be able to get yours going.  The wetter the culture is the more active it will be.  Keep it batter like and at room temp for a few days and add filtered water (no chlorine) and flour 2-3 times a day.  You will have to dump half the starter ever so often, but it will eventually be foaming out of the jar.  That is when it is time to use it.  Once you cold ferment the dough, if it looks like it has not risen then it is not ready.

How long are you leaving it in the fridge?  How long do you let it come to room temp?  It must be over 70 F to make a pizza with it.

There was some discussion a while back on this forum about fermenting 24 hrs at around 65-68 F (the perfect temp range for fermenting a good ale).  I have had good results with a cooler, a towel and a small cold pack.  You really need to check this once during the day of baking to decide if the cold pack needs to come out of the dough need to brought to room temp for a few hours.

Good luck,
Mark

[rcbaughn]

I actually just got an Ischia starter thanks to a very good friend and it is up to par for baking, so early next week when I leave dad's for the weekend I'll get back to college and whip up a new batch of dough and give the Ischia a go with cold fermentation. I used 40% starter in my recent dough recipes since I wanted a fast rise due to my mis-planning of dinner, so I may need to reduce that A LOT for cold fermentation. And my starters are always kept at 100% hydration if that is the consistency you think of a pancake batter. I know for me that it's worked well in past bakes.

I think the last time I cold fermented a dough it was in there for four hours, mostly because there was such a high amount of starter. It was out of the fridge for about two hours, just like I have with IDY based doughs. But like I said even those don't turn out wonderful, case in point my first PH pan pizza attempt. The second one attempt at the PH pan with room temp shorter fermentation was much better in terms of texture and rise. I guess I need to just figure out a schedule that will work best with one certain dough formula and use that for my cold ferment version. I have been bouncing a lot of different formulas around recently so I will try to stick to the Mellow Dough formula I used last time to work with the cold fermentation. I can hopefully adapt it to my other attempts if I like the end results then.

[Pete-zza]

Cory,

I don't see any particular advantage to using a natural starter such as your Ischia culture to make a naturally-leavened Mellow Mushroom clone dough. Refrigerating such a dough only slows down the action of the starter and the enzymes to the point where you get sub-optimal performance out of the starter and enzymes because their temperatures are below their optimal values. What this usually means is that when you take the dough out of the refrigerator to warm up, you will have to make up for all of the time that the dough was held at below optimal temperatures. This might take many hours. To give you an example of what you might be getting into, you might take a look at Reply 38 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6758.msg60892.html#msg60892. In that post, I described how I modified a Papa John's clone dough formulation to use the Ischia culture in lieu of commercial yeast but where I kept the fermentation (cold fermentation) at several days (in this case, about 4 1/2 days). As I noted in that post, the dough rose only 10-15% during that time, and that was with the Ischia preferment at 25% of the weight of the formula flour (or almost 45% of the weight of the formula water). Although I ended up with very good results, it was at the expense of having to give the dough enough time to make up for its prolonged retention at low temperatures. In retrospect, the better course would have been to make a naturally-leavened clone dough that fermented only at room temperature or under a controlled temperature more in line with the optimal fermentation temperature (around 65 degrees F).

I am a strong believer in learning by doing, so I don't want to discourage or deter you from attempting a naturally-leavened cold fermentation version of a Mellow Mushroom clone dough. As I discovered with my naturally-leavened cold fermented Papa John's clone dough, it is possible to recover from less than optimal fermentation protocols. In my case, it helped that I used the poppy seed trick because it told me where in the expansion spectrum my dough was pretty much at every stage of its fermentation. When the expansion eventually got to 100% (a doubling), I pretty much knew that the dough would work.

Peter

[rcbaughn]

Yep I see exactly what you mean Peter. Not long after I posted that the other day I came across something on the forum talking about the effects of refrigeration on natural starter doughs and how it is better to shoot for a room temp fermentation with less starter than trying to retard a dough in the fridge with a higher amount of starter. I actually just pulled out some brioche dough I made up over a week ago with ADY as the leavening and the recipe never even called for refrigeration of the dough, and it still had enough oomph to rise over a couple of hours at room temp. I suspect that ADY/IDY is better suited to cold fermentation/my negligence, or at least that's always been my experience. All my room temp doughs have come out far better though.

And you're right, experimentation is always good, especially with dough as I'm finding out. I just gotta start sticking to fewer dough formulations and start perfecting them with my oven and schedule. LOL, but I guess as long as I'm having fun doing it and it turns out edible that is all that matters.

[mellowjamie]

im hoping this thread hasnt completely died.  i just spent eight hours reading it!!   i live hours away from a mm and it hurts!!!   what happened here??   

[norma427]

im hoping this thread hasnt completely died.  i just spent eight hours reading it!!   i live hours away from a mm and it hurts!!!   what happened here??   

mellowjamie,

This thread hasn’t died, members just aren’t posting on this thread right now.  If you want to try to make a MM pie you can tell us what kind of flours you have access to, if you own a pizza stone, scales and what kind of molasses you would like to use and maybe we can point you in the right direction to a formulation for a MM pie.

Norma

[Pete-zza]

im hoping this thread hasnt completely died.  i just spent eight hours reading it!!   i live hours away from a mm and it hurts!!!   what happened here??  

mellowjamie,

Most clone threads tend to run out of steam because either the goal has been achieved or because the information needed to continue runs out. I don't think that the members who have actively participated in this thread left any stone unturned but what was missing was the type and brand of molasses that Mellow Mushroom uses in making its pizza dough. Without that, you cannot come up with a final clone dough formulation that is authentic. In our case, we came up maybe over a dozen dough formulations. Just about all of them are very good formulations, and some might arguably be better than the real thing, but most of the people who come to the forum are really only interested in a single dough recipe that is self contained with all of the details, preferably including volume measurements and beautiful photos, needed to make a credible clone in a typical home setting using basic equipment and materials that are easily and readily available to them as home pizza makers. That is the full extent of their interest, and once they have that recipe and have copied it, they almost always move on, usually never to return again or only when they need another recipe. They are rarely the type who will read through over 1700 posts spread over 86 pages looking for that single recipe that best meets their needs. I have seen more than a few new members who professed their undying love for Mellow Mushroom clones but left after they took only one look at the MM clone thread.

Members also eventually lose interest, either out of boredom or for other reasons, and move on to other things, and leave it to others to carry on with the cloning process. In Norma's case, she was hoping to come up with an MM clone dough formulation that she could use to make and sell pizzas at her stand at a market where she works. But, as much as she liked the Mellow Mushroom clones she made, her customers were not enthused enough to buy the pizzas, or enough of them, to make the MM clone pizzas a viable product for her purposes. While Norma has not bid adieu to this thread, she is now exploring other types of pizzas that she hopes she will be able sell more profitably at market.

But, like old soldiers, clone threads, no matter how good or bad they are, never die. People are crazy about clones, especially those of the major chains whose pizzas they have come to know and love. Five of the top ten threads on the forum by page views are for clone recipes. Their page view numbers grow even without any new activity. This thread, with 52,174 page views--which is a lot as page views go--will experience the same degree of interest, even without much new activity. People are clearly reading this thread. It still has a pulse.

Peter

[Chicago Bob]

Viva la Mushrooms!     

[mellowjamie]

thanks everyone. the reason i posted is because of how great everyone here was with everyone else.
hard to find true friendly forums.

im some what of a novice.  no wait, a compleeeete newb!  lol
i watched a tv show where a guy tried to clone dominos.  why he picked dominos  ....eeesh.

but then i got thinking about mm.  such a unique pizza and so far away.  i use to live in raleigh nc and would go there every sunday and sit in the sun getting rid of a hang over.  how i miss mm!

so i tried making pizza dough. plain ole dough.
your typical flour, water, yeast... and it tasted gross of coure.
i later tried a bread flower.  some what better but still bad.
one big problem was the dough stretching. i would stretch it out and it was likevrubber
returning to its original form!  lol
when i watched that show, he mixed/kneeded the dough for just a couple minutes.
i now know that was the problem. i need to go much longer.
i played with sweetners, liquids, and fermentation.
honey, molasses, brown sugar, milk, beer...
even oils.  another mistake i make is not enough salt. im not a salt fan and i always discount it.
not good.
i bought the larger kitchen aid mixer recently.
i also drove 2 hours to get a bag of king arthers sir lance a lot flour.
IM DEDICATED!!  lol
i have a normal stone, but quite honestly, my oven wasnt cutting it and i started stoking up the grill.
obvious heating issues there, but its been working ok.  both methods require par baking.
im actually reading a dozen thread here about wfos. maybe make a small one or our deck outside.
i think im going to try a mm clone tonight.
i went to the store yesterday for molasses hunt.
they had four kinds.
grandmas original i think
grandmas robust
another one that looked slightly generic that said ROBUST in big letters
and there was another one that was not mentioned in the 86 pages of this thread, however
what i did was look at the content and sugar content, and went with the one with the highest sugar.  grandmas original.  i also, just for the heck of it bought a bottle of agava. 
im going to make two. one with molasses and one with half molasses half agava.  or plus agava.

i also considered fermenting.
what if, they added more sweetner, then let the dough ferment one day before freezing.
this would increase the yeast from freezing off and feeding them after thaw.

[mellowjamie]

one more thing.  i have a feeling this may not go over well...  lol
buuuut hopefully in the future we can figure out normal messurements for others
rather than percentages.  i can figure it out but a lot may not

[norma427]

mellowjamie,

If you have some Grandma’s original molasses and some KASL you should be able to make a credible MM clone. 

At Reply 834 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3940.msg161938.html#msg161938 Peter set-forth a formulation that seemed to work well for me in using most molasses products, even the Grandma’s original.  Most of the doughs Peter and I tried were frozen first, because we were trying to do what MM might do.   

If you can learn to master the dough tools at http://www.pizzamaking.com/dough_tools.html you then can make any changes to different formulations you want.  All you need is a fairly cheap scale (about in the 20 something dollar range.)  All the weights are based on the weight of the flour.  All you need to do is put in the calculation tools what TF you want, amount of hydration, salt, etc. and you then can change anything.  I am very poor in math, but did learn how to use the dough calculating tools to be able to do most of my formulations myself now.  I did botch up different times, but that is part of the learning process if you really want to learn how to make different pizzas and do stay here long enough to be able to learn.  When trying to use volume measurements, especially if you want to try a clone pizza, your results might be less than optional.

If you need other help just ask.

Norma

[buceriasdon]

I would like to add one more thing to Norma's suggestions concerning the use of baker's percent. In it's simplest form it is a language that is very efficient at relaying information. Much more precise than to say, one cup water plus two tablespoons or two to two and a half cups flour, plus the additional confusion of the method used to fill those cups that can lead to errors in communication. A gram is a gram no matter what. Oh, and Norma, I bought a big boy Salter/Brecknell scale, the one you and I have went home. 
Don

[norma427]

Don,

Great addition advice for mellowjamie or anyone else. 

Good to hear you purchased a big boy Salter/Brecknell scale.  I don’t even know what a Salter/Brecknell scale looks like.

I like my scale for market, but only can weigh up to 10 lbs. so it does have its limitations.  Was the scale you had like mine at market?  I couldn’t recall you mentioning what kind of scale you used before.

Norma