Pete-zza's Papa John's Clone Pizza

[November]

I assumed that all of the sodium in the pizza was from salt, so I divided 1560.62 by 2300 to get 0.68 t. salt.

Reasoning for wanting to know the volume aside, 1560.62 mg of sodium is equal to about 4 g of salt.  I don't understand the conversion you're attempting.  What do you think 4 g of salt should be in a unit of volume?

[Pete-zza]

November,

My thinking at the time was that there was very little salt in the toppings and that almost all of it was in the dough. What I was trying to do was to extrapolate to an early dough I had tested with a known salt quantity (around 0.75%) and to see if that amount went up or down after I adjusted for the salt in the various toppings. Until I came up with some possible forms of the various toppings (which I tried to match to the pecking orders of the PJ toppings), I didn't really know how much sodium I would find. I played around with some scenarios where I increased the amount of total sodium (on paper)and, while it changed the final percent, it was not a big change. As you can see, the amounts of salt I calculated for the toppings were small. I had also done some estimating of the sodium content before I made the pizza and even then the numbers for the salt were small.  

Peter

[Pete-zza]

What do you think 4 g of salt should be in a unit of volume?

November,

Using table salt as the form of salt, 4 g. is 0.14 oz., or 0.72 t. (0.14/0.196875).

Peter

[November]

Using table salt as the form of salt, 4 g. is 0.14 oz., or 0.72 t. (0.14/0.196875).

That's closer to what I expected to see.

[November]

Peter,

My thinking at the time was that there was very little salt in the toppings and that almost all of it was in the dough.

If that is the case, then why does an attempt to show a proof for your math fail?

You have a clone weighing in at 608.09727 g (11.45 oz + 6.5 oz + 2 oz + 1.5 oz).  The amount of salt you added was 1.43 g (dough) + 0.1735 g (margarine) + 0.125 g (icing) = 1.7285 g.  According to Papa John's there is 520 mg x 3 (servings) = 1560 mg of sodium, or about 3.9656916 g of salt in an Applepie.  I'm sure you can see now where there is a problem.  1.7285 is much lower than 3.9656916.  It's not even close.  As a sidenote you mentioned using unsalted butter in the streusel, but if you had used margarine that would have added another 0.18981088 g of salt bringing your total to 1.91831088 which is still about half of what Papa John's reports.  Interestingly, if you multiplied the difference by the amount of salt you used in the dough, your percentage would be about 1.55%.  A familiar percentage for salt in past Papa John's clone doughs.

- red.november

[Pete-zza]

November,

Thank you for your analysis. I appreciate it and will revisit my numbers.

Sometime I plan to try the lower salt number just to see whether I get a bland crust.

Peter

[norma427]

Peter,
Yes, I meant to say 0.75%.  Thanks for finding my error.
Norma

[Pete-zza]

Having already invested a fair amount of time in analyzing and trying to replicate a Papa John's Applepie pizza, I thought that it might be useful to purchase a "real" Papa John's Applepie pizza for comparison purposes. So, for a purchase price of $3.99 plus tax, I bought one today from my local PJ store. Photos of the pizza are shown below.

The pizza itself was 10", as previously noted. However, the dough ball used to make the pizza was a separate, dedicated dough ball, not half of a dough ball used to make a 14" (large) pizza, as I had previously speculated. The dough ball that was used to make my Applepie pizza was taken directly from the cooler and was cold and dense. As a result, the pizza maker who prepared the pizza found it necessary to use two dough dockers, both made of plastic, to flatten and open up the dough. The first dough docker had very short teeth and most closely resembled the dough docker shown at http://www.foodservicedirect.com/product.cfm/p/159264/Allied-Metal-Spinning-Full-Size-Dough-Docker-4-7/8-inch.htm but with a plastic handle. That dough docker was used very aggressively (with better than 20 passes across the dough) to flatten the cold dough ball and press the edges outwardly to start to form a skin. Once that was done, a second dough docker with longer teeth was used on the dough skin, also aggressively. That dough docker looks like the one shown at http://www.foodservicewarehouse.com/american-metalcraft/dd5701/p382701.aspx?source=googleps but with longer teeth. After a few hand to hand flips, the skin was placed on a dark metal disk and dressed.

The pizza was dressed with an apple topping and a second topping (more on this below), and baked. The apple topping comprised diced apples with a fairly large dice size, considerably larger than the apple dice I used. That topping amply covered  the surface of the pizza. The second topping was a sugar-based topping that was fairly light in color and sparsely applied on top of the apple topping. Later, when I was at home and was able to more closely examine the pizza, I could not find any evidence of the use of oats in the second topping, even after poking around both toppings and examining everything with a magnifying glass. I concluded that it was possible that my local PJs is using another PJ topping, called "Cinnamon Spread", in lieu of the streusal topping earlier described. Such use would be contrary to the image of the Applepie pizza shown at the PJ website (http://www.papajohns.com/menu/side_applepie.shtm) which, to my eye, and especially after magnifying the image, appears to show oat flakes. However, the Cinnamon Spread would seem to fit the profile for the Cinnapie pie, which, upon examining its image at the PJ website (http://www.papajohns.com/menu/side_cinnapie.shtm), does not appear to contain any oat flakes. However, if brown sugar and a flour are used, it is perhaps proper to characterize the topping as a "streusal" topping, as PJs does in its promotional materials. If the Cinnamon Spread was used, it contains the following ingredients:

Cinnamon Spread: Sugar, margarine (partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oils, water, salt, mono and diglycerides, lecithin, sodium benzoate and citric acid [preservatives], artificial flavor, artificial color, vitamin A palmitate added), bleached enriched flour (flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), soy oil, molasses, cinnamon, water, potassium sorbate (preservative), and soy lecithin.

After the pizza was baked, the icing was applied. That step was done behind a counter outside of my view but after the pizza was boxed and handed to me, I examined it and saw that the icing had already melted and had largely disappeared into the pizza. Once I got the pizza into the car, I weighed it. It was 17.92 ounces. When I got the pizza home, I examined it more closely. The crust of the pizza was thinner than mine, but as previously noted, I was using an "emergency" PJ clone dough with a lot of yeast (and using very warm water) that resulted in a very gassy dough after better than tripling in volume. The PJ Applepie apple topping also had a "pasty" texture indicative of the use of flour or some other thickener for the apple topping. As shown in the photos below, the rim of the pizza looks pockmarked. That was because of the use of the two dough dockers that riddled the dough skin with holes.

The pizza itself was quite tasty with a pleasant "apple pie" flavor. At $3.99 (plus tax), it might be considered a relative bargain and preferable to attempting to replicate it at home. However, it will have a more "commercial" quality, rather than a "homemade" quality, with a lot of chemicals and additives and preservatives that one might prefer to avoid.

Peter

EDIT (9/5/16): For the Wayback Machine version of the FoodServiceWarehouse link, see https://web.archive.org/web/20130825101837/http://www.foodservicewarehouse.com/american-metalcraft/dd5701/p382701.aspx?source=googleps

[November]

Peter,

I think I would rather eat what you crafted earlier.  Although, maybe they had the same idea for the streusel that I did (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3904.msg32714.html), which excludes rolled oats.  I don't remember exactly why I excluded them, but it probably had something to do with the texture combination of oats and pizza crust.

- red.november

[norma427]

Peter,
Your PJ clone Apple Pie does look a lot better than Papa John's.
I did email Papa Johns's and asked why their website says they put the icing on before baking and I copied their reply for you to see.

Ms. Norma Knepp,

We are instructed to put the icing on after it comes out of the oven.  Sorry about the confusion.  We will have someone check the website to correct the error.  Thanks for catching the mistake.

Scott Steimel
PAPA JOHN'S PIZZA
District Supervisor
Md/Pa Pizza/ Slap Dough Pizza (PJ Bay Subsidiary)
York/Lancaster/Hanover/Ephrata
cell:  717-818-7192
fax:  717-266-1404

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

Thanks for following up on the icing matter.

Peter

[Pete-zza]

Not to belabor the clone PJ Applepie pizzas but since I had some leftover apple topping from my prior effort I decided to use it to make another clone Applepie pizza. However, this time, I decided to use the Cinnamon Spread that some--or maybe even many--PJ stores use to make Applepie pizzas. I believe that the Cinnamon Spread is also used to make Cinnapie pizzas. That spread is a streusel topping, in that it contains brown sugar and flour, but does not contain any oats.

For the dough formulation, I decided to use the same one as before but in which I increased the amount of salt from 0.75% back to the 1.50% that I frequently use for clone PJ doughs. In all other respects, the dough formulation was the same as the last one and the dough was made in exactly the same way (using hand kneading). Using the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html, the final dough formulation was this one:

King Arthur Bread Flour, unsifted (100%): Water (56.5%): IDY (0.80%): Salt (1.50%): Vegetable (Soybean) Oil (7.3%): Honey (5%): Total (171.1%):

189.69 g  |  6.69 oz | 0.42 lbs 107.18 g  |  3.78 oz | 0.24 lbs 1.52 g | 0.05 oz | 0 lbs | 0.5 tsp | 0.17 tbsp 2.85 g | 0.1 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.51 tsp | 0.17 tbsp 13.85 g | 0.49 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.05 tsp | 1.02 tbsp 9.48 g | 0.33 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.36 tsp | 0.45 tbsp 324.57 g | 11.45 oz | 0.72 lbs | TF = 0.1457682

Note: The dough formulation is for a single 10" pizza based on a nominal thickness factor of 0.14291; bowl residue compensation = 2%.

As noted previously in Reply 127, the PJ Cinnamon Spread comprises the following ingredients:

Cinnamon Spread: Sugar, margarine (partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oils, water, salt, mono and diglycerides, lecithin, sodium benzoate and citric acid [preservatives], artificial flavor, artificial color, vitamin A palmitate added), bleached enriched flour (flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), soy oil, molasses, cinnamon, water, potassium sorbate (preservative), and soy lecithin.

To prepare my clone version of that spread, I combined the following ingredients: 76 grams (2.68 oz.) of packed light brown sugar, one tablespoon of margarine (low-end supermarket soft margarine), two tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour, ¼ teaspoon soybean oil, ¼ teaspoon molasses, and 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon. It seemed to me that my clone version of the Cinnamon Spread was lighter in color than the one I saw used in the PJ store recently, so it is possible that the "sugar" in the above ingredients list includes a combination of both sucrose (table sugar) and brown sugar. My version produced far more than I needed for the latest Applepie clone pizza. As it turned out, I used only 19 grams (0.67 oz.). One can easily halve the recipe and have more than needed. Or else reserve whatever is not needed for future pizzas.

The pizza was dressed in the same manner as previously described but for the substitution of the clone Cinnamon Spread for the one that contained the oat flakes. The apple topping weighed 185 grams (6.52 oz.) and the clone Cinnamon Spread weighed 19 grams (0.67 oz.). The total weight of the unbaked pizza, without the icing, was 533 grams (18.80 oz.).

After dressing the pizza, it was baked in the same way as previously described except that it took about seven minutes this time to bake the pizza. After the pizza was done and had a chance to cool, I applied the white icing. With the icing, which weighed 55 grams (1.94 oz.), the weight of the finished pizza was about 535 grams, or 18.87 oz. That was about an ounce more than the real Applepie pizza I purchased from PJs. My pizza used more apple topping than the one I bought so that might account for part of the weight difference.

The photos below show the finished pizza. I thought that it was a very tasty pizza. My apple topping was a bit drier than the PJ version and my apple topping seemed a bit darker but these are things that can be easily remedied if one so wishes. But the flavors overall were very good. The pizza tasted even better, in my opinion, with ice cream.

Peter 

[November]

Peter,

Again, better looking than Papa John's.  I wonder if some of the difference in topping color has to do with the processing of the the apples.  There could be a marked difference between the amount of citric acid Papa John's uses and how it's used in the topping (whether directly on the apples or just in the mixture) and your use and quantity of lemon juice.  If you have any pH strips lying around and get another pie, you could dip the strip for the tip on acidity.

- red.november

[Pete-zza]

I wonder if some of the difference in topping color has to do with the processing of the the apples.  There could be a marked difference between the amount of citric acid Papa John's uses and how it's used in the topping (whether directly on the apples or just in the mixture) and your use and quantity of lemon juice.  If you have any pH strips lying around and get another pie, you could dip the strip for the tip on acidity.

November,

I wondered whether the darker color of my apple topping was due to the amount of cinnamon I used. I can't say that the real Applepie pizza had a pronounced cinnamon taste, whereas it was more detectable in my clones. When I used the lemon juice, I simply gave a few squeezes from a fresh lemon on the apples in a bowl as I was dicing the apples to keep them from turning brown. I have a little bag of citric acid that I thought about using but decided instead to use the lemon juice since most people are more likely to have lemons on hand than citric acid.

As I indicated I would do, I went back to my notes to revisit my numbers on the oat-based clone of the Applepie pizza (0.75% salt), and not surprisingly, your numbers are correct. That led me to increase the amount of salt on the Cinnamon Spread-based clone of the Applepie pizza from 0.75% to 1.50%. When I calculated the total salt content of that clone, it was 3.40 grams, versus the roughly 3.97 grams you earlier calculated, or a difference of about 1/10th teaspoon of salt.

Since I had leftovers of the original oat-based clone of the Applepie pizza (0.75% salt), the Applepie pizza I purchased from PJs, and my latest Cinnamon Spread-based clone of the Applepie pizza (1.50% salt), I did side by side taste tests to see if I could detect major differences in the salt contents. I also had leftovers of a regular PJ sausage pizza that I added to the taste tests. As best I could tell, the crusts of the two PJ pizzas tasted the same to me, which supports the thesis that the same dough is used for the regular PJ pizzas and the PJ dessert pizzas. Surprisingly, the crusts did not taste particularly salty to me. It may be that the high sugar and oil content of those doughs masquerades the way I detect salt on the palate. I likewise did not detect a difference in the salt level of my Cinnamon Spread-based clone and the PJ crusts. The original oat-based clone crust, however, was a bit less salty. With a difference of about 1/4 teaspoon of salt for the two clones, I suppose that that should not come as a big surprise.

I still have some leftovers to continue my taste tests, even if only for reasons other than respective salt contents of the various crusts. Thus far, I have been happy with all of the dessert pizzas. One of the nice outcomes of the clones is that the "emergency" PJ clone formulation works out quite nicely. My crusts were a little sweeter than the PJ crusts but I was using a fairly high amount of honey (5%), which I substituted for sucrose to get more crust color. The sweeter crust dovetails with the sweetness of the toppings, giving the crust a more "pastry" character than a pizza crust character. As I ate the pizza clones, I did not feel like I was eating a pizza crust.

Peter

[November]

Peter,

It's good to hear that the numbers are falling into place now, and that the expected levels of salt are vindicated.  As for the darkness of the topping, I think you would have to add a lot of cinnamon to make that much of a difference (at least based on the images I see here).

Thank you for taking the time to be thorough in your review and reanalysis.

- red.november

[Pete-zza]

I recently discovered a hotline telephone number at the Papa John's website (1-888-404-7537 and select option 1 to leave a message), by which individuals can pose questions about the PJ nutrition data. I decided to test that service by calling and asking two questions: 1) whether the PJ nutrition data is based on baked pizzas or unbaked pizzas, and 2) whether the flours used to make the PJ pizzas are bromated or not. Not long after I left a message, I received a voice mail message back from a woman in the Papa John's R&D operation telling me that the nutrition data is based on baked pizzas and that PJs does not use bromated flours but rather uses ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) in lieu of bromates. When I checked the ingredients information supplied to me last year by PJs, the ascorbic acid is one of the ingredients actually listed under the pizza dough entry.

Interestingly, the PJ nutrition data is developed by taking information provided by PJ's suppliers on the sauce, meats and other toppings, and cheeses and combining that information with the information on the doughs made by Papa John's in its own facilities. Both the suppliers and Papa John's account for the loss of moisture in their products as a result of baking when handing the information over to the companies that come up with the final numbers shown at the PJ website.

Peter

[madjack]

Here are my results, based on Pete-zza's 2-day ferment in the fridge (post #20 of this thread). This was a "personal" sized pizza I brought to my wife at work tonight, sausage, onions, & mushrooms. The dough was very easy to work with and tasted great. I cooked it right on the stone, preheated to 550F for an hour. Pete-zza, thanks for all your hard work and taking time to post recipes that even a novice like myself can follow and have great results in a home setting.

[Pete-zza]

madjack,

That's a good looking pizza. I'm glad that the recipe worked out well for you. I'm also glad to know that you were able to bake the pizza on a pizza stone, apparently without excessive browning or burning of the bottom crust. I've only used screens since that is what Papa John's uses in most of its stores.

Peter

[madjack]

The bottom was a bit darker than when I do other recipes, such as your "thin" version of Randy's American, which I have cooked the same way as I did this pie. I wouldn't call it excessive, and wasn't to the point of burning at all. I'd like to try this dough on a screen but have not ordered one as of yet, as you can see from the shape of the pie above, my pizzas could use a bit more work in the shaping department, that's due to my inexperience with my peel.

[torontonian]

Although I've never had a Papa John's before, in the spirit of continued experimentation I am giving this a go.

I went with the "original" 3-8 day clone to give that a try. I have tow dough balls in the fridge now.

I did have a question I hoped I could get answered before I go to bake... until now I've only made pizza on a stone (NY), or in a cast iron skillet (deep dish). I did manage to find a screen in my pots and pans drawer, its 14", but seems to have a slight non-stick coating to it. I don't think its ever been used. Am I out of luck to try and use this? I remember using a non-stick pan for deep dish once and it was a disaster. Appreciate some input.

Also, when I first made the dough earlier tonight, I screwed up and added teaspoon measurements of the sugar portion, instead of tablespoons. So I have two dough balls with 1/3 the sugar. How are these likely to turn out? Should I adjust the fermentation time for these? The reason I ask is I wonder if in Peter's formula, there was a relation between sugar and IDY. I noticed not much was used compared to the Lehmann I usually use. (Note: this is in addition to two dough balls with the correct measurements - I went back and re-did them)

Thanks!

-- Josh