Pete-zza's Papa John's Clone Pizza

[Pete-zza]

Got any suggestions as for my clone attempt?

Charg,

Out of curiosity I did a search to see if Papa John's has a store in London, Ontario. The answer is yes, as of October, 2008. I then wondered whether they use the same ingredients in Canada as in the U.S. And, according to the discussion of ingredients at http://www.papajohns.com/about/papa-johns-ingredients.shtm. the answer again appears to be yes.

Neither you nor I will have access to the flour that PJ uses since the flour is a proprietary flour milled exclusively for PJ. What we know about the PJ dough as used in the U.S. is that the dough is composed of the following ingredients:

Circa 2008-Present: Pizza Dough: Unbleached enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, wheat starch, ascorbic acid, enzyme, niacin, iron as ferrous sulfate, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, sugar, soybean oil, salt, yeast [fungal or bacterial derivatives – NO animal derivatives]. No trans fat.

As you can see from Reply 585 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6758.msg273667/topicseen.html#msg273667, I have been suggesting that members use a flour with a protein content of 13.4-13.6%. Even in the U.S., a flour with that protein content is almost impossible to find in regular supermarkets. It is a foodservice product. Similarly, the fresh-pack tomatoes that PJ uses, apparently even in Canada, are not found in most supermarkets in the U.S., although they sometimes show up in specialty markets.

I don't know which PJ clone dough formulation you used, but the original PJ clone dough formulation is the hardest to implement because it is for a dough that is to be cold fermented for an above average period, about 5-8 days. Most people aren't able to maintain a constant temperature over such a period in their home refrigerators. For that reason, and others, I came up with a two-day cold ferment version, as discussed at Reply 20 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6758.msg59217.html#msg59217. By definition, that dough formulation can't mimic a PJ dough that cold ferments for 5-8 days, but it is a formulation that has become one of the most popular of all of the formulations posted in this thread. Based on later acquired information, I modified the formulation in Reply 20 to that given in Reply 585 referenced above.

In your case, you might look for a bread flour with the highest protein content you can find. If you have access to a high-protein, high-gluten flour, it can be blended with a lower protein flour to achieve a protein content for the blend of 13.4-13.6%. I don't know what kind of tomatoes you might use in Canada because it is highly unlikely that you will be able to find fresh-pack tomatoes in Canada, either produced by Stansislaus or Escalon, the two largest producers of those tomatoes in the U.S. There are some pizza operators in Canada who apparently are able to source the Stanislaus fresh-pack tomatoes but only from someone who uses them or from foodservice companies. See, for example, the PMQ Think Tank post at http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9634&p=66170&hilit=#p66170.

For cheese, I would just use the best low moisture part-skim mozzarella cheese available to you in Canada.

As previously noted, PJ uses screens or perforated disks in the U.S. to bake their pizzas in their conveyor ovens. All of my PJ clones are intended to be baked in a standard home oven. That means that the top heat distribution will be different than what one would achieve in a conveyor oven. Some members bake their PJ clones on pizza stones but one has to be careful so that the bottom crust does not brown prematurely or excessively because of the high amount of sugar in the dough.

Peter

[Charg]

Thanks a lot for your reply.

Sauce I've been using http://www.fooducate.com/app#page=product&id=707AD0DC-0638-11E1-8977-1231380C180E from costco
Cheese: http://saputo.ca/OurCheeses/Detail.aspx?id=920 (mozz shredded, regular)

My attempt was using your 5-8 day long ferment, I made another batch yesterday with the 2 day recipe that I'll try tomorrow. I bought Robin Hood bread flour for this second attempt. From my current situation, I can't justify the cost for ordering KABF (and among other ingredient differences), so I understand I'm not going to obtain the same results as you. But I'll continue testing to see what my best result can be

I appreciate your elaborate posts 

[Charg]

Looks like bread flour does make a world of a difference. Very happy with how these turned out.

[Pete-zza]

Charg,

I agree that the bread flour was a big improvement.

Seeing what appears to be breadsticks, you might take a look at the PJ clone Cheesesticks recipe at Reply 6 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,25603.msg258178.html#msg258178 . To speed things up, you can use 0.28% IDY in lieu of the ADY to make a two-day dough.

Peter

[Charg]

That's a mix between the clone PJ applepie and cinnapie. Diced some apples, used the spread from the applepie recipe, and added oats because I like the addition. It was delicious, I just think I needed to push the toppiing into the dough a little more, because they wanted to fall off a bit too easily when picking it up. Also didn't wait quite long for the pie to cool off before applying the icing

[Pete-zza]

Charg,

Thanks for the clarification. It's been a while since I made the PJ clone Applepies and Cinnapies that I had pretty much forgotten them in this thread. But I agree that they are delicious.

Peter

[norma427]

Peter,

I saw on TV the other day that Papa John's is making a new mega-sized chocolate chip cookie now.  I wonder how that is made.  Did you look into that any? http://ir.papajohns.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=793916

Norma

[Charg]

I tried it the other day, Norma. It is quite good, but it's a lot smaller than I had anticipated. Definitely would not call it a "family sized" cookie, not worth 6 bucks in my opinion. However, that's besides the point of homemade cloning, I do think it would be interesting to see if he could replicate it if it's in his interest

[norma427]

I tried it the other day, Norma. It is quite good, but it's a lot smaller than I had anticipated. Definitely would not call it a "family sized" cookie, not worth 6 bucks in my opinion.

Charg,

Thanks for telling us you did try the chocolate chip cookie at Papa John's.  I read on Papa John's facebook page that other people were disappointed in how small it was and also what they charged for it. 

Norma

[Pete-zza]

I saw on TV the other day that Papa John's is making a new mega-sized chocolate chip cookie now.  I wonder how that is made.  Did you look into that any? http://ir.papajohns.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=793916

Norma and Charg,

I saw the ads too but I did not pay any further attention to them. However, since you and Charg commented on this matter, I went to the PJ website and did not see any nutrition information on the cookie. However, I did see a review of that cookie along with nutritional information at http://www.manreviewsfood.com/foodreviews/review-papa-johns-mega-chocolate-chip-cookie/. Without an ingredients list, it is difficult to reverse engineer a product such as the PJ cookie on nutrition information alone. However, there are some takeaways that manifest themselves from the nutrition information.

For example, the PJ cookie contains cholesterol. That means an animal source such as butter or eggs. Companies like PJ try to avoid fresh eggs because of potential cross contamination issues but the eggs could take a processed form (such as pasteurized fresh or dry eggs) to get around that problem, or it may be that coming from a commissary the eggs in the ready-to-bake dough is not a problem. However, dry eggs also contain cholesterol. If the only cholesterol in the cookies is from butter, the total of 104 mg for eight cookie slices would be equivalent to about two ounces of butter for the entire cookie. There is no cholesterol in the chocolate chips--if they are a quality chocolate chip, such as the Nestle's (http://www.verybestbaking.com/Toll-House/Products/MorselsAndBaking/Semi-Sweet-Morsels.aspx--and there is no cholesterol in the flour or in sugar or in salt if added, which I suspect they are.

It is also possible that in lieu of butter, PJ may be using a form of margarine that has 0 trans fats. Margarine does not contain cholesterol so that would leave more room for the use of eggs, which are very high in cholesterol. But the amount of eggs would be small.

The sodium content of the PJ cookie as given in the nutrition information suggests an equivalent of about 3/8 of a teaspoon of ordinary table salt. There is a trace amount of sodium in the flour used to make the cookie, which I suspect is an all-purpose flour or maybe even a weaker flour, but there is no sodium in a chocolate chip product like the Nestle's chocolate chip "morsels". If a salted butter (or margarine) is used, its sodium content will be a part of the total Sodium number. Most likely there is some salt added to the cookie dough recipe. If baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) or a baking powder is also used, which is very common for a chocolate cookie dough recipe, there will be a sodium component from that source also. So, maybe we are talking about 1/8 teaspoon of added salt.

It is hard to decipher where the fat resides in the PJ cookie but the ratio of Total Fat to Saturated Fat is similar for butter (if used) and for chocolate chips. But there is no way that immediately comes to mind as to how to apportion the fats between the two products, and especially if we do not know if butter and/or eggs in some form are actually used. It is also possible that PJ is using an oil form of fat, which also has Total Fat and Sat Fat components. There are no Trans Fats in butter, or eggs or flour or salt or sugar or oil, so that is consistent with the 0 Trans Fats shown in the nutrition information for the PJ cookie.

With respect to the Sugars component of the nutrition information, there are natural sugars in the flour, but in small quantities, and there are sugars in the chocolate chip morsels. There are no sugars in eggs or butter. If all of the Sugars were in the form of ordinary table sugar, we would be talking about a total of about 11 tablespoons of table sugar. No doubt, a part of the Sugars come from the chocolate chip morsels, but it is likely that ordinary table sugar (sucrose), or maybe a combination of sucrose and brown sugar, are also added to the dough recipe.

As for the Dietary Fiber component of the PJ nutrition information for the PJ cookie, that would come primarily from the flour, since there is no Dietary Fiber in butter, eggs, sugar, oil, or chocolate chip morsels. Unfortunately, because of rounding factors (under FDA regulations, Dietary Fiber is expressed to the nearest gram), it is hard to say how much flour is actually used to make the PJ cookie dough. I would guess maybe 5 ounces of flour.

For flavor, I would imagine that PJ uses vanilla in some form (natural and/or artificial). There are perhaps preservatives and coloring agents in the cookie dough also.

The review referenced above did not specify a weight for a single cookie slice. But, at http://www.brandeating.com/2013/09/news-papa-johns-new-mega-chocolate-chip-cookie.html, the weight of a single cookie slice is given as 39 grams. If that number is correct, it translates to about 11 ounces for the entire cookie. The 11 ounces is the baked weight. Naturally, there is a loss during baking. I do not bake cookies so I can't say what the loss is during the baking of cookies. Some research suggests a loss of around 12-13% but I don't know if that would apply to the PJ cookie.

As you can see, there are many unanswered questions when you only have nutrition information to work with. If someone is really interested in divining the intricacies of the PJ cookie, I would suggest that he or she get in touch with PJ and ask what is in the cookie. If an ingredients list is provided, that should indicate the predominance of the ingredients in the product by weight. PJ is sensitive to matters like this since they were recently burned by a writer who took PJ to task for not revealing what is in their products.

Peter

[nick57]

This may be my last post on this thread showing my results. This is my third PJ's pie using Pete's updated recipe. I am not trying to make a perfect clone, but a pie that I can make that I like and my friends like. The last three have been great. This one cooked about 30 seconds too long, but the crust did not burn. I cooked it on the stone the whole time, about 8 minutes at 500 degrees. The bottom got pretty brown, but it did not burn. My taster really liked the crispy crust. He thought it was my best pie he had tried.

For the last few weeks I have been going to all the Wal Marts in Tulsa. They have quit selling all Classico tomato products, except for the pasta sauces. At least the Great Value brand is a close second. I will miss the superb flavor of the Classico crushed maters. It never fails, I find a great product at a store and they quit selling it, or the brand goes under. Life is a challenge, just like pizza making. Thanks again Pete. I may never buy a retail pie again.

[Pete-zza]

Nick,

That is a great looking pizza. It is also good to know that the PJ clone dough tolerated the bake on a stone.

Peter

[nick57]

Thanks Pete! I like my crust crispy with good color. This was a little more done than I was going for. It did not have any burnt flavor. This pie was a little thinner than my last few pies. I stretched this one out to 15 inches. It almost seemed like a NY style, though the flavor profile of the crust is not NY style. I may try a spicier sauce on my next one.

I just wanted to pass along the info on Wal Mart not offering Classico tomato products. I should have bought a case when I had the chance. It's bedlam weekend OU/Texas. Hope it's a great game and not a sleeper.

[tinroofrusted]

Great looking pizza, Nick57! 

[Aimless Ryan]

It's bedlam weekend OU/Texas.

Isn't Bedlam Oklahoma/Oklahoma State?

[nick57]

You're correct, but we get just as worked up over this game. Looks like OU is going to loose this one. It's about par for the course, they usually don't get beat, they loose the game all by themselves. Or as my fanatic football friends call it, they pulled a Tony Romo.

My last pie still tasted good after sitting in the fridge for two days. I reheated it in a covered non stick pan. After 3 days in a row of pizza, I need a change of menu. Though, in a couple of days I'll be thinking about making another. I surmise I may be addicted, which is a bad thing for my waistline.

[Pete-zza]

For some time, I have wondered why the Papa John's Allergen Guide at http://www.papajohns.com/allergens/PJ%20AllergenGuide_3_2011.pdf did not have the Soy column checked off for its Original Hand Tossed Dough. So, yesterday, I decided to call the PJ allergens number. I left a voicemail with my questions, with the understanding that I would receive a reply within one business day. The reason for the call was because I knew that PJ used soybean oil in its dough. Their own documents say so.

As it so happened, I received a call back from PJ within a few hours. A very nice lady by the name of Connie with the PJ R&D department explained why the Soy column was not checked off. She said that PJ does not consider soybean oil to be an allergen although she added that there are some people who also avoid soybean oil. She went on to say that if one of their products includes soy flour or soy lecithin or other clearly soy products, they consider those forms of soy to be allergens and so note it in their Allergen Guide.

While I had Connie on the line, I asked her if the sugar in their dough was greater, by weight, than the oil in the dough. She said yes. The reason for this question was because several years ago I received an ingredients document from PJ that has an asterisk at the top of the first page that read as follows: *Ingredients are not necessarily listed in order of predominance. I subsequently concluded from a later analysis of their dough that there was more sugar in the dough than oil. So. it was good to nail that matter down.

I also asked Connie why there were so many reports, including from former PJ workers, that the PJ pizza dough was a frozen product. She said that that was not so. When I suggested that maybe in some of their stores it might happen that dough balls were frozen, or nearly so, she said that their dough balls are always at 35-plus degrees F. When I asked her if their new mega chocolate chip cookie dough as received from their commissaries was frozen at the store level, she said that nothing is intentionally frozen at the store level. This leads me to believe that their cooling capacity does not include freezing capacity. I would guess that the cookie dough is frozen but is defrosted in the stores. Since no cookie dough preparation takes place at the store level, this protocol allows PJ to use fresh eggs in the dough.

For those who are interested, Connie and I spoke for some time about their new mega chocolate chip cookie. She rattled off the basic ingredients and I now have a pretty good idea as to what they are doing, but the ingredients they are using are for the most part industrial ingredients that are not readily available at the retail level. One of the most important revelations was that the first ingredient in the ingredients list is the chocolate chips, which she emphasized as being "real" chocolate chips. Also, a no-Trans Fat margarine is used, along with pasteurized eggs, regular white and brown sugars, a double acting leavening system, and vanillin. Both before and after I spoke with Connie, I checked out all kinds of chocolate chips and chocolate chip cookies and refrigerated chocolate chip cookie doughs and margarine products and leaveners at three different supermarkets. By and large, the vast majority of the prepared cookies and refrigerated cookie doughs list flour as the first ingredient, not chocolate chips. I suspected that PJ was using a lot of chocolate chips because photos of their new chocolate chip cookies taken by consumers showed chocolate oozing out of the cookie slices. What that means is that the product is going to be a big step up for chocoholics.

We also talked about the flour used to make the PJ cookie dough. I asked if it was all-purpose flour. She said no but rather it is a special flour (it is bleached), and it is different than the flour that they use to make their pizza dough. However, when I researched the PJ flour composition, the closest flours to what PJ is using are all-purpose flours, including H&R flours. Sometimes, millers will specify an end use for their flours, such as for muffins or scones, or call the flour an H&R flour, but the underlying flour is still an all-purpose flour. I ruled out cake and pastry flours because the cake and pastry flours I looked at do not fit the profile for the PJ flour used to make the cookies. I'd hate to think that I know more about flours than Connie. But I just go with the facts and the numbers.

I later learned that a similar product to the PJ chocolate chip cookie is the McDonald's chocolate chip cookie. It also has chocolate chips as the first item in the ingredients list. For those who are interested, the entire McDonald's chocolate chip ingredients list can be seen by clicking on "Nutrition" at http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/product_nutrition.dessertsshakes.201.chocolate-chip-cookie.html. An individual Mcdonald's chocolate chip cookie weighs a bit less (33 grams) than a PJ cookie slice (39 grams) but if one scales up to the PJ weight, the two products will be very similar but in a different format (regular round cookie versus a slice). Connie told me that their cookie weighs 12 ounces. When I asked Connie whether the weight losses during baking were material, she said no, simply because their cookie is cooked in one piece, in the aluminum container in which the dough is packaged, and the cookie goes through their ovens quite fast. The cookie is sliced after baking.

Peter

[Charg]

You're like a wizard, Pete. Your investigations are always interesting to read.

[nick57]

All I can say is, you are amazing! 

[Pete-zza]

Thanks, guys.

This has been an interesting and fun thread for me personally. I fully expected to try to reverse engineer and clone Papa John's dough, sauce and pizzas but I never expected to become involved in reverse engineering and cloning PJ's dessert pizza toppings (Applepie and Cinnepie), the Special Garlic  Sauce and the PJ Cheesesticks, and now we are staring at the PJ Mega Chocolate Chip Cookie. And, speaking of that cookie, I got a big kick out of the last photo (reproduced below) in the review article at http://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/we-tried-papa-johns-new-mega-chocolate-chip-cookie-and-were-bitterly-disappointed. I mentioned that photo to Connie at PJ yesterday and her comment was something like "sweet and savory".

Peter