Re: kadio's Attempt at Pete-zza's Papa John's Clone (Split)

[kadio]

Peter,

Hi im new to the forum, and new making home pizza also. Im on my first try to create a pj clone with your Papa John's clone recipe (24 hour dough). Tonite im baking it. Saying that I have the following questions:

My dough did not came out so white, perfectly round as yours (mine ended up more bread color, and looks more harsh artesanal). I've put it on the pyrex without cover, will check it tonite si see how it ended. I used plain wheat flour and mix it by hand (no kitchen aid ).

For the sauce have you tried any hunts tomato product? puree perhaps?

thanks for your help, this is fun and I think I will give it a few tries.....

[Pete-zza]

kadio,

I described two PJ clone doughs, one fermented at room temperature and another fermented in the refrigerator. Can you tell me which one you used?

Also, can you tell me what kind and brand of flour you used? That might help explain why your dough was not as white as mine. Are you outside of the U.S. using a non-U.S. flour by any chance? I have not tried any of the PJ clone recipes using hand kneading but I don't see any reason why it can't be done. Almost all of my dough skins turn out round, which I attribute largely to experience. As you make more pizzas, you should see improvement in that regard.

I have not used Hunts tomato products. My goal was to try to replicate the authentic PJ sauce, so I devoted my efforts to that goal.

Please let us know how things turn out. If you can post some photos, that would be great.

Peter

[kadio]

Yes, I'm outside US will do some research regarding type of flour (It just says wheat flour, nothing added, very white by the way). This one is fermenting on my fridge right now, so it would be 24 hour reefer. I'm sure experience will give me a more round like yours (hope can still use this one). Also it was way to sticky so had to add around 1/3 cup more, even then it still sticky but did not wanted to add more.

Asked about hunts because I don't have WMSV, and my wild guess is that should be pretty similar.

I'm going for plain cheese because for my interest is basically to come with a similar dough, If it deserves hahaha I'll take some pictures like yours.

[Pete-zza]

kadio,

Ir appears that you used the recipe given at Reply 31 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6758.msg60076.html#msg60076.

Usually the biggest stumbling block to making U.S. style doughs outside the U.S. is the flour. Foreign flours tend to be on the soft side with low protein, low-gluten levels. If you can get more information on the type of flour you are using, it may be possible to modify the PJ clone recipe you used to accommodate that flour. The recipe referenced above calls for a hydration of 56% and oil at 7.3%. That combination will work with a flour such as the bread flour I used but is likely to produce a dough that is too wet if a weaker flour is used. Do you happen to have an electric hand mixer by any chance? If so, it may be possible to use that mixer together with hand kneading to get better hydration of the flour.

If Hunts tomatoes are the only tomatoes available to you, my advice is to get the tomatoes in puree form, as by pureeing them with a stick blender or a regular blender, and use a fair amount of sugar and oil, both of which are a critical part of a PJ pizza sauce. You should go light on the oregano and basil and garlic powder. For the oil, I would use a light oil, such as sunflower seed oil or canola oil (also called rapeseed oil), if available. Otherwise, I would go with a general vegetable oil, which in the U.S. is usually soybean oil or a blend of soybean oil and canola oil. If olive oil is all that is available to you, I would go with the lightest version, not an extra virgin olive oil.

Out of curiosity, is there a Papa John's near where you live?

Peter

[kadio]

Pete,

Thanks for all your kind help.

Will look for a better, high protein, high glutten flour.

Yes I have an hand mixer, will use it next time.

For this time I would use hunts pizza sauce, tin can, can list the ingredients tomorrow (remember there is olive oil, garlic and citric acid). As mentioned before my main interest in this trial is the dough.

I've have eaten PJ since 1995 basically in the US, have not done it in some years. PJ is the only mass production pizza I really like, I would say Im the type artesanal pizza guy. We don't have PJ in Guayaquil, there is in Quito, Ecuador's capital (So I would say they are somewhere close to come). We have Dominos, eat some times (beacuse it's popular within friends an family), never eat Pizza Hut (there are tons of both franchises here in Guayaquil).

Thanks again for your time.....will keep you updated

[kadio]

Pete,

By the way obviously doughs most be done down here, it would be to expensive and time consuming to ship it from the US. People who have eat it said it's the same thing.

pm me if you are interested in something in particular.

[Pete-zza]

kadio,

Some time ago, I devised a method using an electric stand mixer and hand kneading to prepare a dough with very good hydration of the flour. The details of that method are set forth in Reply 30 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3985.msg36489.html#msg36489. You might read that post for background purposes.

Having researched the way that PJ does things, I learned that they try to use local ingredients as much as possible. But the dough formulations and pizza sauces may have to be altered to make the best use of the local ingredients.

Peter

[kadio]

Made my first home made pizza. I used Pete's PJ 24 hours fridge method.

My conclusion are:

Dough Preparation (Hand Mix)
It was sticky, had to add 1/3 cup more of flour. It was still sticky but could handle it.

Color was brown-bread color, instead of pure white.

It did not rolled as a perfect sphere.

After 24 hours on fridge

It did no grew more than 20%, it was supposed to double it size.

It was able to strech it but it came back, like a rubber effect.

I had to over strect it to cover the pie.

After the bake

The crust did not rise at all.

It was soggy (like raw texture), sweet, no crisp or crunch at all.

Conclusions:

Will try Pete's cold-freeze long method.
Look for an appropiated flour (key element)

Will post pictures.......

[kadio]

My first pizza pictures

[Pete-zza]

kadio,

Even with a flour that is not quite right and even with hand kneading, and especially with the amount of yeast you used (0.40% IDY), you should have gotten a dough that would rise fairly significantly (in my case it was double after 24 hours). Is it possible that you used vital wheat gluten (also called wheat gluten flour) instead of a pizza flour? VWG is a high protein gluten that is often added to weak flours to increase their protein content. To get an idea as to what a bag of VWG looks like in the U.S., see http://www.bobsredmill.com/product.php?productid=3552. A lot of what you said seems symptomatic of what I have read or seen before when VWG is improperly used instead of flour. If you used VWG instead of flour, you would not be the first to make that mistake. Of course, I may be wrong in my suspicions, in which case I would be very interested in knowing more about the flour you used. It will be very important to use the proper flour, otherwise you are unlikely to get good results, even if you use a different dough formulation and method. It might help if you can post a photo of the bag of flour you used, together with any nutrition and related data on the bag.

Peter

[anton-luigi]

My first thoughts when I read this were:  1) The comment about it being very rubbery led me to believe that the dough was not kneaded long enough.  2) I did not see his ingredient list, but the lack of rise,  and his comment about it not rolling out in a perfect sphere,  led me to believe that he used a rolling pin and that he likely had to "vigorously" roll the dough out wherein he pushed out all the gas.  About the dough coming out soggy and raw led me to believe he either overloaded it with toppings  or just plain undercooked it.  He did not give any details about his cooking method.  Once again,  I am an extreme rookie at this,  but testing out my problem solving skills is helpful to me.

[kadio]

Pete,

No, I just used flour not the product you mentioned, maybe as anton-luigi said maybe it needed more kneaded. I selected it because it was the only one that said wheat flour, with nothing added, others said thinf like "fortified with xxxx, baking powder included etc etc"

Could it be because I put the yeast in the flour instead of dissolving it with the water?

I'm about to contact a friend that works for a bread flour supplier, to ask him about the correct one.

anton-luigi,

Your quote ""vigorously roll the dough out wherein he pushed out all the gas" totally true, as you know I knew problems from the beginning so I just kept going anyway, regradless of the result.

No topping overload for sure, might be a little under cooked could be.

I have a gas oven it only goes up to 500 which I don't think it really does, it has 4 levels, I used the lower first, but the toppings were way ahead, so I change.  The cool thing is that it has a top grill, so I can grill toppings if needed. I might try to cook the dough (my motto of research) a little first, the place the toppings and grilled them at the end.

thank guys for your help and interest........

[Pete-zza]

kadio,

Adding the IDY to the flour is the recommended procedure. So, I don't think that that was the source of the problem. Even if you mistakenly used ADY instead of IDY, and did not rehydrate the ADY as is required, I think you would still have noticeable dough expansion. Also, even if you did not do a particularly good job of kneading the dough, and it was somewhat underkneaded as a result, I think the dough would still have been extensible enought to be able to shape and stretch by hand.

If you used a rolling pin, that is not the method I described and would be inconsistent with the way that PJ workers work with the dough in the PJ stores, although I can see how you might have decided to use a rolling pin under the circumstances you found yourself in. In Reply 1 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6758.msg58196.html#msg58196, I provided links to a couple of YouTube videos that show how doughs are handled in PJ stores. I tried to follow the same general techniques.

Peter

[kadio]

Pete,

Got it regarding IDY.

Yes rolling pin was a necessity, I just wanted to save the pizza. I knew I was not getting any PJ he he.

I've seen the videos, hope next works better.

Will post results.

[kadio]

OK, now I think I discover one of my problems. Apparently I have Active Dry Yeast instead of Instant Dry yeast.

The one I have is the only one available and it's called Dry yeast only, it says it need to hydrate with warm water and sugar, before using it.

Pete,

You said that anyway, anyhow the yeast should helped to rise the dough, what would be the best way to apply it on my next trial?

[Pete-zza]

kadio,

When I was trying to diagnose your problem, it did occur to me that you might have used ADY instead of IDY but since you specifically mentioned IDY, I dismissed the possibility of a substitution. Using ADY in non-rehydrated form is actually a little known trick that some bakers use to slow down the fermentation of the dough even though one is supposed to rehydrate ADY in warm water before using. What may have happened in your case is that you didn't allow the dough to ferment long enough for the ADY to kick in. If you had allowed your dough to ferment a few days longer, I think you would have achieved better results, with a much better volume expansion.

For your next dough batch using the ADY, I would alter the dough formulation you used to replace the IDY with the ADY. Technically, you shouldn't just replace the IDY with a like amount of ADY. I used the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html and did the conversion for you. I came up with the following revised dough formulation:

Bread Flour-sifted (100%): Water (56%): ADY (0.53%): Salt (1.5%): Vegetable (Soybean) Oil (7.3%): Sugar (4.2%): Total (169.53%):

373.42 g  |  13.17 oz | 0.82 lbs 209.11 g  |  7.38 oz | 0.46 lbs 1.98 g | 0.07 oz | 0 lbs | 0.52 tsp | 0.17 tbsp 5.6 g | 0.2 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1 tsp | 0.33 tbsp 27.26 g | 0.96 oz | 0.06 lbs | 6 tsp | 2 tbsp 15.68 g | 0.55 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.93 tsp | 1.31 tbsp 633.06 g | 22.33 oz | 1.4 lbs | TF = N/A

Note: For 14" pizza; bowl residue compensation = 1.5%

The correct (recommended) way to use the ADY is to rehydate it in a small amount of the formula water at about 105 degrees F (40.6 degrees C) for about 10 minutes. You shouldn't need more than about 10 grams of the formula water to rehydrate the ADY. The rest of the formula water should be on the cool side (around 65 degrees F, or about 18 degrees C). I don't normally add sugar to the water used to rehydrate the ADY but if you want to add a pinch of sugar, that will be OK. Once the ADY has been rehydrated, it can be added to the rest of the formula water after dissolving the salt and sugar in the water.

Peter

[kadio]

Pete,

Thanks very much, will try it tonight.

[kadio]

Last night did the dough with Peter's instructions (thanks again), I used another flour, but don't think it's high protein, high glutten (there is none in supermarkets so I have to look somewhere else.) This time I used a hand mixer with the c-hook type attachment. After 15 minutes of mixing the dough looked way better than the first one. It way very elastic but way too sticky so had to add around 3/4 cup more of flour. Even though it still was a little sticky, I was able to create a more round esphere look than the first one. It was not so white as Peter's (because of the kind of flour 100% sure). Put it on the fridge with no cover, this morning I checked it and there was little "rise" and I would say that it grew sideways but not much. Will wait till Tonight, and check it again, if there is no significant rise, will give it another day.

[Pete-zza]

Put it on the fridge with no cover

kadio,

Is there a reason why you did this? My instructions for the PJ clone doughs is to cover the bowl in which the doughs are placed while in the refrigerator. Otherwise, a dry "crust" can form on the outer surface of the dough ball that will destroy its smoothness and make it more difficult to work with, and possibly impede the expansion of the dough.

Peter

[kadio]

maybe I skipped it, but the 24 hour recipe is the only one does not mentions the cover I thought it was intentional part of the experiment. I just put some spray oil very little. will cover it ASAP
thks