The Pizza Therapy Forum and Pasta Therapy Forum

[pizza]

John writes:

Good Morning Albert;
First I would like to thank you for your support and have a place for us to come tofor info, guidance and where pizza lovers can share their thoughts.

I've enjoyed reading your web-site and am a great pizza lover, and like many pizzamakers we are always looking for that perfect one. I haven't found it yet and am having difficultly getting my pizzas to taste right, something's missing.

I'm not having any trouble making the dough or getting it to rise it's just after cooking the dough tastes flat its not chewy and doesn't have much flavor.

When I started making pizza at home some years ago I began with the common all purpose flour after a number of trials and mixing in different ingredients I decided that all purpose flour isn't the one. All the cooking was done in an electric oven. Next I moved to Bread flour and the taste got closer to delivery type pizza but not quit. Then I added a pizza stone and the taste improved even more, but
still not right.

So I moved out side to the grill, heated the stone to 500 degrees
cooked the bread flour mixture pizza... pretty good but not it. So I built an out door Pizza oven, modeled it after the dome shape design of the Pompeii oven in Italy. Fired it up, got it to temp and cooked my first pizza, it tasted great but something is still missing and the dough still doesn't taste right. I know that the sauce and cheese play as much a roll as does the dough, but to me if the dough iswrong the whole thing is off.

Sorry to be so long winded and I don't mean to bore you with my history but if you could give me any incite I would be most grateful.
All the flours I've used are from the local stores, and I've been thru them all from whole wheat, to unbleached, enriched to rye and they all taste home made...not that it's a bad thing but I'm looking for that restaurant clean taste.

Or maybe I'mlooking in the wrong place, perhaps the restaurant ovens change the flavor and it something I cant achieve at home but I would love to keep working on it and tryingnew things.

Just so you know I made you dough last night and it tasted the best so far. How can I get the outer ring chewy like PaPa-Johns or Domino style do I need to switch to pizza flour (cant get it local) and is there really that much a difference.

I would like to know your thoughts.

Regards

John Snapp

My Response:

I don't know John.

You seem to have done everything correctly.

Here is what Chris Bianco (one of the most celebrated pizzaiolos in the country) told me in Legends of Pizza, Volume 1: