Another Attempt for a Mack’s style pizza 7/06/2010

After I watched the new videos, I decided I was hungry for another Mack’s pizza attempt.  I decided to take another stab at trying mixing another dough for a Mack’s pizza. When I watched the new videos over and over again, I decided, I didn’t really think Mack’s pizza uses any standard formula for the sauce and cheese, but the new videos, show even more that they even add the sauce in different ways.  The pieman in the first video was the one I had watched when I visited Wildwood.  It looked on the new video like not as much cheese is placed on first. It still amazes me how easily the piemen open the dough and can twirl it in the air. I know this must take a lot of experience, but with the heat and humidity Wildwood has sometimes it makes me wonder, how they do this all summer. I used the same formula I did in my last attempt in reply #341, but I left the dough cold ferment overnight.

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9068.msg100438.html#msg100438

The weathermen were calling for a heat index of around 105 and I really wasn’t happy about going to market and being in the heat all day, without air-conditioning, but since this is my job, and stand holders are expected to be there for customers that come, I went to market. I know from experience with my other stands that when the weather gets this hot, that most people just come until a little after lunch time and get what they need and then leave. When I mixed my regular dough, the temperature in the market was 93 degrees F.  I knew that when all the doors are open today, the temperature would get hotter and the temperature of market builds up throughout the day.  Being next to a hot oven all day doesn’t help either.  Time to take some Excedrin along, because I probably was going to get a headache from the heat.  The temperature at my stand most of the day was 99 degrees F.

I mixed this dough by hand.  I sifted the flour, added all ingredients but the olive oil and kneaded by hand.  The dough came together well.  Adding the olive oil and mixing it by hand took awhile.  First picture is the dough ball after mixing Monday evening.

Pinocchio decided he had to go along.  I told him he was really going to be miserable, but he insisted.  I said okay.  I really pressed on the dough like the piemen do.  The dough was easy to twirl.  I purchased some creamy longhorn cheese at market.  All the deli and meat stands have different kinds of longhorn cheese, so I just chose the one I thought looked best.  The dough ball weighed 1 lb. 0.1 oz., weighed on the scale at market.  The pie was dressed with sauce similar to how the pieman did in one of the videos I posted.  The sauce added weighed 8 oz.  I grated the longhorn cheese and when weighed the weight of the cheese was 7oz. I put less cheese on to start, then added the sauce, then more cheese. The pie was baked in the deck oven.  The baked pie right out of the oven weighed 1lb. 10.4 oz.  I took some pictures while the pie was cooling and on the other pictures it can be seen how the pie loses weight when cooling.

Pinocchio did enjoy this pie.

Most stand holders left early, because not many customers were at market later today.  I was happy to get home in the air-conditioning.

Peter (Pete-zza) posted:

Based on the weights you provided, it looks like the unbaked pizza weighed 31.1 ounces (16.1 ounces for the dough, plus 8 ounces for the sauce, and 7 ounces for the cheese). With a fully baked weight of 26.4 ounces (1 lb., 10.4 ounces), the weight loss during baking was a bit more than 15%. My last two Mack's clones had weight losses of 13.5% and 14.5%. That was in my home oven, not a commercial oven.

It also looks like your pizza (16") was scaled in terms of weight in line with the numbers I came up with for an 18" Mack's clone.

Peter

This attempt was my second to last attempt for a pizza like Mack's pizza.  I am still trying to find the kind of white cheddar that Mack's uses before I try another attempt.

Norma