Definitive Closest Giordano's Clone as of 6/12/13?

[IHK]

Wow Ryan's pics look amazing! Thanks for sharing all the info.

I just finished making Garvey's thin crust(which was awesome) and built up some courage to try a stuffed pizza.

My wife has banned me from Giordanos. Recently I've been going there about a couple times a week for the past 6 months. So I hope I can contribute to this thread.

For toppings I used to order Spinach and Mushrooms for years, but lately I've been getting Jalepenos and Garlic.

I was wondering if anyone can comment on this... I feel that in the past couple of years thier dough recipe has changed. It tastes a lot lighter. I used to feel heavy after eating thier pizza, but as of a couple years I don't get that feeling. This could all be specific to the location I goto on the Northside of Chicago.

[Garvey]

My wife has banned me from Giordanos...

I was about to ask why, but then, mystery solved:

lately I've been getting Jalepenos and Garlic.

[Aimless Ryan]

...So I hope I can contribute to this thread.

Please do. If there's anything you think I may have been doing wrong, anything that just doesn't look quite right to you, or anything you think could be a better alternative to how I've done things, please speak up. Even things that may not seem very important. It's nice to receive compliments (and I thank you for yours), but I want criticism, too.

[IHK]

I was about to ask why, but then, mystery solved: 

Haha. I put on some weight recently and have been spending too much on Pizza. I cut down to thin crust from Nancy's/Al's Beef chain.

[IHK]

Please do. If there's anything you think I may have been doing wrong, anything that just doesn't look quite right to you, or anything you think could be a better alternative to how I've done things, please speak up. Even things that may not seem very important. It's nice to receive compliments (and I thank you for yours), but I want criticism, too.

Your very close to it... A couple things I noticed and I could be wrong. But just from my opinion I noticed the following:

1. Sauce seems a little more than what they put on, yours is more liquidy. Which in my opinion is a good thing. But there's is definetly drier. Sometimes I feel there sauce is a little dry.

2. I see you put a layer of pramasean on top and they do too. But there's is usually very visable. At first I thought you didn't put any but then after a second glance it looks like you did.

3. The top skin, yours is either thicker than there's or more cooked. Usually you can't even tell that it's there, that's how un-noticeable it is.

4. Cheese in the middle. Either yours has oozed out but it seems a little less in the middle. Maybe there's stays more solid. I usually carry out so it could be that the cheese becomes a little solid. But it just seems less. From some angles it looks like you have enough but in some it doesn't.  Or maybe it's the top skin which blends in visually with the cheese.

I'm gonna have to go back and study your pics more, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

[Aimless Ryan]

Excellent critique.

1. I'm totally with you on the sauce comment. In fact, heavy sauce on my pizzas is one thing that stood out to me a couple nights ago as I reviewed this thread (but which I forgot to mention a night later). Even before that, I already kinda thought I was going a little too heavy on the sauce. I am surprised to hear that my sauce may be thinner than their sauce, but I'm not surprised to hear that this may be a good thing. One thing I've thought about recently is watering down the sauce a little. Or perhaps adding a more watery tomato product (like processed undrained whole tomatoes) to the ground tomatoes that currently constitute my sauce. Because even though I've never had Giordano's, and even though my experience trying to clone it is very limited, I learned right away that you can't let the sauce dry up. With the long bake time, if the sauce dries up, all you taste from the sauce is the herbs/spices you've added to the sauce, as well as a very cooked tomato flavor. In fact, that's precisely why I began going very heavy on the sauce after my first pizza.

2. The parmesan comment is also in line with things I've been thinking. I've never been much of a parmesan fan; I mostly only use it when I know it's used on a style of pizza I'm trying to clone (which I guess is actually most of the pizza styles in my repertoire). I recently became more conscious of this idea after eating a couple slices of member waltertore's NY style pizza, to which I think he adds a liberal amount of grated hard cheese just before baking. Honestly, part of the reason why my pizzas may be lite on parmesan is because of those damn parm containers (and how they don't work when the cheese clumps). I'd much rather distribute a small handful of parm from a bowl (like they do in videos made in places like Giordano's and Malnati's), but that's just not very practical when you're only making one pizza. Will definitely keep this in mind, though.

3. The top skin is an interesting topic. My last one was much thicker than earlier ones, intentionally. There's a lot of discussion between me and Nate on this topic early in the thread. He insists that the top skin should be much thinner than the bottom skin, but when I look at pictures of actual Giordano's pizzas, I see both thick and thin top crusts. And as is evident in videos, they clearly do not adjust the sheeter to make thinner top skins. I suspect the top skins often end up noticeably thinner than the bottom skins because Giordano's pizzamakers hand-stretch the top skin a bit more than the bottom skins. Then, because they leave a lot of air beneath the top skin, the skin becomes a little thinner when the weight of the sauce stretches it a little more. Interestingly, though, I really liked the pizza I made with a noticeably thicker top crust. I thought the thicker top crust specifically made this one better than all the others. (I think this was the last pizza, which used Power flour.)

4. The cheese is kind of an interesting point. I think it's hard to tell from the pictures what's really going on with the cheese. The appearance largely seems to depend on how long you let the pizza sit between cutting it and serving it. If you serve it right away, there won't be any (or much) stretched cheese. But if you cut it, then let it sit for five minutes before serving, the cheese will stretch forever, as in my most recent pics. Those pics are not an accident. After I figured out in my mind which procedure(s) might be largely responsible for the stretchy cheese phenomenon, I forced myself to let the next pizza sit for at least five minutes after cutting it. Only then would I serve the pizza. That's precisely how/why I was able to get that series of four pics with cheese oozing out of the slice a few pages back (page 9, I think). Also, I think you're right on with the "oozed out" comment. I've thought that many times myself. Particularly, I've wondered if the neighbor lady who ate the slice from the pictures showing a ton of oozing cheese ended up with a not-cheesy slice.

It's very possible (or maybe even likely) that I'm not using enough cheese, but I assure you that I am using a ton of cheese. Also, my cheese portion is very in line with the detective work and educated guesses Peter contributed a long time ago in one of the other Giordano's threads. And if you haven't already figured this out, Peter's information is very trustworthy. Peter is a facts guy. That is, he digs up facts that none of us would ever be able to acquire (because we're too lazy) before sharing anything that may be considered a fact. And when he provides educated guesses rather than facts, he makes it clear that he's not providing facts.

Your feedback was awesome. I appreciate it a whole bunch. Also, I'm sure many others will appreciate it, and it will surely lead to a better collective understanding of what constitutes Giordano's stuffed pizza.

I just remembered this. I've been wondering what sizes Giordano's offers. It seems that they offer 10" and 14" (top diameter, it appears). Is that correct? And if so, are there any other sizes? (This question is directed toward everyone, not just IHK.) I ask mainly because one of the restaurant supply stores in Columbus carries some nice-looking, dark, slope-sided pans. Although I'm fine with using vertical-sided pans, most of my vertical-sided deep dish pans (6", 9", and 12") are only 1.5" deep, which is simply not deep enough for this style of pizza. I'd love to get a few of the right-sized pans, with sloped sides and 2" depths, for future pizzas.

[Aimless Ryan]

The more pictures I see of Giordano's pizza, the more I think the dough may be bulk fermented. Also, the more I think about the dough recipe that was shared with me, which is allegedly the original Giordano's dough recipe, the more I think the dough was likely bulk fermented back then. If the alleged original dough recipe is actually the original dough recipe, I can see how a bulk ferment would make everything work smoothly. Due to the recipe's very low yeast percentage, it makes sense that they probably would have made the dough at night, then let it bulk ferment overnight at room temperature, then used it all day the next day.

If that's how they did it, would they have punched down the dough in the morning (following the all-night bulk ferment), then immediately scaled dough balls? I'd say it seems very reasonable to do it that way.

I don't know if I've explained my thoughts well, but the following dough management model works well in my mind for the alleged mid-1970s dough: 1) Make dough after dinner rush, using warm water; 2) Bulk ferment all night at room temperature (or possibly in proofer); 3) Punch down and scale dough in the morning; 4) Leave dough balls at room temperature all day; 5) Sheet dough just before assembling pizzas; 6) Recycle scraps (perhaps mainly for use as top crusts, to hide the visual imperfections inherent in most scrap dough).

That seems pretty feasible to me. Regardless, we know some things are done differently today. Even if it was done that way in 1975, here are some differences we know (or suspect) about how they do it nowadays: 1) Dough is made in a commissary, then delivered to Giordano's stores; 2) Dough is allegedly used 3-4 days after it's made.

That raises some questions with me:

1) Since dough is now made in a commissary, rather than in-store, is it reasonable to bulk ferment? If so, do the commissary workers leave 40-some large batches of dough (for 40-some stores) sitting around bulk fermenting at room temperature in the commissary, or do they refrigerate the dough batches right away?

2) If the dough is bulk fermented, is it delivered to individual stores in bulk, or is it scaled in the commissary, then delivered? (This seemed like kind of a stupid question to me earlier, with an obvious answer, but after some thought it seems like a very reasonable question.)

Since this post is getting long, and since these questions raise a whole bunch of other questions, I'm going to stop now, then resume sharing these thoughts in another reply later, in hopes of making it a little easier for you to follow me. If anyone feels the urge to respond to anything I've said here, go ahead and respond, because it might be a while before I post my follow-up response.

[Pete-zza]

Ryan,

Your questions are reasonable questions to ask. However, having become reasonably familiar with the practices of pizza companies that use a commissary model, I have found that they invariably the dough balls are formed at the commissary. This is true of national pizza companies like Papa John's and Domino's and Mellow Mushroom, but it is also true of much smaller regional pizza companies like Papa Gino's, Regina Pizzeria and Home Run Inn. In some cases, remote locations might make their own dough in-store because they are too far out of the distribution area, as is the case with outlying stores of the Papa Gino's chain and, most likely, with the Regina Pizzeria chain, both of whom have stores in neighboring states. In the case of Giordano's with its three stores in Florida, I would guess that the dough is made in-store at those three locations. However, that doesn't automatically rule out using a commissary. There can be big commissaries and there can be small commissaries.

If you think about it, it makes a great deal of sense to do as much as possible at the commissary level. In addition to keeping trade secrets away from the prying eyes of store employees who might be tempted to spill their guts for a few bucks, you achieve far better quality control and consistency and uniformity of product when using the commissary model. Also, everything flows through the commissaries, not only the dough balls but the sauces, cheeses, meats, paper goods, and just about everything else but fresh vegetables that out of necessity are sourced and processed at the store level. The main objective of the commissary model is to simplify everything at the store level. That means that you can hire transient, low cost labor to assemble the pizzas. Those workers don't have to do anything but make the pizzas. You don't want them to divide and scale and round dough balls from a bulk dough, or doing anything else that might possibly result in a different product being produced from one location to another. It also wouldn't seem to make much sense moving refrigerated bulk dough from commissaries to the various store locations. That would require a specific and targeted logistics solution, including provisioning stores with cooling capacity to store bulk dough, that perhaps doesn't even exist at this time. These days, competitive forces demand simple solutions. That means less room for artisan type pizzas that harken back to the "good old days" where most pizzas were truly artisan pizzas.

What you described would have worked in the old days of Giordano's when there were only a few stores and where those few stores were in a small geographical area. Most likely, the dough was made in each store. In that case, the type of dough production you described would have been feasible. In fact, that model is the one used today by Vito & Nick's in its single location in the Chicago area:



But once you get to a certain critical mass, it makes sense to go with a commissary and do as much as possible there. Of course, in a home setting, you are free to use a bulk dough and divide it later. With the original Giordano's dough formulation, you would be going back in time to the 1970s. So, if you yearn for the good old days and are nostalgic about these matters, there is a certain attraction and appeal to doing that.

Peter

[Aimless Ryan]

You make very good points (and total sense), Peter. I guess that's pretty much how I was seeing everything before I wrote my previous post. Your post seems to focus on the second question I raised.

So do you think it's reasonable or feasible to bulk ferment in a commissary? I would think not, for many reasons:

• A bulk ferment, then another 3-4 days in a cooler as dough balls just doesn't seem right in a lot of ways.
• The commissary probably makes dough constantly, which means there is a lot of dough in the commissary at all times. If the dough is bulk fermented at room temperature, dough takes up a ton of space, which really can't be used for anything other than temporary dough storage. Also, this introduces a lot of prospective inconsistency issues. But bulk fermenting in coolers is pointless in all kinds of ways.
• As I believe you've pointed out in NY style threads, it's difficult to form dough balls out of cold dough that has been bulk fermented in a cooler, particularly compared to dough that has just been mixed.
• I know bulk fermentation is a method used in commercial bakeries. However, commercial bakeries also bake all their dough before it leaves the premises. In a bakery, bulk fermentation has to be done with certain products. But in a commissary, which makes a lot of dough that leaves the building as dough (not baked goods), I can see how it might work best to divide and round dough immediately after mixing, even if it was bulk fermented in the past (before the commissary existed).

One thing that bugs me, though, is the fact that there is no need to accurately scale or round Giordano's dough, which means dividing dough in the commissary is essentially wasted work and wasted energy (if they actually divide their dough, which videos suggest they do). Preparing a Giordano's skin is not unlike preparing a Pizza Hut thin skin (when Pizza Hut made their dough on-site). Just like with Pizza Hut, Giordano's does not require an accurately scaled piece of dough to end up with a perfectly shaped and sized skin of the proper weight. The only real guidelines for a Giordano's employee to make a skin is: 1) That the skin-maker starts out with more than enough dough than is required for the skin, and 2) That the piece of dough is relatively round before it goes through the sheeter. If the skin-maker uses too much dough, it's no big deal because the pizzamaker trims the scraps and returns the scraps to the skin-maker to be reused.

So why even bother scaling and rounding dough in the commissary? Unlike Giordano's, it makes complete sense for Papa John's, Domino's, and Regina to scale and round their dough in the commissary because their dough has to be scaled and rounded. (I don't know about the other places you mentioned, but I assume they also scale their dough in the commissary out of necessity.)

Maybe Giordano's scales their dough in the commissary for other reasons than out of a need to have accurately scaled dough portions. If they do scale dough in the commissary, maybe they do it for storage reasons, quality control during transport, and/or some other good reasons that I've considered (but forgotten).

Still, I'm not convinced that they scale the dough in the commissary. One big reason is because it appears that they store their dough on sheet pans in the make area of the kitchen. I wouldn't consider sheet pans a good long-term dough storage vessel, nor would I expect it to be very easy to transport dough on sheet pans. Loading and unloading the delivery truck with lots of sheet pans full of dough balls would also be difficult and inefficient.

[pythonic]

Ryan,

You need to get up to Chicago to try a real Giordano's pie.  The crust flavor, texture and sauce is like no other.

[Pete-zza]

Ryan,

You raise some legitimate issues. But, for the record, let me say that there are some pizza operators, albeit a very small number, who cold ferment their dough in bulk and do the division and scaling later. In almost all cases, the reason is limited storage space. However, I have never heard or read of a commissary delivering cold fermented dough in bulk to its stores.

The issue of bulk cold ferment and divide and scale later versus doing the division up front and then cold fermenting is not a new one on the forum. It has come up quite often. For example, if you don't mind doing a bit of reading (well, maybe a lot ), see the following threads:

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,20067.msg197025.html#msg197025

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,10142.msg88569.html#msg88569

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,15208.msg150141.html#msg150141

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,10371.msg91351.html#msg91351

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,19620.msg192236.html#msg192236 (starting at Reply 4)

In the above collection of threads, you will find a considerable amount of discussion and debate as to the merits of both approaches mentioned above, with discussions of the "mass effect" and other arcane technical matters. However, if I were to distill the essence of those threads, I would say that the main reason for doing the division and scaling of the dough ball up front, especially if one attempts to control the finished dough temperature to the desired value, is because of convenience and, more particularly, better dough inventory control and management. No doubt, there are some apparent advantages to using the bulk dough method, such as increased fermentation byproducts that contribute to final crust flavor, but such advantages are arguably outweighed by the convenience and related factors mentioned above.

As for the use of sheet pans, I do not see that as an impediment. While most commissaries that I am aware of use dough boxes rather than sheet pans, it is possible to place dough balls on sheet pans, place the sheet pans in racks, and place what is often referred to as a "body bag" over the racks. Alternatively, the sheet pans can be placed in their own bags. Most racks have wheels so it should be possible to roll the racks into refrigerated trucks. I have never heard or read of commissaries doing this, but I suppose that it is possible. It could also be that the dough balls on trays are put into humidity and temperature controlled proofing racks. Another possibility is that the dough balls actually are delivered in dough boxes and are then transferred onto sheet pans for use in proofing units. On the matter of dough boxes versus sheet pans, you might take a look at the PMQ Think Tank thread at http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7668&hilit=.

As you mentioned, as long as the dough balls are big enough, there should be no problem of forming skins of the right size and reuse any scrap dough after trimming, as you also mentioned.

All things considered, I would still come down on the side of doing the division and scaling of the dough balls at the commissary. Anything else strikes me as being too unorthodox and unwieldy and without sufficient advantages to compel delivery of cold fermented bulk dough to the Giordano stores.

Peter

[jkolassa]

WOW... This blew up.  Back when I started this thread I chickened out of trying to cook one because I was overwhelmed with very little cooking experience but a buddy of mine who has cooked a lot is helping me cook it.  We have all the ingredients but we need to know how much flour to use for the power flour recipe for a 12" pan. 

[Aimless Ryan]

Sorry Joe. Although it seems your post was kinda directed at me, I kinda forgot to respond.

My spreadsheet is telling me to use 27.11 oz of flour (769 g) to end up with 42 oz of dough. However, I think the crusts on these pizzas probably need to be a little thicker than I've made them. When I tell the spreadsheet I want the thickness of both crusts to be TF=0.1 oz of dough per square inch (instead of TF=0.09), it tells me I need 48.85 oz of dough, which (rounded up to 49 oz) means you should base your recipe on 31.63 oz of flour (or 897 g).

I think that should be accurate, but it's been a while since I've thought much about this stuff, so I might be a little off.

[Aimless Ryan]

Correction: Where I said 48.85 oz in the previous post, it should have said 45.85 oz. I apparently misread the spreadsheet. That means an appropriately sized batch of dough should be based on about 30 oz of flour.

Also, I forgot to add this: For a 12" vertical-sided pan that's 2" deep, my spreadsheet says to divide the dough into one dough ball of 25.92 oz (735 g) and another dough ball of 19.93 oz (565 g). After trimming, your bottom skin should weigh about 17.91 oz (508 g) and your top skin should weigh less than 13.1 oz (371 g). I said "less than 13.1 oz" because 13.1 oz will give you a pretty thick top skin, which is fine, but you'll probably want to roll it a good bit thinner. In other words, roll the top skin to a thickness that feels right to you.

Sorry about all the confusion. There are a lot of different variables to balance with this stuff, and some of it is very difficult to communicate.

[Aimless Ryan]

I just made a batch of dough and a batch of sauce for the pizza bash we're having Sunday at member waltertore's classroom in Newark, Ohio. If anyone is interested in attending, check out this thread: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,29016.0.html.

Dough
100% Power flour
48% Water (cold)
0.9% ADY
0.9% Salt
6% Shortening

Sauce
28 oz 7/11 ground tomatoes
4 oz water
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp crushed red pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder

This is gonna be cool because I get to bake this pizza in Walter's Blodgett 1000 oven. Can't wait.

[pythonic]

I just made a batch of dough and a batch of sauce for the pizza bash we're having Sunday at member waltertore's classroom in Newark, Ohio. If anyone is interested in attending, check out this thread: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,29016.0.html.

Dough
100% Power flour
48% Water (cold)
0.9% ADY
0.9% Salt
6% Shortening

Sauce
28 oz 7/11 ground tomatoes
4 oz water
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp crushed red pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder

This is gonna be cool because I get to bake this pizza in Walter's Blodgett 1000 oven. Can't wait.

Nice Ryan.  Let us know how it turns out.

[Aimless Ryan]

Nice Ryan.  Let us know how it turns out.

Nice and simple for once, without writing a thousand words to complicate everything, right?

Having only made only enough dough for one 10" pizza, I'm wondering if maybe I should have made more. Sounds like the guest list is growing, and it's hard to slice these things into any more than 8 slices. I'd hate for anyone not to get a taste of this one, but I ain't giving up my slice.

[mrmojo1]

make some emergency dough!!!  they are going to love your pie Ryan!!! you could have a riot on your hands!  auction off the last slice for charity!!  hee!!

[Chicago Bob]

make some emergency dough!!!  they are going to love your pie Ryan!!! you could have a riot on your hands!  auction off the last slice for charity!!  hee!!

Mr. Mo.....you don't like to get too excited about pizza matters do you?
Always love your posts man....you crack me up! 
Good idea about the auction too....

[Aimless Ryan]

make some emergency dough!!!  they are going to love your pie Ryan!!! you could have a riot on your hands!  auction off the last slice for charity!!  hee!!

Thanks. I think I am going to make another batch, out of Mondako flour, either tonight or tomorrow, since the guest list keeps growing.