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

[pythonic]

I'm using a 10" x 2" seasoned aluminum pan. Even though it's not a true deep dish pan, it's not a bad pan. I have four tin-plated steel deep dish pans, but the three smallest ones (6", 9", and 12") don't really work for stuffed pizza because they're only 1.5" deep. The 14" deep dish pan is 2" deep, but I haven't used it yet because I've had no need to make a 14" stuffed pizza so far. That would make almost a 6 lb pizza!

Yep, that is why a 2 topping pizza is a whopping $28!

[Aimless Ryan]

Here are some pics of my first stuffed pizza ever, on 8/13/13. The formula for this dough was:

100% Gold Medal all-purpose flour
45% Water
1% ADY
1.08% Salt
9.38% Oil
2% Sugar

I didn't really plan to make this pizza. Sometime that morning, I decided I wanted to make a pizza that evening; a style of pizza I'd never had before that day. I gave the dough a 6-hour bulk ferment, then made the pizza. Baked at 450 for 35 minutes. Aside from the excess browning, this pizza turned out very nice.

[Aimless Ryan]

Here are some pics of my second stuffed pizza ever, from 8/17/13. The formula for this dough was:

100% Pillsbury AP flour
46% Water
0.6% ADY
1.5% Salt
8% Oil

I believe I made this dough on a Thursday Wednesday night, for Saturday. This pizza is by far the best stuffed pizza I've made so far. Note that I 86ed sugar for this batch, after using 2% sugar for the first batch.

[Aimless Ryan]

This one is also from 8/17/13. It was made from the same dough that I used for the other pizza on 8/17/13. I kinda screwed up with this one, though. 13 minutes into baking this pizza, I realized the oven was set to 500 (because I had previously made a Tommy's style pizza, which I bake at 500). I immediately turned the oven down to 450 and hoped my mistake wouldn't screw the pizza up too bad. However, the pizza didn't turn out right.

[Aimless Ryan]

This is my fourth stuffed pizza, from 8/22/13. The formula for the dough was:

100% Pillsbury bleached AP flour
49% Water
0.4% IDY
1.5% Salt
6% Corn oil

I think I made the dough three days before I made this pizza. This one was for my friend Lisa, whose birthday was a couple days ago. She ate two slices of the pizza, which were half a pound each. (I ate three.) I was a little disappointed with this one, first of all because this is the pizza that made me realize I was doing the wrong thing by increasing the hydration, but also because the cheese wasn't as gooey as the other stuffed pizzas I'd made. I think I used 14 oz of cheese in this one, instead of 13 oz, as I had done with the previous pizzas, which is why I suspect the cheese wasn't as gooey as usual.

In contrast to my disappointment, Lisa loved this pizza.

[Aimless Ryan]

This is my fifth (and most recent) stuffed pizza, from today. The formula for the dough was:

100% Pillsbury bleached AP flour
47% Water
0.6% IDY
0.9% Salt
6% Shortening

Even though I already had two batches of dough in the fridge Thursday night, I made this dough for today (Saturday) because Thursday's pizza made me realize the hydration figures of the other two batches were too high. Even with the drop in hydration, this dough ended up feeling too soft. But the softness of this dough may have been a result of overfermentation, which I think is evident in the visible texture of the crust. The pizza was still very good, though, and my guests seemed to love it.

I had never used IDY until the last few days, and it's giving me a little trouble. Even though the yeast is working, it's not working as fast as I expected. In fact, it doesn't seem to be working any faster than ADY. Consequently, I've had to mess with my dough management procedures because I've been worried about ending up with underfermented dough. Then I end up with overfermented dough. Not a huge problem, but it's kinda frustrating. I'm not sure if it's bad yeast or if it's just me having trouble figuring out the conversion from ADY to IDY.

OK, I'm done posting all my pics tonight.

[Aimless Ryan]

I made another one of these today, using one of the two batches of dough I thought I might end up throwing out after I realized I was starting to go too high with the hydration percentage. The dough I used for this pizza was the dough I made 5 days ago, using this formula:

100% Pillsbury unbleached AP flour
50% Water
1% ADY
0.9% Salt
6% Corn oil

This dough had been bulk fermenting in a covered bowl in the fridge ever since I mixed it five days ago. I hadn't punched it down or anything, and I was worried that it would be overfermented and end up making a less-than-desirable pizza.

The pizza turned out very good.

I divided and rolled the dough (using as little bench flour as possible) almost immediately after pulling it from the fridge, then I assembled the pizza and baked at 450 for 40 minutes. All my other stuffed pizzas have baked for 35 minutes (excluding the pizza that baked at 500 for the first 13 minutes). I hoped the extra five minutes of bake-time would make the cheese a little gooier than the cheese has been with my previous couple pizzas, but I don't think I achieved the result I was hoping for.

I invited a neighbor and his son over to munch on this pizza (in addition to a Tommy's style pizza), along with myself and my parents. The neighbors really liked this pizza, and I'm pretty sure my mom said this was my best stuffed pizza yet. (I'm more inclined to say it was a close second best.)

I’m noticing some trends with my stuffed pizzas:

The best pizzas so far (which were also the best-looking pizzas) contained both ADY and corn oil in the dough, rather than IDY and shortening. I can't say for sure, though, that either of these things is what caused the pizzas to be either good or not so good. I think the main reason why the IDY pizzas have not turned out as good is because the dough for these pizzas has been overfermented. Not because I used IDY, but because I had to alter my dough management with the IDY dough. I had never used IDY before the last week or so, and I've made some mistakes because of it.

I'm not so sure about the corn oil vs. shortening.

[pythonic]

Nice pies Ryan.  I think you are still too thick on that top layer though.  Needs to be 2-3 times thinner than bottom.

[Aimless Ryan]

Nate, I've been rolling the top layer much thinner than the bottom layer. Since I divide the dough into a 20 oz piece and a 10 oz piece, I don't have much choice but to end up with a considerably thinner top skin unless I roll the bottom skin way too thin (like I did with the most recent pizza). I end up trimming approximately half of the dough from the top skin, which means the top skin ends up using maybe 5 oz of dough (which is very thin). The top layer may look kinda thick in some of these pics, but it's actually very thin.

Having said that, I must admit that videos make it appear as if Giordano's sheets both skins to the same thickness.

Even though the video evidence suggests that the bottom and top skins are sheeted to the same thickness, I agree with you that it seems like the top skin should be much thinner than the bottom skin. If they do sheet each dough layer to the same thickness, one way I think they may end up with a thinner top layer is by placing the top layer flat on top of the pan, with a lot of air under it, rather than by making any effort to remove the air beneath the dough and shape the skin to the surface area inside the pan (as they do with the bottom skin). This way, when they crimp the two skins together around the outside, then add the sauce, the weight of the sauce ends up stretching the top skin, making the top layer thinner.

[Aimless Ryan]

Here are a couple pizzas I've made out of scrap dough left over from pizzas pictured above. The first two pics are of a pizza I baked on 8/21/13, using scraps from the stuffed pizzas I baked on 8/17/13. The last two pics are of a pizza I baked earlier tonight using dough I think was scraps from yesterday's stuffed pizza. (There are so many scraps in the fridge right now, it's hard to say which scraps are which.)

As you can probably tell, these pizzas were constructed similar to how deep dish pizza are built, excluding the rolled skins. I rolled the dough and draped it over a deep dish pan, then formed it to fit snugly in the pan and trimmed the excess dough. I added cheese first, then sausage (on tonight's), then sauce.

The first pizza is the one I mentioned and described earlier in this thread, which was made by rolling two pieces of scrap dough separately, then rolling them together before shaping, trimming, and topping.

These were very good pizzas; some of my favorite ever. Take note of the outside of the crust. To me the crust looks a lot more like Giordano's crust than the original pizzas did. I feel like maybe there's a lesson hidden in these crusts.

[pythonic]

Yep.  That key is the sheeter and the lamination.  I count 8-10 layers every time I get a pie.

[Aimless Ryan]

If Giordano's pizzas were laminated, the skins in the videos would be square.

[Aimless Ryan]

Here are some pictures I picked out of the Google image search results for Giordano's. I can't say for sure that all the pics are from Giordano's, but I feel pretty confident that they are all from Giordano's. I'm attempting to show that there's one obvious common characteristic with each of these pizzas; a characteristic that has been said many times in Giordano's threads not to be a characteristic of Giordano's pizza, including earlier on this page. Anyone care to guess what characteristic I'm attempting to highlight here?

[Aimless Ryan]

And here are a few more pictures showing the same characteristic.

[Aimless Ryan]

This picture is interesting because it lends support to what Nate has been saying about lamination, but it also suggests some other things, which I won't discuss until after I've given everyone some time to think about what I was trying to show in the previous two posts.

[Pete-zza]

Ryan,

Is it that the fillings between the two skins, including the cheese, do not rush out onto the plate but rather pretty much stay between the two skins? Also, some of the top skins seem fairly thick, with maybe some gum line.

Peter

[Chicago Bob]

Here are some pictures I picked out of the Google image search results for Giordano's. I can't say for sure that all the pics are from Giordano's, but I feel pretty confident that they are all from Giordano's. I'm attempting to show that there's one obvious common characteristic with each of these pizzas; a characteristic that has been said many times in Giordano's threads not to be a characteristic of Giordano's pizza, including earlier on this page. Anyone care to guess what characteristic I'm attempting to highlight here?

Thick top crust.

[Aimless Ryan]

Peter, your second guess is what I was trying to show. Good call, Bob.

The top crust in each pic is clearly pretty thick; thicker than I'd feel comfortable serving. Especially the first pic. And this is very representative of the pictures that come up in the google search. I'm not saying you can see a thick top crust in most of the pics that come up in the search; I'm just saying that, of the pics that were taken from the proper angle to reveal a top crust (and are in focus), almost all of them show a pretty thick top crust. With at least a few of these pics, you can see in a couple different ways that the top and bottom crusts are about the same thickness.

Gum line never even consciously occurred to me because I just wasn't thinking in that direction. But that was definitely worth pointing out. Glad you noticed it.

With the last pic (in Reply #74), I think it pretty clearly shows that the bottom crust was two layers and that the top crust was probably one layer. As someone who has surely made at least a hundred more laminated skins than probably every member except DNA Dan, I feel pretty comfortable speculating that to achieve lamination like that, the dough has to be stiff enough that it cannot be the slightest bit sticky (unless it's way overfermented); or stiff enough to put through a sheeter without any bench flour. For example, if you look at the second picture in this post (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,25774.msg275396.html#msg275396), you can see that my top and bottom dough layers kind of merged together into one crust. With 50% hydration and 6% oil, that dough was just soft enough to be considered soft for this style. If only the hydration had been 48%, the dough would have been stiff enough to keep the skins from merging into a single crust like that.

Nate, I'm pretty convinced that the quality of hand-rolled laminated dough/crust is essentially identical to that of laminated dough/crust from a sheeter. Yes, it takes at least 15 times longer to do it by hand, and yes, I would prefer to have a sheeter for my laminated cracker dough. It even seems logical that all the extra rolling (by hand) should toughen dough, but it just doesn't happen. I mean, just look at my latest Tommy's pics (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,12446.msg275304.html#msg275304), compared to actual Tommy's pics (a few posts later). I can tell you, with all honesty, that my Tommy's clones are almost identical to actual Tommy's pizzas.

[Aimless Ryan]

Actually, I should have linked to this reply in the Tommy's thread (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,12446.msg274991.html#msg274991, and the following reply). These four pics don't show the lamination, but they do show pizzas that look like they came from Tommy's. Especially the blistered ones, although I realize it's a slightly different blister pattern than the Tommy's blisters. (I'm gonna have to try the barley malt tip, from Reply #284.)

[Aimless Ryan]

I just made another batch of dough. I was almost ready to use my standard flour (Pillsbury bleached AP) when it occurred to me that I have some other flours that might be worth trying for this style. Even though I've read in a couple places that Giordano's uses high gluten flour, I remain skeptical. So I want to try some high-protein flour for this style and find out if it works better than AP.

I have several different kinds of high protein flour available right now because someone far, far away (where flour options are very limited) sent me these different kinds of flour and asked me to try them out for NY style and let him know what I think. I have Morbread, Mondako, Power Flour, and All Trumps unbromated (as well as All Trumps bromated, which has long been my go-to flour for NY style).

I decided after one pizza that Morbread is nasty; the one pizza I made with this flour tasted like canned biscuits. All Trumps unbromated seems to have a weird taste, too, so I don't really want to try it, either. (Also, it's nothing like AT bromated.) Power Flour has been my favorite of all the flours I was sent, at least for NY style, but Mondako hasn't offended me yet. So I decided to try Mondako with this batch of dough. I might also make a batch with Power Flour sometime tonight, using the same formula.

Here's the formula for this evening's dough, which I don't intend to use for at least two days (or preferably 3 days minimum):

100% Mondako flour
48% Ice cold water (with unmelted ice cubes still in it)
0.86% IDY
0.9% Salt
6% Shortening

This dough was very cold after mixing for 4-5 minutes in a KitchenAid with a spiral dough hook. In fact, a couple of the ice cubes didn't melt until the last minute or two of mixing. (I don't have any kind of thermometer that can read dough temperature, but the dough felt like it was about 60 degrees after mixing.) I immediately bagged the dough and put it in a fridge to bulk ferment until shortly before I use it.