Garcia's Pizza

[dmckean44]

I checked out your sauce and I use basically the same thing but no Mccormick Italian seasoning. I think I pureed the tomatoes to much. I remember garcias had chunks.
Thin crust is on the menu and a skin in the fridge now. I'm trying to get a Grady's crust. Grady's is a thicker cracker crust. Mmm mm gradys.
Also got a Chicago style using the same cracker crust dough which cooks nicely at 40% hydration. Gonna turn that one into a stuffed crust pizza.

I still think yours turned out well. We have to figure out the baking thing on our own because every oven cooks differently.

[dogboy]

Yes I agree. I was surprised it took almost 20 minutes to cook. My deepdish takes 35 to 38 minutes.
Got me a Blackstone coming in 10 days gonna be pizza drunk!!

[Chicago Bob]

Yes I agree. I was surprised it took almost 20 minutes to cook. My deepdish takes 35 to 38 minutes.
Got me a Blackstone coming in 10 days gonna be pizza drunk!!

Woo hoo baby!! 

CB

[Dills Pizza]

thank you.
I had a chance meeting last evening with a  former employee of one of the Normal Garcias. Although it has been many years since they have been in town and since he worked there he did try to recollect some techniques and info.
Cornmeal is an ingredient in their dough. The sauce was made off grounds and brought in from somewhere so he wasn't sure about the sauce.
The gutbuster style pan pizza was rolled with a sheeter and then pressed into the pan. The panned dough then sat in the pan for many hours until used. Which gave it a long rise time. It would rise at or above room temp in the kitchen which would get hot do to the ovens. These pizzas went on a conveyor to cook.
I'm gonna try the long rise in my gas oven.
He said the deep dish they used aluminum tent stakes that were bent somehow and that helped cook the deepdish all the way through. I'll get more detail next week on that.
He also said the meats were precooked before going on the pie.
Again it had been many years since he worked there. And this was just one of the locations.
I'll post some pics this evening of my results.

Any further information that might be extrapolated (via water-boarding, etc) would be nice.

[mrmojo1]

I hadn't seen this before!  but it gives me hope they are on a comeback maybe???  i like how the guy recording this is obviously surprised and taken aback by seeing Ralph and Joe on television after all these years later!  i wonder if he had worked there in the heydays!!  80s?

[Zaphod]

Having Moved from CU 8 months ago i am in Gutbuster withdrawals. I have reviewed the postings  and this is what i have compiled:
My questions are these:
What temperature has been determine to be the best?
Do you sprinkle or mist any olive oil on the top?
How do you epand dough from a 9 x 13 yield to 12 x 16 yield?

Pizza slices in a pan 4 x ( 6 x 8 slices)

pizza sauce:
1 28 oz can great value crushed tomatoes
4.5 oz great value tomato paste
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp basil
1/4 tsp McCormick’s Italian seasoning
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
Pinch of red pepper flakes
Powered beet 1\4 tsp

 toppings:
Sausage
Mozzarella slices
Mozzarella shred
Provolone shred
Romano shred
Parmesan (dry)
Onion
Green pepper
Pepperoni

Pizza dough:
 1 x 9x13 ( need to expand the dough for 12 x 16” pan
Flour (100%): 242.79 g  |  8.56 oz | 0.54 lbs
Water (58%): 140.82 g  |  4.97 oz | 0.31 lbs
Instant dry yeast (1%): 2.43 g | 0.09 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.81 tsp | 0.27 tbsp
Salt (1.3%): 3.16 g | 0.11 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.93 tsp | 0.31 tbsp
Canola Oil (27%): 65.55 g | 2.31 oz | 0.14 lbs | 4.86 tbsp | 0.3 cups
Cardoman  .25 tsp
Sugar (7%): 17 g | 0.6 oz | 0.04 lbs | 4.26 tsp | 1.42 tbsp
Total (194.3%):471.74 g | 16.64 oz | 1.04 lbs | TF = 0.16

24 hr dough sit in fridge pull out 4hrs before use

Oven 450: 15-20 min
1.   Butter pan, apply corn meal
2.   Press in dough to corners.
3.   Let Rise  1hr  in very warm room
4.   Slices of cheese
5.   Sausage (raw chunks with ground black pepper Spicy)
6.   Sauce
7.   Green peppers, Onions
8.   Pepperoni
9.   Insert tent stakes thru sides
10.   Shredded mozzarella, low-skim mozzarella, provolone, Parmesan, Romano
11.   Light mist drizzle of olive oil
12.   Oven 450: 15-20 min (experiment with this)

[RockyMountainPie]

Hi Zaphod.

You can use the http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded-calculator.html to do all of the hard work for you.  Use the same formula you have listed and then make sure you select "Rectangular" as your pizza shape and then plug in your pan dimensions. 

This is what I came up with when doing that for a 12x16 inch pan:

Flour (100%):    448.23 g  |  15.81 oz | 0.99 lbs
Water (58%):    259.97 g  |  9.17 oz | 0.57 lbs
IDY (1%):    4.48 g | 0.16 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.49 tsp | 0.5 tbsp
Salt (1.3%):    5.83 g | 0.21 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.21 tsp | 0.4 tbsp
Canola Oil (27%):    121.02 g | 4.27 oz | 0.27 lbs | 8.88 tbsp | 0.56 cups
Sugar (7%):    31.38 g | 1.11 oz | 0.07 lbs | 7.87 tsp | 2.62 tbsp
Cardamom: 0.5 tsp
Total (194.3%):   870.91 g | 30.72 oz | 1.92 lbs | TF = 0.16

Note there is no entry for cardamom, so I just manually typed that in.  I increased the value to 0.5 tsp since this doughball will be roughly twice the size of the original.   

[dmckean44]

Hi Zaphod.

You can use the http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded-calculator.html to do all of the hard work for you.  Use the same formula you have listed and then make sure you select "Rectangular" as your pizza shape and then plug in your pan dimensions. 

This is what I came up with when doing that for a 12x16 inch pan:

Flour (100%):    448.23 g  |  15.81 oz | 0.99 lbs
Water (58%):    259.97 g  |  9.17 oz | 0.57 lbs
IDY (1%):    4.48 g | 0.16 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.49 tsp | 0.5 tbsp
Salt (1.3%):    5.83 g | 0.21 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.21 tsp | 0.4 tbsp
Canola Oil (27%):    121.02 g | 4.27 oz | 0.27 lbs | 8.88 tbsp | 0.56 cups
Sugar (7%):    31.38 g | 1.11 oz | 0.07 lbs | 7.87 tsp | 2.62 tbsp
Cardamom: 0.5 tsp
Total (194.3%):   870.91 g | 30.72 oz | 1.92 lbs | TF = 0.16

Note there is no entry for cardamom, so I just manually typed that in.  I increased the value to 0.5 tsp since this doughball will be roughly twice the size of the original.   

No one should be putting cardamom in the dough. If the dough is fermented using my procedures above, it will produce some cardamom like esters. 

[dmckean44]

I'm bumping this thread because I'm back living in the area now and was able to make it to one of the few remaining locations a few weeks ago.

The pizza they currently serve is a mess. It's not really anything like what they were making in their hey-day in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

I still made a couple notes though. The sauce is definitely sweeter than what I've been making on my clone. It tastes like there's a lot more tomato paste in it. On my next batch I'll be increasing the amount of tomato paste by 50%.

Also, the sausage they're using is absolutely delicious. It's definitely a garlic sausage with a very large amount of black pepper in it. I'll get a new recipe for sausage going before I do my next bake.

The rest of the pizza was really poor quality. The crust barely had any rise going on, the pepperoni was super cheap and tasteless, the cheese was so cheap and it was gross and all the vegetables were just diced into squares and not torn into chunks like they used to do. It was a really disappointing pizza. 

[Danivel]

Thanks man! A lot of this is is already in posts earlier in the thread but it's great to hear the same things from more people so we know we're on the right path.

The cornmeal is new though, I made this dough recipe from BigR's post #76 in this thread. Since I had no idea what was in the slurry mix packet, I just went with sugar, salt and yeast to simplify things until we got closer. I just made best guesses on the amounts of those ingredients. If you run into this person again, ask them how they know or why they suspect that corn meal was used in the dough.

Well, I sure hate to see that there are so few people posting about The Flying Tomato Brothers, Garcia's Pizza. I still have fond memories of their great pizzas during their heyday.

As far as posts about cornmeal being used in their dough, my post « Reply #23 on: October 22, 2005, 08:17:08 PM » mentioned the cornmeal way back then. I found it when I was looking for a deep-dish recipe that I would like when I came across the recipe from the Frugal Gourmet's cook book with it in it. I wasn't trying to duplicate Garcia's at that point. His recipe wasn't really even for a deep-dish pizza, at all, since he said to pat the dough down to where it was only about 1\8" thick. I made it about 1" thick and it just happened to have that great Garcia's taste that I had been missing for over 15 years at that time.

I'm glad to see that a former employee has also said that there was cornmeal in their dough, I think it is what gives it its distinctive flavor. I'm still working on getting the sauce just right, I'm pretty sure it was very basic, but the seasoning has to be just right. I also need to modify the sausage I use to try to get it more Gutbuster-like in flavor. Of course, it's been over 30 years since I've had a slice of a real Gutbuster pizza, we moved to Missouri in 1991.

Luckily, we now have a Monical's just 45 miles from us, west of St Louis just, off I-70. Talk about fancy pizza parlors!!! This place is super high-end looking.

Good Grief!!! I just realized it has been exactly 17 years ago, to the day, that I posted the recipe. I've made a lot of attempts to duplicate Garcia's and Monical's pizzas since then but they are never as good as I remember the originals being.

Dan...