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

[tonymark]

one big problem was the dough stretching. i would stretch it out and it was likevrubber
returning to its original form!  lol

This was one of my biggest problems for years.  Once the dough is fully mixed and the flour is hydrated (15-20 minutes after all the flour is added) or after your first rise (if you use a multistage fermentation), you should portion out your dough balls for the final rise.  I put a few drops of oil in a ROUND Rubbermaid container and spread it around.  I shape the portioned dough into a smooth ball and drop it in.  It really should rest at least 2 hours after final handling before stretching.  The longer it "relaxes" the better it will handle.  If you use a cold fermentation, the dough ball (actually, flat if properly relaxed) should be back to room temp before stretching.

I hope this helps.

tm

[mellowjamie]

thanks evryone.  im actually good with numbers and have a digital sale .... sme where
i think i will try tomorrow
i am not sure if i will freeze i or give it three days.
 mix it up thurs morn for saturday nite.
i think i have to let it come to room temp
think its a big mistake with the rubberiness
temp is also an issue.

norma,
what do u sell at the market?

[norma427]

thanks evryone.  im actually good with numbers and have a digital sale .... sme where
i think i will try tomorrow
i am not sure if i will freeze i or give it three days.
 mix it up thurs morn for saturday nite.
i think i have to let it come to room temp
think its a big mistake with the rubberiness
temp is also an issue.

norma,
what do u sell at the market?

mellowjamie,

It is great that you are good with numbers and have a digital scale.  If you decide you don’t want to freeze the clone MM dough ball, you might want to drop the amount of yeast back a little if you want to cold ferment for 3 days.  The amount of IDY in the formulation I pointed you to was a little higher because of the freezing of the dough ball. 

You do need to let the dough ball come up to room temperature.  If you make an attempt on a MM clone, the temperature of your oven really doesn’t have to be over 500 degrees F on the pizza stone.  Real MM pies are baked for a decent amount of time.

I sell pizzas at my small farmers market stand.

Norma

[buceriasdon]

Norma, It was the round silver one with the round glass top. I haven't found the exact Salter I have online, it may be only available in Mexico or I would post a link. It doesn't shut off for ten minutes which is nice. Rechargeable battery.Easy to read. Closet I've found: 
http://www.wholesalepoint.com/pc-Check-Weighing-Scales/Salter-Brecknell-C3235-6.html

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

[norma427]

Norma, It was the round silver one with the round glass top. I haven't found the exact Salter I have online, it may be only available in Mexico or I would post a link. It doesn't shut off for ten minutes which is nice. Rechargeable battery.Easy to read. Closet I've found: 
http://www.wholesalepoint.com/pc-Check-Weighing-Scales/Salter-Brecknell-C3235-6.html

Don,

That sure looks like a nice scale.  My scale at market doesn't ever shut off, but wish I could weigh higher amounts.

Norma

[Pete-zza]

You do need to let the dough ball come up to room temperature

Norma,

What you said in the above quote is quite common, but when the dough is tempered it should be "at" room temperature, not tempered until it reaches room temperature. Tom Lehmann has addressed this issue so many times that he very often capitalizes the word AT for emphasis, for example, as he did in Reply 8 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,18798.msg183580/topicseen.html#msg183580. It may well be that Tom knows how hot it can get around a deck oven. But, even here in Texas, room temperatures this time of year and for the rest of summer can get quite high--far higher than one would want to approach during tempering of the dough.

Peter

[buceriasdon]

Peter, Very true statement concerning tempering at room temp. I presently have to shuttle dough balls back and forth between the counter and fridge during the time I'm open, it's a delicate balance I've found. I've now realized this is the reason all the local pizza joints roll out their dough rather than work the dough by hand as I do.
Don

[norma427]

Norma,

What you said in the above quote is quite common, but when the dough is tempered it should be "at" room temperature, not tempered until it reaches room temperature. Tom Lehmann has addressed this issue so many times that he very often capitalizes the word AT for emphasis, for example, as he did in Reply 8 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,18798.msg183580/topicseen.html#msg183580. It may well be that Tom knows how hot it can get around a deck oven. But, even here in Texas, room temperatures this time of year and for the rest of summer can get quite high--far higher than one would want to approach during tempering of the dough.

Peter

Peter,

Thanks for correcting me.  I know what I meant, but posted wrong.  I also have the same problems you have in Texas and Don has at his pizza business, when the temperatures at market are hotter.  It can be a juggling act to keep the dough balls under control at higher temperatures.

Norma

[cptbingo2000]

Ok... over the course of 2 days, I read this entire thread, only to find the last post was a month ago

I just wanted to say that I truly appreciate all the time Pete and Norma have put into cloning the Mellow Mushroom Pie (a year and a half I think...)

However....I have a couple of things to pontificate about...

I have eaten at about 10 different Mellow Mushroom restaurants from Florida to Virginia, and have never once been inclined to describe their dough as "sweet".  Now I understand perceived levels of sweetness is a personal and subjective thing, but I truly can't recall ever thinking that at all.  But what I have noticed, is that the sweetness actually comes from the sauce, which I love, and was sad to see that it was only mentioned like 3 or 4 times in 87 pages.

Every time I visit a MM, I make sure I sneak into the kitchen, even if only briefly under the guise of "can't find the bathroom", and I have noticed that they all have used Escalon 6-in-1 Crushed Tomatoes in Heavy Puree, as well as the Escalon Bonta Pizza Sauce.  You can see the 10lb. cans of them piled up on the racks.  The only part I don't know is the proportions that are used of each, and all of my inquiring of store personnel has ended with the familiar "trade secret" retort.

I only harp on this because I thought you guys were going for a MM clone, and to me, every part of it has to get as close to the original as possible, but yet the scarce mention of sauce.  I don't know about everyone else who has the pleasure of eating there, but I don't eat my pizza a layer at a time....I bite down as fast as I can to savor the whole flavor and texture experience while trying to avoid destroying the roof of my mouth or tongue from the heat.

I want to reiterate that the time and effort that has been put into this thread is beyond amazing, but I just couldn't help but feel the whole MM experience was being shortchanged by leaving out the attention to detail of a major ingredient that the dough received.

So all that being said, I sit here awaiting my Escalon products from PennMac and my KASL flour from Publix (special order), because we eat at least 3-4 MM's per month, and frankly, it's probably cheaper to be a dope addict.

Thanks for letting me ramble, and I'll tell you how mine turns out soon!


Woody

[Pete-zza]

Woody,

I tip my hat to you for having the stamina to make it through the entire thread. The skeletons of many other members litter the trail that has brought you to this point. Some, including members who have professed their undying love for MM pizzas, just took a look at the MM thread and exited stage right.

I personally do not believe that we gave short shrift to the MM pizza sauce. For example if you look at Reply 40 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3940.msg151292.html#msg151292, under the section The MM Sauce, you will seen an early discussion of the MM pizza sauce, including the fact that MM uses fresh-pack tomatoes and no refined sugar in the sauce--only tomatoes, herbs and water (the last ingredient of which usually suggests a heavy or thick tomato product, or else a cost-saving measure by thinning the canned tomatoes). We have always pretty much known who the major sources of fresh-pack tomatoes are (mainly Stanislaus and Escalon) but not the specific one in MM's case. So, I thank you for telling us which of the Escalon fresh-pack tomatoes MM is using.

I also took a stab at explaining some of the possibilities why some MM diners have noted a decided sweetness in MM crusts whereas others (maybe in the majority) have not, at Reply 1269 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3940.msg170160.html#msg170160. In the sample of the MM crust that I ate, I tasted the crust separately and apart from the sauce and, to my palate, the crust had a noticeable sweetness. I believe that Norma had a similar experience.

But you have added an important additional piece of the MM puzzle, so that should help members get closer to a more credible clone.

A good part of what I have done in this thread has been for the benefit of Norma, since she was hoping that she might be able to offer an MM clone to her customers at market. Alas, that did not materialize. Apparently her customers were not lusting for MM clones. That helps explain why activity on this project has declined recently (but also because we don't know what specific molasses product MM is using).

I look forward with interest to you experiments in attempting an MM clone.

Peter

[cptbingo2000]

Thanks for your reply Pete.  I do now recall the links to the replies you mentioned.  I'm glad I could help fill in a piece of the puzzle.  The sauce is one of the main reasons we frequent there, as my wife has a sensitive stomach to Citric Acid, and a lot of places use Stainslaus, which seems to be loaded with it.  Escalon does not add any to their tomatoes, so we try to find places that use them.

One more thing, as I read through all the posts, I wondered what execs at Mellow Mushroom would think of this huge thread.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery they say.

Cheers!

[Pete-zza]

Woody,

Contrary to what you may think, most tomato products contain citric acid, even the ones from Escalon, as I once noted in Reply 58 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6633.msg160409.html#msg160409. Also, if you look at the ingredients lists (under Nutrition Facts) for the Stanislaus tomato products, at http://www.stanislausfoodproducts.com/products/nutrition-facts, you will see mention of naturally-derived citric acid. Technically, I do not believe that the FDA regulations require that naturally-occurring ingredients be listed although some companies do so anyway.

I have sometimes also wondered what MM executives would think if they saw this thread. They would perhaps think that Norma and I belong in a home somewhere but at the same time they would perhaps tell their employees to keep their mouths shut. One of the wise things MM did, however, was to state serving sizes in their Nutrition Facts but not specify the weighs of the serving sizes. That makes it harder to reverse engineer and clone their products.

Peter

[tonymark]

Ate the oldest Mellow Mushroom in existence last Thursday and I tasted cinnamon in the crust.  My wife stated that they serve a cinnamon bread stick or pretzel at that location. 

I am starting to wonder if they may slip a little cinnamon into all their pizza dough in small quantities.  Maybe below the taste level, but with the aromatic benefits.

Thoughts?

[norma427]

Woody,

I agree with Peter that you sure had stamina in reading this whole thread.  Interesting that you didn’t note any sweetness in the MM pies you tasted.  When I went to DC, there was a sweet note to the crust (not a lot), although I know each person tastes sweetness in different ways.

Another member of the forum (that is working on cloning another type of pizza) sent me this picture in an email of Mellow Mushroom’s sauce that he found on the web taken by some HJ Heinz East Coast employees when they visited the Escalon Plant in California.  If you could purchase some both of the products you saw in MM pizza businesses you might be able to come up with the sauce of MM.  Good luck to you in trying to clone the MM sauce.  It would be another part of the MM pizza solved.  

Peter was right that I was only trying to make a decent MM clone to make for market, and really didn’t try to clone the sauce, but as it turned out my customers weren’t really interested in a MM clone pizza.  I think because most of my customers never even heard of a MM pizza in our area, or ever tasted one, that is why they weren’t interested in the MM clones I tried.  

I don’t think we will know how many members really tried to make a clone MM pizza or if any guests tried out Peter’s formulations.   I also think if MM executives looked at this thread they might think Peter and I are off our rockers, but we did have a purpose in mind to try the best we could to make a credible MM pizza.   I did use Stanislaus products in my regular pizzas and my clone MM pizzas.  

As for the molasses, that is also one thing we aren’t sure of and might not ever know.  I recently saw an article on Baking & Snack formulations in an email I receive and saw that different sweeteners are used in different products.  I had wondered about the White Sorghum syrup that Breiss Malt & Ingredients Co. sells. http://www.briess.com/food/Products/nswss.php  I wonder when that product was first introduced and how it would fare in a MM clone.

This is the picture the one member emailed me, (but it is in bmp format) so I tried to post it, but can't.  The member also emailed me pictures of the MM pizzas he purchased.  They didn’t look like my clone MM pies, at least in my opinion.  If anyone know how to change a bmp format to a jpg format, let me know.

The picture of Mellow Mushoom sauce says on the box with basil.

Norma

[norma427]

Have a Happy Fourth of July from MM and me! 

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Ate the oldest Mellow Mushroom in existence last Thursday and I tasted cinnamon in the crust.  My wife stated that they serve a cinnamon bread stick or pretzel at that location. 

I am starting to wonder if they may slip a little cinnamon into all their pizza dough in small quantities.  Maybe below the taste level, but with the aromatic benefits.

Thoughts?

tonymark,

Companies, including Mellow Mushroom, are under no legal duty to disclose the ingredients in their products although there are some, like Domino's, who go to extraordinary lengths to do so. However, if they do so, they have to comply with the FDA rules and regulations that govern ingredients lists and what should be in them and how the ingredients are expressed.

If MM were using cinnamon as a dough ingredient and it also produced an ingredients list as mentioned above, under the FDA rules and regulations the cinnamon would have to be listed. Having researched the MM dough for so long, I do not ever recall reading anywhere that MM is using cinnamon in its dough so I would tend to doubt that MM is using cinnamon. But, if it were to do so, then it would be at the MM commissary since it would be poor quality control practice to let licensees/franchisees do it at the store level. It is is quite possible, however, that if there is cinnamon used at the work areas in MM stores where pizzas are made and assembled, for example, for pretzels, some of that cinnamon might find its way into a dough ball used to make a pizza.

Peter

[Chicago Bob]

An employee prolly snacked on one of the Cinnamon products and your pizza got baked in that same pan...

[Biz Markie]

So all that being said, I sit here awaiting my KASL flour from Publix (special order), because we eat at least 3-4 MM's per month, and frankly, it's probably cheaper to be a dope addict.

Woody

Yo Woody - what kinda price you gettin' on that KASL from Publix?

[norma427]

I mixed a dough ball by hand using Dave’s (Tampa) formulation at Reply 6  http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,19879.msg195106.html#msg195106  and used the Dominio molasses in the formulation.  The dough ball is now being frozen until tomorrow.

The only reason I am testing Dave’s formulation out is I am somewhat unsure of how close my MM attempts were.  Being it has been awhile since I tried out one of Peter’s formulations for a clone MM pizza, maybe I should have also used the MM#7 formulation Peter set-forth for me and made another dough ball, but I didn’t.  Maybe I will try out the MM#7 formulation next week.

The one thing I have been thinking about for a little while has been I don’t think my crumb texture of my attempts were right and sweetness levels might not have been right (Peter‘s explanation at Reply 1269 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3940.msg170160.html#msg170160 ), but maybe that is just me, or my results could have been affected by what Peter posted at Reply 12  http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,19879.msg195230.html#msg195230 

I sure haven’t been using the kind of oven MM uses, my bake times are a lot shorter than MM and I am unsure of how many days MM keeps their dough balls that are made in the commissary.

The dough is a lot lighter than my other attempts and no oil was used in this attempt per Dave‘s formulation. 

Maybe in the future Peter might want me to do the oil test on the little Bob the small dough ball if he doesn’t come up with another experiment for part of the dough ball.   

I also was wondering about the sweetness level in the crust and rim, but it appears even members that have tasted MM pizzas also think the MM pizzas look different or even have different sweetness levels they perceive.  Maybe, I also will need to see how a MM pizza tastes if I can ever go to a MM pizza business again. 

Picture of Dave’s formulation when the dough was mixed and final dough ball with cornmeal.

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

If you look at the MM Nutrition Facts for the pretzels with cinnamon and honey, at http://mellowmushroom.com/public/nutritionfacts102411.pdf, you will see 5 grams of fat per serving (one-half order of three pretzels). Since there is no fat in the cinnamon or honey, that means that the 5 grams of fat have to be in the dough. As you know, the same dough is used by MM to make both pretzels and pizzas.

I didn't think to mention it before, but we also don't know exactly how MM makes and freezes its dough balls. That can also affect the ultimate performance of the dough when used to make pizzas.

It is unlikely that we will get the same results as MM in a home setting, or in your case at market, even if all the numbers for our clones line up with the MM Nutrition Facts, as was pretty much the case with many of the MM clone dough formulations I came up with after the hydration bake tests. The operating environments are too different. To get closer to a real MM dough and pizza, you would have to have access to more real MM pizzas, note the differences, and modify your dough formulation through tests until you are satisfied.

Since you decided not to offer MM clone pizzas at market, is there a reason why you have resurrected your interest in that style?

Peter