Tommy's Pizza (Columbus OH) - Any recipe ideas

[DNA Dan]

Fantastic you were able to get what you're after Ted. I enjoy seeing your results with this style.

[Floridian]

I'm pretty sure Tommy's only uses high gluten flour. When I got the picture of the Bellisimo high gluten flour from the Campus Tommy's, the guy/employee I asked to take the picture said that was their only flour.  I also never saw any other flour bags when I did the dumpster diving with Ryan

TIFWIW

[tedcholl]

I'm pretty sure Tommy's only uses high gluten flour. When I got the picture of the Bellisimo high gluten flour from the Campus Tommy's, the guy/employee I asked to take the picture said that was their only flour.  I also never saw any other flour bags when I did the dumpster diving with Ryan

TIFWIW

Nice to see you back on the forum Floridian.   I've been using a 50/50 blend of King Arthur Bread Flour and King Arthur Hi Gluten to give me the same protein % as the Bellisimo, per their website.  No one, including me have been able to find where and how to buy Bellisimo.
Lot's happened since you were last active.  Hope you're doing well.
Ted

[bobgraff]

333Meg had found out a Tommy's clone (supposedly) that is in Naples FL. My mom used to live in Naples before her passing so I was familiar with the city. Megs doctor's receptionist told about The Crust (www.the crust.net). My wife finally found some time and took a road trip to Naples yesterday. Got a bit of a late start but arrived at our hotel around 7. We quickly disgorged our luggage and made the ten minute drive to The Crust. At 7:30, the place was PACKED. First off, it is NOTHING like a Tommy's on the inside. They had 20+ beers on tap and lots of wine choices. The restaurant is dominated by a 40 seat bar. The bar was packed too. There were at least 40 tables and booths in the restaurant as well as a six table private room. We got sat in a six person booth and ordered our drinks. I love Tommy's meatball subs so we got a medium pepperoni pizza and a meatball sub. We got our food and we were struck how much the pizza looks like Tommy's. The crust was spot on. Definitely ezzo for the pepperoni. That being said, after reflection, I found something was missing from the flavor profile. Not sure if the garlic powder was missing or something else. A reddit post said (from someone who claimed to have worked there) that Tommy's uses pecorino romano cheese. I lost my sense of smell 5+ years ago so my sense of taste is somewhat limited. I tend to like strong flavors so I put pec rom cheese when I make my clone here. Meg doesn't seem to think Tommy's uses pec rom. The sauce didn't stand out to me at all. Nothing like Tommy's IMO. The cheese seemed close to Tommy's, but, again, hard for me to discern some flavors. We went back today for lunch. We were the first customers of the day. I took the opportunity to go to the restroom so I could scope their kitchen out. They use a Lincoln pizza oven. After perusing the Lincoln website, I saw the model they use: http://www.lincolnfp.com/Product/fam_eomqsq/Impinger-I-1400-Series. They had two stacked up, which means they can crank out a ton of pizza pretty quickly. We got a small pep for lunch today and a large pep to go for our kids.

The first pic is of the pizza we got last night. Looks just like a Tommy's pizza IMO

The second pic you can see the lamination, looks spot on

The third pic is of the bottom of a piece

The forth pic is of the opening of the kitchen

The fifth pic is the large pep we got to go, they don't do par baked pizzas

The sixth pic is the bottom of the pizza from last night         

If anybody gets to Naples, check out The Crust. Not quite Tommy's, but pretty close

Saw mention of another shop in Scottsdale, AZ called The Crust Brothers in a Columbus Pizza Facebook group.  Looks like the guys who developed The Crust in Naples opened their own shop out West.