Man I haven't been on the board in a long time. Joined 15 years ago. Damn.
Anyway, grew up spending summers at the Jersey Shore. Very familiar with Mack and Manco pizza, but I moved to California back in 2006. I saw this giant thread the other day and had to jump back on.
mjnern's recipe seemed like it was would be viable. I remember trying to copy famous pizza places that I really liked. The thing where I think MJ's spot on is the high yeast %. When we make stuff at home, we love the idea of long slow cold ferments, but if you see Manco's on a Thurs, Fri, Saturday night.... there is no space in their building to be pumping out the volume of pizzas they make, and have a multi day cold ferment. It's just not gonna happen. Their financial overhead is probably high, refrigeration is expensive, and the margin on a slice of pizza isn't' huge. It's a volume business which means, look for recipes that speak "profit margin". This is gonna mean I doubt they do anything crazy or artistic. If this was lombardi's or grimaldi's, sure I believe that, but this is a 2-3 dollar slice and go joint. Think simple.
My guess is that they're pumping out dough almost constantly. They probably put their dough in trays on a speedrack and then cover the entire speed rack with a plastic bag while it proofs over a couple of hours. When one is gone, another is right behind it just about to finish proofing.
Anyway, I tried MJ's recipe tonight. I increased the yeast to 1.5% as it was gonna be 2.5 hours from dough to baking. I made 540g of dough, split into 270g balls to make a 11.5 inch pizza. I used some leftover canned sauce with some oregano that I dehydrated from my garden and some other seasonings. The first pie was straight mozz, whereas the second one was 50/50 mozz+mild cheddar (I only had yellow so that's what I used).
This to me, tastes exactly the way I remember Mack and Manco's tasting from my teenage years. It's not high end, it's not fancy, but it's a good slice of pizza to grab on the go.
