I was born the same year Lou Malnati opened his original Lincolnwood location and I grew up two miles from that spot. I've had a lot of slices in my time and as good as the frozen Lou-to-go pizzas are, they're just not the same as fresh from the oven. This board has been so helpful educating me in my attempt to replicate the original. A big thank you to all the contributions here.
Here are the two main questions I haven't been able to find answers to on this forum:
- How should the cooking time and/or temperature be changed when cooking a 14" pie (instead of a 9")
- What type of parmesan does Lou's put on the tomatoes before cooking? I used fresh, grated parmesan - which disappeared into the sauce during cooking
This was our first attempt at replicating a 14" sausage & mushroom. It was
nearly perfect. We found the crust to be more crumbly than crunchy. It didn't seem to have the same "crunch" from the original. Would love any feedback on what we could have done better.
We used the cooking time we saw for a 9" pizza. I heated the stone to 650 degrees on my grill and placed it on the bottom rack in an oven preheated to 450. I cooked 12 minutes on the stone, rotated 180 degrees, then cooked another 12 minutes. We finished cooking on the top rack for 6 minutes, but the crust wasn't done, so I added about 6 minutes with the convection fan on. Maybe I needed to adjust the time for the larger pizza, but I haven't seen much guidance on that.
Dough formulation:
14" x 2" straight pan, 1.4" up the sides, 1.5% bowl residue
Combined Flour 100% 397.73
(AP Flour 85% 338.07 / Semolina 15% 59.66)
Water (47%) 186.94
Active Dry Yeast (0.6%) 2.39
Morton's Kosher Salt (0.5%) 1.99
Butter/Margarine (1%) 3.98
Corn Oil (18%) 71.59
Olive Oil (5%) 19.89
Total (187.1%, TF=0.12) 744.16
Single Ball (1 balls total) 744.16
2 hour rise @ 85 degrees, 2 days refrigerated in the same bowl, 3.5 hours at room temp prior to cooking
I used ghee to grease the pan
Sauce: 28 oz of Alta Cucina whole, peeled (drained and cut into thirds) + 14 oz 6 in 1
Cheese: 1.25 lb Boar's Head Whole Milk mozzarella
Sausage: Pythonic's recipe (1 lb, 80/20 ground pork)
Pan: Chicago Metallic aluminized steel 14"x2"
Photos of the process and outcome...