Author Topic: My Giordano's Style Pizza's (with pics) (Read 96476 times)

Chicago Rules!!! · « **on:** October 10, 2007, 08:30:24 PM »

Here are my two pies i made today. Both are stuffed spinach. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Nathan

Chicago Rules!!! · « **Reply #1 on:** October 10, 2007, 08:31:08 PM »

pic 2

loowaters · « **Reply #2 on:** October 11, 2007, 05:45:41 AM »

Great looking pies! How big are they? How much spinach? Any pics of a cut slice?

Chicago Rules!!! · « **Reply #3 on:** October 11, 2007, 05:09:05 PM »

thanks loowaters, they are both 10" pies. And theres quite a bit of spinach in them as you can see.

Pete-zza · « **Reply #4 on:** October 11, 2007, 05:13:36 PM »

Nathan,

How did the pizzas taste, especially in relation to a similar pizza sold by Giordano's?

Peter

Chicago Rules!!! · « **Reply #5 on:** October 11, 2007, 05:18:44 PM »

the dough is amazing, and it taste great. i have never had giordano's so nothing to compare it to. But amazing though.

loowaters · « **Reply #6 on:** October 12, 2007, 06:24:22 AM »

Yeah, that's a really good looking stuffed pizza and the slice looks even better than the whole pies. What did you do for sauce? How much cheese went into each? How much spinach?

Loo

Randy · « **Reply #7 on:** October 12, 2007, 06:41:18 AM »

Nathan, as good as looking pizza as I have seen anywhere.
Did you roll the dough? Did I miss which dough recipe you used?
Great pictures for sure.

Randy

Chicago Rules!!! · « **Reply #8 on:** October 12, 2007, 05:49:24 PM »

The sauce is 6in1, with some diced onion, fresh garlic, fresh basil. The dough is made very similar to buzz's. But i just do it by eye so not really any measurements.

chicagonative · « **Reply #9 on:** October 13, 2007, 10:20:39 AM »

DETAILS PLEASE!!!!!

Oh my gosh does that look good. I had to go bring the laptop upstairs and show my husband, so that we could both drool together. We are in Dallas and the only way we can get good Chicago pizza is to make it ourselves. I am going out today to buy a new pan to attempt another deep dish because of those pic's!!!!!

Please post your recipe!!!!

Buffalo · « **Reply #10 on:** October 13, 2007, 11:10:25 AM »

Good Morning ChicagoRules;

Based on how your spinach pizza looks; I would definitely say that Chicago Rules. Would you please give us some "step by step" guidelines and approximate amounts of ingredients used. I am also not familiar with
the Buzz dough formula...Would you please either post it or direct me to where I may find it. Very GREAT looking pie.
Thanks much...

Buffalo

Chicago Rules!!! · « **Reply #11 on:** October 13, 2007, 12:32:04 PM »

here

Quote from: buzz on June 13, 2005, 03:28:10 PM

Here's what I did (cheese deep dish pizza)!

1.5 cups KA AP
6 Tablespoons water
9 teaspoons canola oil
.80 teaspoons yeast
.40 teaspoons Kosher salt
.40 teaspoons sugar

I proofed the yeast in warm water, added it to flour, salt, sugar, and oil. Kneaded it about 1.5 minutes (less than 2 minutes, anyway)--it came together very nicely, very quickly. Let it rise at room temperature for 8 hours. Beautiful piece of dough at this point. I punched it down, let it rest for half an hour. Then rolled it out with a rolling pin and put it immediately into the 10" pan with no further rising. Added half a pound of cheese (half Stella, half Sorrento mozzarella), sauce, and "Parmano" cheese.

Sauce (uncooked) was:

1 28-oz. can 6-in-1 tomatoes
2 cloves garlic, minced
.75 teaspoon Kosher salt
Fresh cracked black pepper
.50 teaspoon sugar
Dried pizza spices, red pepper flakes

It was an excellent pizza, very Giordano's-like, but I made a couple of mistakes. As an experiment, I rolled the dough out very thinly, and this didn't work as well as a slightly thicker dough. Also, I think 9 tsp. is too much oil (I could could taste the oil in the crust)--7 is probably closer to what is needed.

Very, very tasty overall, though!

BDoggPizza · « **Reply #12 on:** November 07, 2007, 01:18:01 PM »

Where on the board is the latest and greatest Giordano's recipe from Buzz or whomever. I thought there had been some updates made to this one.

Thanks!
B

Buster514 · « **Reply #13 on:** November 22, 2007, 10:45:47 AM »

Quote from: Chicago Rules!!! on October 13, 2007, 12:32:04 PM

here

What is "KA AP"? Why the .8 / .4, etc. are they converted from metric?

abatardi · « **Reply #14 on:** November 22, 2007, 01:35:29 PM »

KA AP = King Arthur All Purpose

The fractional teaspoons are probably the result of a scaled down recipe using baker's percents...

- aba

buzz · « **Reply #15 on:** November 25, 2007, 02:32:27 PM »

Actually, the fractions are scaled down from a recipe for a larger pizza!

I keep experimenting with different levels of oil--currenly I've been working with 3 TBS oil to 1 cup flour, so the oil content in this recipe would be a bit light. I like to experiment!

Nathan made a beautiful pizza!

buzz · « **Reply #16 on:** November 26, 2007, 11:17:05 AM »

Last night I tried another Giordano's-style experiment. I remember a few years back when I was developing this recipe (trying to crack the code!) for this forum, and how frustrated I was by the recipes available at that time on the Internet--they all came out like bread with tomato sauce instead of the biscuit-like texture of authentic Chicago deep dish. Lots of failed attempts later (and with some sub rosa advice from Tom Lehman), I finally discovered that you need lots of oil and a short knead time. So now it works!

Last night I tried making a Giordano's-style using my bread machine, and it came out beautifully! The recipe is:

1.5 cups AP (I used Gold Medal)
8 TBS (.50 cup water)
3.5 TBS canola oil
1 tsp yeast
.75 tsp Kosher salt
.75 tsp. sugar

I proofed the yeast, then put all the ingredients into the bread pan and let it mix on the dough cycle for 1 minute. Then I took the bread pan out, let the machine go into the knead cycle, replaced the pan, and let it knead for 2 minutes.

I let the dough proof for about 8 hours and baked it. It tasted exactly like Giordano's--wonderful!

I think in the future I will scale the recipe up by a third to have a bit more dough to work with for my pan.

Brian200001 · « **Reply #17 on:** January 06, 2008, 08:14:45 PM »

Hi Everyone.
I'm new to the forum but have been a very big fan of Giordano's Pizza for a long time. I've made my share of pizza's that claim to be "similar" to Giordano's and none really "cracked the code" as it were. Some were similar, some were way off. You can imagine how interested I was when I ran accross this website and this recipe specifically.

Well I tried the Buzz recipe but I don't believe the code has been cracked. Buzz, hats off to you for the elusive secret regarding short knead times for the biscuit like crust. That particular aspect has always plagued my efforts.

I followed the recipe precisely with precise measurements. I actually followed the recipe using two techniques (First exactly as Buzz describes and second mixing the flour, yeast and oil together first).

I'm not saying I can do better than this recipe, I'm simply offering up taste observations that I know are absolutely accurate in comparison to Giordano's crust.

Observation 1 - Not enough dough. You need enough dough for top and bottom layer for at least a 9 or 10" pie. The recipe has to be modified to include at least 3 cups of flour and other ingredients. The essence of Giordano's is a top and bottom layer.

Observation 2. The crust was absolutely too oily without a doubt. In fact, while assembling the pizza, the dough was too heavy and oily to even hug the sides of the pan and stay up. Either the Buzz recipe of 3.5 TBS oil per 1.5 C flour is way too much oil or Buzz is really compressing the flour when digging it out from the flour bag and not quite experiencing what I did. Either way, the ratio of oil to flour is way too high and you can taste the oil in the crust. You can even see the color of the oil in the crust.
Recommendation: 1 TBS Oil per Cup of flour.

Observation 3. The crust is too salty. When tasting Giordano's crust, you cannot close your eyes and pick out the salt flavor in the crust as you can in this recipe.
Recommendation: 1/2 tsp salt per 2 cups of flour.

Observation 4: Need a bit more sugar in the crust. Giordano's crust is very un-Pizza-like. With that said, the recipe needs more sugar to begin balancing that fine line between pizza crust and pastry goodness.
Recommendation: 1 Tablespoon of sugar per 2 cups of flour.

Observation 5: When tasting the crust, you can taste the yeast. In fact you can burp up the yeast flavor 20 minutes later. (sorry but I'm trying to be a little funny here). Giordano's has absolutely NO yeast flavor whatsoever. I've often wondered if I should try to make their crust with baking soda or powder. Never tried that, but I can tell you that there is no yeast flavor to be found in a Giordano's crust.
Recommendation: Assuming that Giordano's does use yeast I would recommend that you use 1/2 tsp yeast per 2 cups of flour. Don't forget, the Giordano's crust isn't all that fluffy and chewy anyway. So there is not much of a need to fluff it up and ferment it with the taste of yeast and have the pastry like taste of the crust be spoiled.

I think that's about it. My next try will probably use approximately the following:

3.5 to 4 Cups flour
1 tsp yeast
1 tsp salt
2 TBS Sugar
1 Cup water
6 TBS canola oil

As others have mentioned, you want to mix the flour, oil and yeast together to give you the flakiness.
Add the oil afterwards and knead for 2-4 minutes until you are happy with the consistency.
Don't forget to grease the pan liberally with margarine.

I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks again to Buzz for getting this closer than so many other recipes out there on the internet.

Pete-zza · « **Reply #18 on:** January 07, 2008, 10:12:12 AM »

Brian200001,

It is very difficult to reverse engineer a pizza dough without having good information. I have not been able to find any nutrition information on the Giordano's pizzas, including the frozen versions, although I would imagine that the information accompanies the shipped frozen pizzas (because the government requires it). I looked at the Giordano's website, and I don't see any nutrition data there and I didn't see it at the Nutrition Data website. Have you seen any such information anywhere?

I also wouldn't be surprised if the Giordano's dough formulation has changed over time. According to the Giordano's website, there are now 47 locations, plus three more to come. When chains get that big, they invariably go to more sophisticated preparation and manufacturing processes. For example, when I look at the photos of the deep-dish pizzas shown at the Giordano's website, the crusts don't look to me like they were made by hand. To me, they look like they were formed in a commercial hot press, some models of which can be used to shape skins into deep-dish pans. From that point, the skins can be proofed, if desired (and quite common), and they can be par-baked. If I had to guess, that is what they do with the frozen versions of the pizza. Once the cheese and toppings are added, the pizzas can bake some more and then be flash frozen. Like Home Run Inn, when local companies have both pizzeria and frozen versions of the same pizza, the equipment and processes start to become more common. Have you seen any signs of this happening at the Giordano’s store level?

I notice that Giordano's touts the deep-dish pizzas at its website as being "stuffed". I have been assuming all along that "stuffed" pizza means two layers of crust--the basic one in the pan and one on top. Is this more than just a semantical distinction, or can "stuffed" mean only one crust--the one in the pan?

For your information, there is a neat dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/dd_calculator.html that I helped design with member Boy Hits Car (Mike) that allows one to design different dough formulations for the deep-dish style. If you have a good scale and can weigh the flour and water you use to make your various versions (volume measurements are fine for the rest of the ingredients), it should be possible to come up with the baker’s percents for the various ingredients. To do this, we would need to have the dimensions for your deep-dish pan and also how far up the sides of your pan you press the dough and also whether there is a second, top sheet of dough (and what weight of dough is used for the top skin). If you manage to get close to what you think is a viable Giordano’s clone, then the tool can be used to tweak the ingredients to get them even closer.

Peter

Brian200001 · « **Reply #19 on:** January 07, 2008, 12:13:25 PM »

Hi Peter,
You're right, reverse engineering dough is difficult!!

Again, hats off to Buzz for getting a recipe closer to Giordano's than Uno's - I hate when when folks lumped the two crusts together as if they are similar Chicago Style crusts.

I can tell you that I have been obsessed with getting this crust recipe in the past. Buzz has re-invigorated my interest, so thanks to you Buzz.

As far as common processes, etc. most high level franchises do require common equipment, ovens, assembly process steps of the pizza and of course even look and feel of building. I might be stating the obvious, but one of the reasons there is such consistency between franchises (and also why most of these dough recipes are still veiled in secrecy) is because the franchisee is requred to purchase much of the product through a distribution center.

A Franchisee receiving pre-mixed-formulated, dough, cheese, etc. from a distribution center will never know the true ingredients of the product. Believe me, Giordano's pizza joints are not fort knox. If they had part time employees mixing up their famous one of a kind dough, the recipe would be all over the internet long ago.

I did not verify if Giordano's specifically sends the dough pre-made to the franchisee, but just look at any Subway and you will see them baking fresh bread. They certainly do not make their own dough there, but merely receive the dough and stick it in the oven.

When places like Uno's or Giordano's sends mails their pies, I don't believe they parbake them. Rather they are usually made just the way they are in the resturaunt and flash frozen. I saw this on one of those Food network shows for uno's - not sure if its the same for all.

Regarding the term stuffed. Its always meant top and bottom layer dough (i.e. enclosed/stuffed). Perhaps others have been misusing the term. A non-thin crust pizza (chicago style or otherwise) is of course a pan pizza or deep dish pizza. Its only when there is a top layer of crust does it qualify for "stuffed".

Now as far as the Giordano's true dough recipe is concerned, most would be suprised to know how far off they really are. I can't stress that you simply cannot make the giordano's crust simply by re-formulating the ultra-basic pizza dough ingredients (fat, flour, yeast, salt, sugar and water). Think about it... does the dough really taste that basic?

I argue that it contains other ingredients that, once perfected soon, I'd be happy to share with everyone. The ingredients list may surprise you. It always makes me chuckle when I read the rationalization that they can't possibly use eggs or milk, etc. because of spoilage or complexity. But again, you gotta remember that the franchise and distribution center partnership.

I'll be in touch.