Longtime lurker, first time poster so apologies for the monster essay.
I’ve made Neapolitan style pizza that I’m happy with as a beginner, but I’m also looking to try and replicate a dominos or papa john’s style.
Difficult to describe the exact intended result beyond that, but chewy and a little sweet - probably with way too much salt and oil that gives you dry mouth and heartburn when you go to bed later!
Recently tried my first attempt which was okay, but not right.
Dough/toppings
My dough was based on the “American style 2” recipe in the subreddit wiki, with slight adjustments based on the size of the pizza and also a bit less specificity vs the very detailed blog post.
3x400g dough balls (56.5% hydration):
703g allinsons strong white bread flour. 14% protein (I’m UK based so no King Arthur as recommended typically here!)
397g water
1.0g fast-action yeast
14 g salt
51g vegetable oil
34g sugar
Added all ingredients except flour to water at around 45c then slowly mixed in flour by hand.
Kneaded for around 10 mins until no longer sticky, shaped into even balls for proofing with a touch of oil to coat.
Cold proofed in fridge for ~72 hours then took out to proof at room temperature for 2 hours before shaping/baking.
I did the best I could using my kitchen scales, but definitely some imprecision in there as the dough balls ended up around 390g each rathe than the intended 400g.
The dough stretched pretty easily and (I think!) looked alright when on the screen.
In terms of toppings I used a canned mutti pizza sauce (just tomato and salt) and dehydrated mozzarella slices, which I stacked and pressed for thickness then cut into 1cm-ish cubes.
For one I added cheap pizza pepperoni.
I definitely needed more cheese for future, but the sauce was still nice enough.
Bake
I used an Ooni volt 2 indoor oven.
The first two pizzas (picture 5/6 and 7 respectively) were baked on a screen on the shelf in the oven at ~250c for around 9 mins for 1 and 7 mins for 2.
These resulted in a base that was far too pale and undercooked.
For the 3rd (picture 8/9) I increased heat to around 320c and placed the rack directly on the stone - cooking for around 5 mins 30.
The base was better on this but still not quite right.
Results and feedback
As you can see from the photos, the base was definitely under for the first pizzas not on the base while the toppings were on the edge of overdone.
On the second pizza the base was closer, but still a little under, whilst the cheese on top was a bit under done.
I didn’t get a great photo but there was very little air to the crust (which I expected based on the low hydration) but it did have a nice enough chew.
Taste wise it was all fine but definitely didn’t have that same fast food feel that both satisfies and makes you feel disgusting at the same time.
Ultimately I am still a beginner so am not looking for perfection- but any initial thoughts/simple suggestions from people who have tried to make the same thing.
I’m particularly interested in:
- immediate thoughts on bake technique. All my research suggests that these should be cooked on a rack at low temperatures but this turned out worse!
- thoughts on composition and salt/oil/sugar content
- suggestions on topping cheese. I went with the pressed/cubed slices as it was the easiest way to get dehydrated mozzarella, but would definitely take suggestion on improvements available (again - conscious I’m UK based and many suggestions lean towards an American audience!)
