Reverse Engineering Beau Jo's Mountain Pie Crust

[bojoMountainMan]

Also, white crust with sauce, bacon, and basil:

[bojoMountainMan]

and of course, with that same dough, you can make their calzones:

[bojoMountainMan]

and as long as people don't want to be haters and trolls, I am happy to go through the entire process... and believe it or not... its only a 15-20 minute rise...

[RockyMountainPie]

bojoMountainMan,

Great work on your pies!  They look very authentic.  Would love to learn more about the entire process.

[bojoMountainMan]

Thanks.  It tastes authentic too. ;-)  This process is how BeauJos does it...

You will need a pizza pan with holes in it and a pizza docker to make it.  Use the 1/4 batch recipe.  Again, its good for 2 16 inch pies.  This recipe we used the wheat crust recipe as its our favorite.

In a mixer, mix the dry stuff - flour, salt and pepper to be sure its all inter-mixed pretty well.  Then mix together alone the wet stuff, the water, oil and after its mixed separately, very slowly pour it into the dry mix in the mixer.  Very slowly add in the honey as a last step.  Once its all together you want to run the mixer for about 7-10 minutes, or until the dough is relatively firm and it pulls away from the sides.  You probably can do this w/o a mixer, but we followed the BeauJo's process.  The key is the dough should be firm and should not stick to your fingers.

Once its done, you want to put it into a ball and put some flour over it.  You then want to cut a tic-tac-toe or big # sign on top of the ball with a knife.  Place it in an air tight container and let it rise for about 15- 20 minutes.  Its a short rise, but it seems to be pretty effective.  After the rise is complete, dust some flour on a counter (or board), and flatten out the dough with a rolling pin to about 1/8".  Beaujo's uses a roller machine, but I'm thinking most folks don't have one, so a rolling pin will suffice.

Once its rolled out you want to roll a pizza docker on the dough.  This prevents the bottom part of the crust from rising further upwards and it rises into the holes.  It basically keeps the bottom of the crust thin, while allowing the outter crust to rise to give it that typical Beaujo texture.  Once you have done that you lay it over the pan.

Here is a picture of how that should look:

[bojoMountainMan]

Now to do that nice beaujo's crust...take 3 fingers at the edge of the pan and cut that distance as a diameter around the entire pie:

[bojoMountainMan]

At the base cut a slit in the pie:

[bojoMountainMan]

Then you begin folding part of the slit diagonally into triangles.  You fold it upwards and to the right with your right hand.  Then place your left hand at the tip of the triangle, while beginning to form the next triangle with your right hand.  You will do this all the way around the entire pizza to form the beajo's crust.

[bojoMountainMan]

Be sure you preheat your oven to 500 degrees.  That takes a while so get going as soon in the process as you can.

Now for the toppings.  I will show the firecracker since its one of our favorites.  For the firecracker pizza, they use La Nova Hot Wing Sauce and some commercially made ranch dressing in a quantity of 2:1.  We didn't want to order that stuff on line, so we made a great substitute that uses Frank's Red Hot Wing sauce and Kens Buttermilk Ranch dressing (which are easily found at Safeway and most major grocery stores) which ended up tasting identical.  Beaujo's uses those squeeze condiment bottles that you can get at Walmart for like .99, so we used those for safe keeping.  Of course thats not necessary, but we sometimes use that sauce for buffalo wing salads and on hot dogs, so its convenient.  Whatever you use, you fill up the bottle half way with Frank's Red Hot Wing sauce and then another 1/4 of the bottle with the Ranch dressing.  The Ken's is pretty thick, so you may want to water it down a little so it has a more liquidy consistency.  Mix it all together and shake the bottle really well to be sure it intermixes.  This will give you a creamy spicy hot-wing style sauce.  Yes, this is how BeauJo's does it.

You will also need to chop up about 4 fresh jalapenos and the cheese is monterrey jack and cheddar.  You will also need to have some chopped cooked chicken handy and cut into small cubes.

To make the fire cracker, put on the BeauJo's ranch/wing sauce you made, but don't over do it.  If you put on too much, the dough will come out soggy.  Then add the chicken and jalapenos.  Then add the monterrey jack, and then the cheddar.  Again, be sparing on how much you place on it.

[bojoMountainMan]

Beajo's uses a roller oven that is set to 457 and the pizza is cooked for something like 9 minutes.  At some of the higher altitude stores, they will set it at 500 and it will be a 7 minute run through the oven.  Most folks don't have a roller oven so your nicely preheated 500 degree oven will have to suffice.

Place it in the oven and try not to lose too much heat by leaving the door open too long.  Get that pizza in the oven quickly leaving that door open in as little time as possible.  The pizza pan with the holes should allow that crust to get nice and crispy.  You want to bake it for 7-10 minutes.  Keep your eye on it to see that the crust gets that nice golden brown look and the toppings have sufficiently melted.  You may also want to try putting the pie on a stone or pizza steel to help it retain that heat (we haven't tried it yet with this pizza, but I am guessing it would do well to help the bottom crust)... YMMV.

The finished product is below and it tastes identical (likely because its the exact recipe and most of the BeauJo process).  The crust has a light sweet taste to it.  For those who have never been to BeauJo's, their claim to fame is the put a squeeze bottle of honey at your table.  Many people eat the pizza and leave the crust on the side, then when finished, they squeeze a little honey on the crust and eat it as a desert.

[bojoMountainMan]

I love the wheat crust and as stated before its a 50/50 of crushed wheat flour (I got that at Natural Grocers, but you can likely get it just about anywhere) and regular white flour.  That's how we made the firecracker shown previously.  2 of my kids don't like wheat nor any of those specialty pizzas like firecracker.  They like the white crust and more of a traditional tomato based pizza... so we made one of those as well with just white flour.

Beaujo's makes their own tomato sauce called "Beajo's Sauce".  They don't make it in house.  They get it shipped in from somewhere and its pre-made.  So that recipe I cannot get, but dissecting the taste, it seems to just be tomato sauce with oregano and some added sugar.  I was lazy on this pizza.  I just used straight tomato sauce from the can and sprinkled some oregano on it.  It tasted darn close, but just not as sweet.  I don't like sweet sauces anyways so that worked out fine for us.  You can add a Tsp of sugar and YMMV.

We were short on meats, so we used some cooked bacon and my kids love basil, so we put a lot of fresh basil on the pie, along with the usual mozzarella.

The process is identical to the firecracker, just using the different ingredients. Pics below:

[bojoMountainMan]

and that's the process.  Would love to hear how it worked out for others.  Ours turned out pretty much identical... but then again, one of the BeauJo's cooks helped us make it.  I guess we are lucky to have one in our family.

Good luck!

[texmex]

Very nice. Having never heard of this pizza, is it a crackery crust?

[bojoMountainMan]

Very nice. Having never heard of this pizza, is it a crackery crust?

Not really.... its moist and chewy, but has a light crunch on the outside.  Its definitely a different taste from a traditional pizza.  Its the honey that does the magic.  All I can say its really good.

They have a cult following here in Colorado.  On weekends during the summer (or during the ski traffic times) the lines are out the door with an easy 45 minute wait for a table.  I think they have opened a couple of restaurants in some of the other mountain states, so they are certainly branching out.

[bojoMountainMan]

Man vs Food did a piece on it:



You can see as they prep the pizza, its the same process as detailed in this thread.

[RockyMountainPie]

Thanks for the excellent explanation of the process and your pictures!  Very informative!

[Mindflux]

Thanks for posting this. I hadn't even thought of attempting Beau Jo's pizza.  I may have to give it a go.. but that's a boatload of yeast.  I wonder if you could cut it WAY back if you did a slow rise.

I don't think my pizza stone is big enough for a 16" pie either.

[kdollpizza]

Thanks for the recipe for the dough. I just tried it today!! It turned out great! I do need practice in making the braid for the crust, but that will come. As for the sauce, I looked online at the ingredients list that Beau Jo's posts for allergy reasons. It says that it consists of tomatoes (tomato paste, tomatoes, water - basically tomato sauce), onions, spices, garlic, salt, and honey. I trying to replicate it, I use 1 14 oz can of tomato paste. I put it in a shallow sauce pan. Sprinkled some onion powder and garlic powder in. Set it on Med-low heat. It didn't say which spices, so I used Basil, Oregano, and Marjoram. I'm not one to measure out my spices before putting them in - I used a few shakes of each one. I also added a small pinch of salt and about 1 - 2 Tbsp of honey. I tasted as I went until I liked the flavor. My husband said it was pretty close to the sauce at the restaurant. I would say that if you're doing this at home, use the ingredients and play around with the amounts. You could use fresh onions and garlic if you choose - I would say maybe 1/4 of an onion diced up and 2 cloves of garlic. Again - your taste will tell you. Thanks again for helping me recreate to experience at home as the closest Beau Jo's is about 8 hours away.

[renchero]

So I had a pizza party on NYE and made my traditional American style pizzas for them. Good as always. They brought up the Colorado style pizza and how it was good.  I went searching for this post. I had seen this post a while back and so after hearing that my friends liked it, I wanted to try it.

I made two last weekend and it’s actually pretty easy to do and literally the dough rise is only like 20 minutes.

My results were very similar to the pics posted. I can see why people like the crust. It’s like super soft bread. But I wasn’t a fan of dipping the crust into honey so we ended up going with ranch as a dipping sauce. But also, I’m not sure I was a huge fan of the pizza myself. Perhaps because I grew up on the Chicago style thin my preferences are much different from this mountain pie. This dough rose a lot (obviously with that much yeast in it, it would) but the crumb structure was minimal. Super super small.  I prefer a bit of a crunch to my dough with a soft interior. This was soft all the way around.

VERY interesting pie. I’m glad I tried it but I’m not sure I’ll go for it again though. But, never say never.

From a restaurant workflow standpoint though, this place can crank out as many doughs as they want without much notice so running out of dough isn’t an issue for them. Pretty neat in terms of that.

Also. I recorded the weights as I went through the process (I adjusted the amount of salt too as the salt amount was way too low for a normal dough) so here are the percentages I ended up with if anyone wants them.


INGREDIENT     BAKER'S %
AP Flour     50.00%
Whole wheat flour     50.00%
Total Flour     100.00%
Water     56.20%
Olive Oil     5.00%
Honey     9.08%
IDY     4.20%
Salt     1.50%
Black Pepper     0.20%
TOTAL     176.19%

[renchero]

Here's the pic of my pie.