Shakey's sauce recipe??

[Pete-zza]

Dan,

It looks like we both went over the same ground on the yeast issue. You might want to read what was posted at the thread at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,10382.msg91533.html#msg91533.

Peter

[Zing]

See Adobe page 18 of this document for information about what happened to A-B's yeast business:
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/fcn/gras_notices/grn000284.pdf

The bakery was using one pound blocks of bakers yeast. Red Star and Fleischmann's still sell it. Might make for a tastier pizza. I believe fresh yeast can work at a lower temperature.
http://www.lesaffreyeastcorp.com/products/category/1/view/35
http://www.abmf.com/products/yeast

I can see how the beer distributors also sold the bakers yeast. They stored and delivered the keg beer back then cold. Since their delivery routes also had bakeries and restaurants along it, they could profitably sell the refrigerated yeast.

[lightmeter]

I recall reading that many of the prohibition-era brewers began distributing baker's yeast to offset and ride-out the drop in beer sales; AB and Pabst among them. However, they were also marketing to a thriving "bathtub beer" market. Were they selling baker’s yeast to home brewers or was it brewing yeast? Anyone know? Did prohibition restrict the sale of brewer’s yeast to home brewers, or perhaps brewers were concerned they would be found out if they used brewer’s yeast and so used baker’s yeast instead? Did retail stores even sell brewer’s yeast during prohibition? Anyone know?

I have no specific recollection of whether Shakey's used brewers or baker’s yeast, but will ponder it a bit more and see if some of the recommended reading leads me to any clues. As a first question, I'd ask what whether there are any physical or visual characteristics that distinguish between the two. Reason is that I never found any difference in the AB cake yeast we used at Shakey’s versus what I bought at the grocery store for home baking (Pabst). It was an off-color, squeeky (to rub) material - same as store-bought - so I presume it was baker’s yeast.

I also recall a relatively recent Pabst announcement that they ceased marketing yeast. It caught my eye because when I bought cake yeast in the store, may times it was by Pabst.

And here's another favorite memory... anyone ever do "Dough Hits"? Ya gotta’ remember, this was high school kids in the 70's. Instead of simply punching the dough down, we'd punch and sniff the fumes – a big blast of malty yeast smell – likely carried by nothing more than CO2 gas. I have no idea what would prompt a bunch of kids to do it, but we did. Mostly a headache is all I recall.

[DNA Dan]

A good discussion can be found here under the beer section:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeast#Beer

Essentially Saccharomyces Cerevisiae covers all the fermenting yeasts in baking and brewing except those that bottom ferment. Those actually belong to another species -Saccharomyces pastorianus, formerly known as Saccharomyces carlsbergensis.

What you have within S. Cerevisiae is hundreds to probably thousands of different strains. These can be more or less flocculant, more or less fruity, more or less malty, etc. They differ in their metabolics. Some grow better in higher salt conditions, some produce more esters, etc. The only difference I see between the "baking yeasts" and "brewing yeasts" is the brewing yeasts grow slower, and can live in higher alcohol content. This makes them more adapted for alcohol making. The deal with the baking yeasts, is bakers wanted something that had a long shelf life, grows fast and produces a lot of gas, so the push over the last century has been from compressed yeast--> ADY ---> IDY --> rapid rising yeasts. This is what we have today.

The article that Peter linked to does give some support that they did sell the brewing yeast as a baking yeast. After all, they are the same species, just a different strain. They are both technically S. Cerevisiae. I came across some "malt syrup" products that AB tried to sell during this time period as well. Which lends further proof that they were trying to sell the flavor that their strain produces and what their infrastructure was ready to support. I think what happened by 1988, was there were so many other identified specialty yeast strains on the market that it wasn't really profitable to continue producing this to customers. The market is saturated with hundreds of S. Cerevisiae strains. So the "Malty" flavor of the 40's and 50's was no longer as unique as it once was.

What clued me into linking the bakers and brewer's version as one and the same was your recollection of the fermentation period. 6 hours is a long time for a baking yeast to ferment. You would almost completely exhaust all the sugar by then. My hypothesis is that this was actually a "brewer's" yeast used in making budweiser, and after it's in the log phase of it's growth 6+ hours later, the "puffiness" of the crust is maintained by laminating the dough. Which we know is created through trapping air and squeezing the cells.

Tell me, how big was the dough after rising? would it double? triple?
After punching down, would it double again during this same time period?

PS. Zing you're brilliant! Many thanks

[DNA Dan]

More on brewing yeasts....

If the AB yeast is the same yeast they sold in bricks, then one might conclude that it would have to be an S. Cerevisiae brewing yeast in order to be marketed as a "baker's yeast". I don't think this is the case, because to my knowledge Bud is made with a lager fermenting yeast, which are typically bottom fermenting, thus putting it in the S. Pastorianus (Carlsbergensis) genus/species.

The only thing I have to offer on this is that the designation of S. pastorianus outside of S. Cerevisiae is a relatively new debate with the invention of DNA sequencing. Once they looked at the genomes, they realized it was deserving of it's own species designation. So, perhaps at one time before the modern DNA sequencing world, yeast was yeast. It could have been sold for beer making or bread making, didn't matter. But today if there is a a commercial requirement that anything designated "baker's yeast" needs to be a strain of S. Cerevisiae, this would explain why AB got out of the market as well. They could no longer market the yeast as a baking yeast. Now I don't know if that is true or not, but it just goes to show that prior to the invention of DNA sequencing, any yeast could be sold as anything. If people didn't like its performance, they would not have bought it.

Notice the wrapper I posted to does not specify the type of yeast, it's just YEAST.

[lightmeter]

Tell me, how big was the dough after rising? would it double? triple?
After punching down, would it double again during this same time period?

Room temperature rise easily doubled the dough, enough that it would lift the lids off the tubs, and if we got too busy in prep, we never thought twice about punching the dough a few times in an 8 hour period to keep it under the bus tub covers - buying us a bit more time before we had to stack the tubs and lug'm into the cooler. Each rise was less active than its predecessor, finally only requiring a horizontal hand jab at any exposed dough to drop the lid back onto the tub. By quitting time, we'd give it another poke before putting it in the cooler. We weren't really trained to a strict process, only to put it in the cooler before clocking out 8 hours later.

1 rise, 2 or 3 made no matter to us and frankly didn't seem to make much difference in the characteristics of the cold dough when it was brought back out for sheeting or in the final skin. We used anything and everything that was sheeted with the exception of sticky skins which were hell to peel of the wax paper. If cooks found this too frustrating, they would sometimes throw the whole penny stack away – or twenty or thirty, etc.

So what’s the repeatable process? Two rises, each doubled, and then into the cooler would be the median. Rise at room temperature. Monitor the Sheet and cut.dough and punch each time it doubles. Just before refrigeration 6 hours later +/-, punch it down one last time. Retard 12-14 hours.

[lightmeter]

Correction to last post... "So what’s the repeatable process? Two rises, each doubled, and then into the cooler would be the median. Rise at room temperature. Monitor the dough and punch each time it doubles. Just before refrigeration 6 hours later +/-, punch it down one last time. Retard 12-14 hours. Sheet and cut.

[DNA Dan]

hmmmm I don't know. From your descriptions of doubling every few hours then not doubling so much toward the end of the day, it sounds like a baking variety yeast. I just don't think a brewer's yeast will have that much action in a 8 hour period, but I will find out soon enough.

I just ordered my "St. Louis" yeast (wink wink) and some malt extract. I am going to propagate it a few days and pellet the cells so I can resurrect my very own authentic compressed yeast for this style. I don't think I will be able to get as much water out of it as a compressed yeast, so it will probably be more like a cream yeast. May also take a few attempts in my dough to get the proportions right. I guess one big question that remains for me is just how much of a compressed yeast cube is dead cells contributing flavor but aren't actual viable cells? This complicates things because coming from a propagation flask I will most likely have a lot more viable cells unless I deliberately dry it out a bit. The problem here would be adding too much yeast and getting too much activity. I may even start a new thread to make it all nice and pretty for others following the idea.

[lightmeter]

I may be wandering from the purpose of this thread so point me elsewhere as needed/if needed.

DNA Dan - You're right to look for a yeast that is highly active for 8 hours. Don't get too hung up on my comments about successive rising being less than the former. This stuff really jumped. Note also that once removed from the cooler for sheeting that the dough had risen again to the full extents of the bus tub, i.e. it doubled again in the cooler. I know this because we had to peel the lid off the dough and then scrape the lid and bus tub with our hands to remove it all. Pulling the dough out of the tubs at the moment of sheeting, the dough was full of bubbles, wettish and sticky. A couple passes and foldings through the sheeter with some dusting took care of a lot of the wetness and stickiness.

One more recollection for Shakey's on the Rockville Pike is that we used two types of flour. One for the dough mixture and a second one for dusting that was used quite liberally during sheeting, more so during the first sheeter passes than later passes as the stickyness subsided. Surely this dusting between sheeter passes and between dough foldings contributed to the physical characteristics and suspected laminations. If we forgot to dock the dough the pies would balloon in the overn for sure.

[DNA Dan]

Do you know if this was just a different flour or was it spiked with any leavening agents; ie baking soda/powder, etc.?

[Zing]

Since back then Shakey's was not using a pizza crust premix, can you remember the names of the flours? Most restaurant/bakery flour has a trade name, such as  "All Trumps". Names would allow us to crack the specs of the flour they were using.

[DNA Dan]

Since back then Shakey's was not using a pizza crust premix, can you remember the names of the flours? Most restaurant/bakery flour has a trade name, such as  "All Trumps". Names would allow us to crack the specs of the flour they were using.

I am sure the flour is a high-gluten variety, since that seems to work best with this style. In regard to the yeast connection of AB, here is a link taken from Lallemand that confirms the purchase of Gist-Brocades (which was the first business to aquire the strains from AB). http://www.lallemand.com/our-business/bakers-yeast-and-ingredients/baking-solutions
http://www.lallemand.com/our-business/bakers-yeast-and-ingredients/lallemandamerican-yeast-division

So the strain is sitting somewhere in the 4000+ yeast strain library that lallemand is sitting on . 

[lightmeter]

No. I have no recall of the flour names but one of my shakeys pals says he recalls a W name on the front bottom of one of the bags and offered the name Washburn (he has a scary good memory but its a guess). I also dont know if both flours were same company or not. Not much help on this one I know.

[Zing]

There is a high probability that the name Washburn's tells us what type of flour was used. The only uncertainty is that there may have more than one type of Washburn's flour sold in the late 70's. General Mills lists Washburn's Gold Medal as one of their professional flours. It is a trademarked name registered April 27th, 1886 by a predecessor company of General Mills. It is listed on two of GM's websites:
http://generalmillsfoodservice.com/products/productdetails?pKey=59401000&retUrl=/SearchResults.aspx?SearchTerm=washburn&retLabel=Search Results
It is not listed under products; I had to use the search function to get this page. Also, the GM professional flours site has this page of flours sold in the East that lists details of Washburn's:
http://www.gmflour.com/gmflour/flour.aspx?type=Espring

From the descriptions, "A high quality enriched, malted and bromated bread flour milled from a selected blend of hard wheat. Unbleached." Ingredients are listed as: "INGREDIENTS: Wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, potassium bromate, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid." Listed uses for this flour include thin crust pizza.

The trade dress of the General Mills bags of flour seem to have remained the same since I was a kid. The name of the flour is indicated by reverse printing at the top and botton of the bag. See examples on the bags of flour shown on the GM flours product pages.

General Mills also makes a flour called GM-44 that is described as an "economy flour" and one of its recommended uses is for dusting flour.

ADDENDUM: From the list of ingredients in the premix posted by Jet-deck, there is no potassium bromate in the current formula outlying area mix. Perhaps elsegundo could post the information in parenthesis after 'wheat flour' from the premix bag that blew out of the trash and wound up in his garden.

Current premix formulations use ammonium sulfate (fertilizer) and calcium sulfate (classroom blackboard chalk, plaster of paris). Do a google search and you will find these ingredients listed in many commercially produced breads. Subway frozen bread dough uses these in some of their varieties. The problem is finding some food grade versions in small quantities. Dextrose is not too hard to buy.

[Zing]

Here are the current specs for GM's Washburn flour:
Moisture: 14.0% maximum
Protein:   12.6%
Ash:        0.52%

I don't know what changes have to be made to a recipe if a bromated flour is replaced by an unbromated one. Because of California's labeling law, it is certain unbromated flour is now used there.

[Zing]

I finally got around to the making the sauce, and it was really good.  But, during the prep, I remembered something from my days at Shakey's.

There was WINE in the sauce!  I don't remember quantity, but there was some.

Does anyone know or remember this?

Lew.

A tablespoon of Merlot that had "turned" added to a batch of sauce "suggests" there is wine flavor in the Shakey's sauce. But why didn't any of the people who made Shakey's sauce before the bag-in-the-box sauce remember it?

Could it be that Wine Powder was part of the spice mix added to the tomato product? I found references in a patent that indicate wine powder was available since at least 1978. It seems to be sold by ingredient and flavor suppliers to food manufacturers, mostly on the wholesale level. There are a few dealers that sell in small quantities online, such as spicesetc dot com. They are available in different flavors, such as burgundy, sherry, and chablis. Not being a wino, I can't discerne what wine flavor is being used in the real Shakey's sauce. Can anyone help?

Elsegundo's ingredients list includes maltodextrin and natural flavor. Natural flavor could be dehydrated wine, and the maltodextrin is probably added to the dehydrated wine at the flavors factory.

As a side note, I was able to buy both dextrose and calcium sulfate in a home brew shop. Home brew shops sometimes call the calcium sulfate "food grade gypsum".

EDITED to replace the word 'indicates' with 'suggests' in the first sentence, for reasons discussed in the next two entries.

[lightmeter]

Zing – I have to say it again. At the Shakey’s on the Rockville Pike, we didn’t use wine in the sauce, ever. Wine didn’t exist on the premises. Was it used by other Shakey’s? I can’t answer that, but I personally reject the notion without a stronger choir than I’ve read so far. Since I would be the last to dissuade you from experimenting, in this case, I’ll just say to be careful of over thinking this and possibly going down a wrong path.

At the Rockville store, we used Heinz puree, water and a Shakey’s herb mix. It was, I think, entirely dried green herbs. There was no trace powder in the mix that I recall, but can’t argue that sugar and natural flavors wouldn't be ingredients. I wouldn’t extend that to include wine powder, calcium, citric powder, salt – or any other crystal or powder. If there was anything mixed with the herbs, it was a dusting. I have a hard time believing Sherwood was that scientific. The ratio was on the order of 15 gallons of puree + water to a quart of dried herbs.

Now that I’ve read the previous posts, I get where your ZING moniker comes from and the quest you’re on - and you’re right, there is a ZING to the sauce. ZING a good word and says a lot. Since my last post, I visited a couple Shakey’s in the LA-area, including the corporate store in Rancho Cucamonga, CA http://rancho.shakeys.com/Press/PressRelease.aspx. Although their baking methods are obviously different (more later if interested), the Rancho Cucamonga store was the sauce I remember. ZING. Good stuff.

Funny story, just as I was approaching the store, the corporate delivery truck was unloading the sauce – yep – boxes of it, on the sidewalk. I snapped a picture on the way by, using my new phone camera, not realizing the damn thing would “click”, resulting in the driver trying to figure out what that noise was. The biggest covert operation ever~!

Anyway, as for the ZING, I say it’s predominantly in the Heinz puree as acidity or maybe even bitterness, but not wine, wine powder or calcium. As such, now that you’ve located a supply of Heinz Puree, I challenge you to find that ZING you’re looking for in the puree itself. Puree can be strained with or without seeds, cooked a little or a lot, fresh or ripe, thick or thin, etc. We’ll never know the process Heinz uses to make that particular puree, but look for the ZING there. My best guess is that the Shakey’s sauce recipe is now buried in a corporate box of Heinz puree, water and herbs.

All for now - thanks for the personal e-mail. Happy food engineering~! I look forward to your progress.

[Zing]

Lightmeter, thanks for your comments. I now realize I left out a few details about why I am experimenting with wine flavor. I have always had this feeling that Shakey's pizza on the east coast was slighty different than that on the west coast. I also found this to be true with the food from most national fast foods with the notable exception of McDonalds. If you were to leave leftover takeout Shakey's pizza in a box overnight, it would smell differently than, say, New York slice joint pizza. After defrosting a sample of west coast Shakey's, I noticed a sweet aroma that I could not place. So, I re-read all the threads and came across the post about wine. I also didn't note that I did not consider it the source of the zing, but of a flavor also unique to Shakey's. Wine may not be the source of the aroma in Shakey's pizza, but may be close to what is the real source.

I tried about 7 different powdered commercial pizza seasonings. From the labels, these are the ingredients found in one or more of them: Salt, Dehydrated Onion, Dehydrated Garlic, Oregano, Basil, Marjoram, Thyme, Crushed Red Pepper (Flakes), Savory, Bell Peppers,
Fennel, Parsely, Celery Flakes, Rosemary, Dried Tomato(!), Chili Peppers. Yet none of these seem to be the source of the flavor and aroma I notice in leftover pizza.

Regarding foodservice puree, so far, I have only tried the Hanover Primo Pomodoro 1.06 Specific Gravity Tomato Puree, canned in Hanover, PA with California tomato concentrate. Zing was not in there. One concern of mine is that the Heinz puree is not made the same way as in the 70's. The ingredients statement of the current Heinz product is: "Tomato Concentrate made from Red Ripe Tomatoes, Salt." But, I will look for zing in the Heinz puree.

As for the box-in-the-bag sauce, there are a number of firms that make ready-to-use sauce for pizza chains; check out the offerings at neiljonesfoodcompany dot com. While elsegundo and Jet_Deck's ingredients lists are fairly descriptive, that "natural flavor" could be anything whipped up by those ingredients and flavors firms such as Kerry Americas.

One of the challenges facing us is selecting which version of the sauce to clone. I'm going after the version used by the better Shakey's in California, since I can compare it with samples to see how close I have come. The last east coast Shakey's I ate at was in Cockeysville/Hunt Valley MD, which must have closed before 2000 (add: 1996 may be a closer date). I had my last California Shakey's pizza in 2005.

I would be interested in hearing about the baking methods used in Rancho Cucamonga.

EDITED to correct typos and update closure date of Cockeysville.

[grotto]

WOW !!  lightmeter , you have brought back many memories !
I worked for Shakeys in Mpls for 3 yrs during the late 70's. "Dough Hits" !! man what a trip!
I worked prep , bar (yes, we served wine) , till and cook.
you are correct, they did not use wine in the dough or sauce,
Lightmeter is as close as I can remember to an accurate description of how the dough was made. As for the sauce , it was the tomatoe puree as mentioned and the powdered bag of propietary mix, It was very thick and brushed on to the skin, I believe the combo of thick sauce and cracker style crust to be the secret, This kept the sauce from penetrating the skin and saturating it.The exact recipe and chemical composition is beyond my scope.

As for the cheese , there were seven different cheeses used . Mozz , Prov , cheddar ,parm....and 3 others that escape my weak little mind....
I do remember that all the cheeses were ultra high quality imported cheeses , many of which were wax wrapped...
Pepperoni was Swifts Premium that was wax papper wrapped in approx 24" tubes.
polsh sausage was sliced lenght ways.
All sausage and beef was ground and spiced dailey from fresh product,

BTW, one post mentioned all the different topping available and stated that they weren;t all put on one Pie...  to that I say  "EBA!!!!!"  everything but anchovies !

Wow.. let me collect my thoughts and I will post tons of Shakeys trivia later.

[grotto]

Yeah... I'm not as illiterate as that post appears...lol
Thoughts are coming faster than i can type.
I will try to get ahold of 7 or 8 other ex-Shakeys employees that i know for more input.
Maybe they can remember more than me