Classic Hand Tossed Domino's

[PizzaSean]

Hello American Style forum!

I've enjoyed trying to make NY style pizzas for the past 10 years or so, but have always thought it would be fun to try another style. I recently noticed the pizza screens at restaurant depot and thought that it would be fun to take a crack at a classic hand tossed Domino's clone. It is a fun pizza and I've always wondered what it would be like to try to replicate it.

Pics below of my first attempt, and if you want the methods and formulas I'll get right into that.

Before I tried making this, I searched the forum and youtube to see what it looked like to make a Domino's pie. There are lots of videos of workers stretching dough balls and documentaries showing the dough making process. Based on their process I decided I'd put the dough in the fridge, but due to my plans to bake it today, it only got about 18 hours in the fridge.

Having no benchmarks for dough ball weight or dough formula, I decided that a 1 lb dough ball for a 14" pie was a nice round number to start with and chose the following formula:

Flour (100%): Water (60%): IDY (.13%): Salt (2.25%): Oil (2.25%): Sugar (2.25%): Total (166.88%): Single Ball:

565.37 g  |  19.94 oz | 1.25 lbs 339.22 g  |  11.97 oz | 0.75 lbs 0.73 g | 0.03 oz | 0 lbs | 0.24 tsp | 0.08 tbsp 12.72 g | 0.45 oz | 0.03 lbs | 2.65 tsp | 0.88 tbsp 12.72 g | 0.45 oz | 0.03 lbs | 2.83 tsp | 0.94 tbsp 12.72 g | 0.45 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.19 tsp | 1.06 tbsp 943.49 g | 33.28 oz | 2.08 lbs | TF = N/A 471.74 g | 16.64 oz | 1.04 lbs

Dough
I used cold water to make these dough balls at about 52F. The finished dough balls were about 75F before going into the fridge.
Dough was mixed by hand, Superlative unbromated was combined with IDY and sugar, then mixed into the water which already had the salt mixed in. After that combined, the oil was added.

When I settled on baking them early afternoon, I decided that they'd need a few hours at room temp in order to keep growing to the size that I had in mind, so I pulled the dough balls from the fridge, initially warming the metal proofing containers on the stove since they hold their chill pretty effectively and I wanted to try and influence things in the warmer direction. I don't really have a game plan to do these kinds of things, it's more just a spur of the moment way for me to try and make the dough do a thing. I sort of wonder if I had added the salt a little later if that could have helped, but not sure.

Ingredients
Dough balls were coated generously in corn meal and then pressed out and stretched onto a 14" seasoned pizza screen.
Sauce was bonta, diluted with water until a consistency that seemed like Domino's videos. It had salt, onion powder, garlic powder, basil, oregano, and sugar. Didn't measure them.
Cheese was RD Supremo Part Skim LMM.
Pepperoni is the pictured hormel.

Bake Info
Oven set to 450. Quarry tiles on middle rack and screen was placed on the tiles. The tiles read more like 470F. Bake times were approx 10 min.
It seems to me like going with a screen on rack type of bake might be more like the Domino's conveyor oven and might result in a better finished product.
I was disappointed by the light color of the crusts and had I not been in a rush I would have let them go a few more minutes to get some color. I wonder if LDMP might be worth looking into.

Takeaways

I think that if I were to try this again, I'd want to make the dough ball a touch heavier. Maybe try 17 oz and see how that was.
I think I'd want to bake on the rack and compare that result to a tile result.
I think I might want another browning agent in the dough.
I'd probably want to be less subtle when seasoning the sauce.
and
I'd want it to taste more like Dominos. It was okay! It just didn't really remind me of Domino's that much, and I'm not sure why.

Anyway, this was fun and I'll probably periodically come back here and attempt more tries at this. I saw an active thread about Domino's Pan, but thought that it could be nice to have one on the hand tossed.

[PizzaSean]

Slice pics.

[Pete-zza]

Sean,

The reason your pizza did not taste like a Domino's pizza is that you did not use the correct ingredients . For example, the ingredients for the Domino's hand tossed dough, as taken from the Domino's website at https://www.dominos.com/en/pages/content/nutritional/ingredients, are as follows:

Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Niacin, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Soybean Oil, Contains 2% or Less of the following: Sugar, Salt, Whey, Maltodextrin, Dextrose, Dough Conditioners (Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Enzyme, Calcium Sulfate, Ascorbic Acid, Calcium Phosphate, L-Cysteine), Yeast, Corn Meal (used in preparation).

If you want to see what all of the above chemicals and additives do so that you can eliminate them or look for natural substitutes, see the list at:

https://www.vrg.org/ingredients/index.php

You might also want to take a look at this post for a possible Domino's dough clone:

Reply 14 at https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=16170.msg162177#msg162177

To the foregoing, I might mention that Tom Lehmann once said that Domino's uses frozen dough. However, in a conversation that I once had with a Domino's customer service person, I was told that they do not freeze their dough. If I were to speculate, I would say that the Domino's dough balls delivered from their commissaries to their stores may be pretty close to freezing, and it is also possible that some of their dough balls get frozen unintentionally. The "fresh" dough claim seems to be supported by the video in Reply 16 at:

https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=31354.msg313066;topicseen#msg313066

Similarly, the "fresh" dough claim gets support in the UK, where a Domino's dough is also made. See Reply 10 at:

https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=20485.msg313398#msg313398

See, also, the video cited in Reply 12.

Peter

[Pete-zza]

Sean,

After my last post, I went back to the PMQ Think Tank to see if I could find Tom's post there on the Domino's dough. I found it, at:

https://thinktank.pmq.com/t/analysing-dominos-crust/12857/16

Peter

[PizzaSean]

Thank you for pointing me in those directions, Peter! I'll be following up on those links you provided and hopefully coming up with a better approach for my next attempt.

On the note of using the correct ingredients - you're absolutely right  . I had previously glanced at the ingredients list for their hand tossed crust, robust inspired tomato sauce, and pizza cheese, but forgot to brush up on that before this attempt.

So in an effort to improve my sauce I'll include their ingredients list for their standard sauce.

Robust Inspired Tomato SauceContains: Tomato Puree (Water, Tomato Paste), Sugar, Salt, Spices, Garlic, Soybean Oil, and Citric Acid

The name of that sauce will probably always be funny to me

Anyway, I believe that someone on this forum once indicated that "onion" would have to be listed as an ingredient and not under the umbrella of "spices." If what I'm remembering is correct, then I should omit the onion in the sauce next time. And I'll add a little bit of oil.

I've done a little bit of poking around the internet to see if there's any info on if they cook that sauce during processing or if it is uncooked tomato going on pizza, but so far I haven't turned anything up.

[PizzaSean]

Sean,

The reason your pizza did not taste like a Domino's pizza is that you did not use the correct ingredients . For example, the ingredients for the Domino's hand tossed dough, as taken from the Domino's website at https://www.dominos.com/en/pages/content/nutritional/ingredients, are as follows:

Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Niacin, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Soybean Oil, Contains 2% or Less of the following: Sugar, Salt, Whey, Maltodextrin, Dextrose, Dough Conditioners (Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Enzyme, Calcium Sulfate, Ascorbic Acid, Calcium Phosphate, L-Cysteine), Yeast, Corn Meal (used in preparation).

If you want to see what all of the above chemicals and additives do so that you can eliminate them or look for natural substitutes, see the list at:

https://www.vrg.org/ingredients/index.php

Peter,

I'm finally getting around to reading about some of these ingredients on the link that you thoughtfully provided. I was surprised to learn that L-Cysteine can be made from human hair and duck feathers! I think I can leave that ingredient out.

I'm curious about a few things:

1) i'm trying to pick a good product for the "whey" ingredient to try and include that. Would you think that something like this product be along the right lines? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HYJ5JFM/?tag=pmak-20

2) when the ingredients list denotes that some ingredients are less than 2%, that must refer to a real world 2% not a bakers 2% I assume. If my assumption is correct then the fact that the total makeup of ingredients is less than 2% for the sugar/salt/whey/dough conditioners/etc, and the fact that soybean oil is listed before that 2% could give us a clue for setting up the bakers percentage formula for a Dominos clone if I'm not mistaken. At the minimum it seems to suggest a hierarchy that oil would be the highest % and it would be greater than sugar which is in turn greater than the salt.

By my logic above, if I used the Lehmann Dough Calculator Tool and input 1 round dough ball with 14" diameter and TF of 0.11, 60% hydration - the total dough ball weighs ~480g. So we would know that the dough contains less than 480*.02 = 9.6g each of sugar and salt but more than 9.6g of oil. Using bakers percents of 3.5, 3, and 2 for oil, sugar, salt respectively satisfies the criteria of oil > 9.6g and sugar and salt being < 9.6g.

3) I read another post of yours (reply #9180: https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=21830.msg540747#msg540747) where you explained that maltodextrin helps with inhibiting ice crystals from forming but doesn't add much in terms of flavor or food for the yeast, so I'm intending to omit that ingredient.

4) Dextrose you go on to say in that same post can help with color, so I may spring for a bag of dextrose at some point to see if that helps.

5) the dough conditioners - many of these are available for purchase on amazon and could become part of this project, but I think that for now I'm going to hold off on those for now.

6) enzyme - I saw an old post that you linked to Tom Lehmann discussing the enzyme at PMQ, but unfortunately the link was not working for me. In another post it seemed possible that the enzyme is malt. If that is the case would using LDMP be a viable option or would that be the wrong approach?


So I think I'll try to get some whey and reformulate my dough so that oil > sugar > salt and then take it from there!

I'm going to keep doing some more reading from your resources and I'll be back with more questions or another pizza attempt.

[PizzaSean]

Peter,

I now am re-reading the link you provided at Reply #3 on this thread and I'm realizing that that post must be a version to Tom Lehmann discussing the enzyme and analyzing Domino's dough that I found as a broken link elsewhere on the forum.

[Pete-zza]

Sean,

On the matter of whey, I am not familiar with the Amazon product that you cited. My recollection is that I used an inexpensive package of sweet dairy whey that I found in a local market. I believe that I may have used the Bob's Red Mill sweet dairy whey (see photo below) but when I tried today to locate an online source of that product I did not find that product by that name. However, this product is an example of one that should work for your purposes:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0001JXDLI/?tag=pmak-20 (for description, see http://www.barryfarm.com/nutri_info/milk/whey_sweet.html)

Generally speaking, I have seen sweet dairy whey products in supermarkets, in big box stores like Walmart, and in dollar stores. And whey is readily available from online sources.

Further, by way of background, you might take a look at the definition of dairy whey as set forth in the forum's Pizza Glossary to get an idea as to what that product is and how it is used:

https://www.pizzamaking.com/glossary.html#index_d

With respect to the FDA's 2% rule, you might want to take a look at the following thread inasmuch as I discussed that rule with Tom Lehmann, and, as it so happens, specifically with respect to Domino's:

https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=31528.msg313289#msg313289

On the matter of the enzyme you mentioned, I am inclined to think that the enzyme is a diastatic malt since the flour components recited by Domino's do not include barley malt or an equivalent product. Usually when the enzyme in an ingredients statement is coupled directly with a flour, and sometimes also a sugar like dextrose, that product is an LDMP.

Unfortunately, many of the PMQ Think Tank links on the forum no longer work. That is because PMQ restructured its forum to use different software. I try whenever I stumble across an inoperative PMQ Think Tank link to search the PMQ Think Tank to see if I can find the original subject matter. Sometime, I get lucky, but sometimes I am not successful.

Peter

[PizzaSean]

Peter,

Thank you for recommending the sweet dairy whey for this application. In my hunt for the right kind of whey I saw a bakers supplier selling a 50 lb bag of sweet dairy whey, so that caught my eye and made me wonder if that might be what I should use.

If anyone comes along in the near-term to this thread, and is looking for the product Peter linked to above, I have some good news. I was able to buy it from Barry Farm directly for $1-2 less on the shipping than it was from Amazon. I imagine that buying directly from the business might result in a win-win for the customer and the vendor. Just ordered it today so I'll be trying this with some LDMP in small quantities on my next Domino's attempt.

Thank you for referencing the glossary as well! I read through it when I was brand new to this site ages ago and had never heard of almost any of the terms in the glossary. It was nice to revisit it now and learn some new things and see how some of the terms were very familiar now.

That was a very interesting thread on the less than 2% rule. I tried looking for some FDA labeling documentation but the one document I spent the most time on didn't seem to have anything on that topic. Very interesting that it provides a shroud for companies to shuffle the order of ingredients away from their descending weight values! It was also interesting to compare the April 2014 hand tossed crust ingredients list with the Nov 2020 list. Very similar with some slight differences. But it was interesting to note how the whey and the "enzyme" were in the sub 1% list in 2014. They're of course on the sub 2% list but this seems to offer us some buckets to put certain ingredients in with some upper boundaries. Seems as though if I were to plan my next dough right now I'd probably aim for something like this:

Flour (100%): Water (59%): IDY (.2%): Salt (2.5%): Vegetable (Soybean) Oil (3.5%): Sugar (3%): Sweet Dried Dairy Whey (1.5%): Diastatic Malt Powder (1.5%): Total (171.2%):

280.41 g  |  9.89 oz | 0.62 lbs 165.44 g  |  5.84 oz | 0.36 lbs 0.56 g | 0.02 oz | 0 lbs | 0.19 tsp | 0.06 tbsp 7.01 g | 0.25 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.46 tsp | 0.49 tbsp 9.81 g | 0.35 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2.16 tsp | 0.72 tbsp 8.41 g | 0.3 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2.11 tsp | 0.7 tbsp 4.21 g | 0.15 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.39 tsp | 0.46 tbsp 4.21 g | 0.15 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.68 tsp | 0.56 tbsp 480.06 g | 16.93 oz | 1.06 lbs | TF = 0.11

I think this satisfies the less than 1% from 2014 with the whey and ldmp. It should also satisfy the less than 2% with the sugar and salt, though I acknowledge that the salt could be a higher weight ingredient than the sugar as per the rules in the other post.

I haven't received my LDMP yet in the mail but I know it is intended for use up to 5%. I haven't contacted the manufacturer yet to get the actual degrees Lintner value data but I will do so just for the sake of documentation.

Thank you again for all of these great searched threads from these forums and those at PMQ!

[Pete-zza]

Sean,

This morning I did some more searching to see if I could find the current FDA's 2% (and lower) rule. I found it. It is titled §101.4  Food; designation of ingredients, and can be seen at:

https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=c508400f9d27a665861e3dddab04844e&mc=true&node=se21.2.101_14&rgn=div8 (note first two paragraphs)

Peter

[brijaco]

Thanks for the recipe, turned out good. Pretty flavorful crust. Have never used whey in a dough before but added it along with diastic malt powder as suggested in previous posts. Im glad I did, the crust browned nicely and the texure was pretty similar to Domino's. Wouldn't say the flavor is spot on, but still a tasty pie.

[PizzaSean]

Thanks for the recipe, turned out good. Pretty flavorful crust. Have never used whey in a dough before but added it along with diastic malt powder as suggested in previous posts. Im glad I did, the crust browned nicely and the texure was pretty similar to Domino's. Wouldn't say the flavor is spot on, but still a tasty pie.

Hey brijaco! Thanks for posting your work on this recipe - I'm happy that you tried it out and the results look good!

I've lost some momentum on this project, but I did do another attempt of the dominos with the whey powder and malt powder included and took pictures. Unfortunately, life has gotten quite busy and I never posted them after a month or two. But now that I see your post you've got it on my mind again. I'll see if I can find those pictures and post them up here to keep the Domino's Hand Tossed project going.

[brijaco]

Hey brijaco! Thanks for posting your work on this recipe - I'm happy that you tried it out and the results look good!

I've lost some momentum on this project, but I did do another attempt of the dominos with the whey powder and malt powder included and took pictures. Unfortunately, life has gotten quite busy and I never posted them after a month or two. But now that I see your post you've got it on my mind again. I'll see if I can find those pictures and post them up here to keep the Domino's Hand Tossed project going.

Would be interested to see how yours turned out. Mine was fun to make and tasty but honestly aside from the sauce I made being pretty spot on it didn't taste like Domino's all that much. I think part of the issue I had with it was that I left too much crust around the rim when I was opening up the dough, and I didn't add any garlic butter to the crust once it was out of the oven like Domino's does (or in their case most likely a margarine based product). Not sure I'll make this again anytime soon but when I do I'll keep those things in mind.