mix, mix…stir, stir

While Carol is off on her big TableFare road trip spreading the news about SpiceCare, I thought it would be fun if I took over the blog to document an experiment I’ve wanted to try for some time. In short, I wondered what would happen if you applied good technique to bad ingredients. Is it possible to end up with something edible?

When I was a kid, I probably ate more Chef Boyardee boxed pizzas than any other food item. After a while, my mom apparently got tired of making them for me and let me start making them myself.  I guess this was the start of my homemade pizza obsession that continues to this day. So what would happen if I combined what I know now with what I had then?

I was a bit surprised to find the Pizza Kit product was still on the market after all these years. It’s essentially the same as it ever was, though the  yellow box has given way to red, and what was once 79¢ will now set you back $3.59. Inside, however, are the same three components: a package of dry dough mix, a can of sauce and a packet of powdered Parmesan cheese.

I established some simple rules for my experiment. I could not add any ingredients to my Test Pizza, such as better cheese or a splash of herbs on the sauce. I also had to make another Control Pizza according to the box directions, just in case they made any improvements to the ingredients over the last 30 years.

Respect the Dough

Before I go any further, let me say a few words about pizza crust. It is my opinion that the crust is the pizza. While it possible to start with a good crust and still create a bad pizza, it is absolutely impossible to get a good pizza if you have a bad crust. Carol and I have spent over 20 years fine-tuning and tweaking the way we make pizza and I think we’ve taken it about as far as can be done using an electric oven.  One thing that we’ve learned is that technique is every bit as important as the ingredients. The best crust is a simple concoction of four ingredients (high-quality pizza flour, salt, yeast and water…no oil!)  teased into chewy bubbly perfection by a slow, delicate handling process. You must genuinely respect the dough.

Control Pizza

I made the Control Pizza in strict accordance with the instructions on the box. The only area in which I had to improvise a bit was on the rise time. The instructions say to let the dough rise for five minutes, but that you can extend that to 20 if you want. I decided to split the difference and let it rise for 12 minutes.

Test Pizza

The big difference between my two pizzas was obviously going to be in the crust since my rules prohibited me from making any changes to the sauce or cheese. Here’s how this crust differed from the previous:

1. For the Control Pizza, the instructions directed me to mix 2/3 cup water with the dough flour and then mix it with a fork just until it was a moist ball. For the Test Pizza,  however, I gave the mix the royal treatment.  First, the flour and water were mixed in the KitchenAid on low for four minutes. During this time I thought the dough was much too dry so I began adding extra water (the judges determined that this did not constitute adding additional ingredients and therefore was fair). The dough was then allowed to rest for five minutes so the water could be better absorbed. Finally, the dough was mixed on a medium-low speed for a long time until it took on a beautiful, smooth appearance. During this long mixing I continued to add water to keep the dough very sticky. A wet dough is a good dough.
2. The Control Pizza had me give the dough a 5-20 minute rising. For my pizza crusts, I do a two-day cold rising, which gives the dough an incredible just-barely-sourdough tinge. I was afraid, however, that the dough mix probably used a rapid rise yeast that would completely blow up if I left it for two days, so I dialed that back to a single day cold rise.
3. The Control Pizza instructed me to spread the dough on an oiled cooking pan and bake it at 425˚F. For the Test Pizza, I put one of our pizza stones in the oven and cranked it up to 550˚F, letting it stabilize for over an hour before doing any actual baking. The dough was hand-stretched then transferred to the stone on a peel.

The Results

I think the pictures tell most of the story.

The Control Pizza is extremely thin and lifeless. Now, thin is not a bad thing in the world of pizza, but there’s definitely good thin and bad thin, and this was bad thin. The crust was hard with a plain white-bread taste. The fact that it was baked on an oiled pan also made the very bottom part taste deep-fried.

Now look at the Test Pizza. It is, I must admit, somewhat ridiculous. As soon as it went onto the stone it started puffing up aggressively and it didn’t let up for the entire baking period. The yeast was having a heyday, and all that extra water I used was steaming up things mighty fierce.  I really don’t think I’ve ever seen a thin crust puff up that much before.

This cross-section of a slice of the Control Pizza shows how flat it turned out. As I said, thin is OK, but there should still be some nice bubbles and variety throughout, and this has essentially none.

The slice of the Test Pizza looks pretty much what you’d expect based on the picture of the whole pie.  It has puffed up considerably more…but obviously a bit too much.

But How Does It Taste?

The Control Pizza was exactly how I remembered these things tasting all those decades ago. The only difference was that back then I enjoyed it. This time, I ate one slice, took the photos, and tossed it out.

The Test Pizza really was quite a bit better. No, it was still not good, but bringing the crust to life definitely improved the overall texture and flavor, resulting in a somewhat surprising pie. The crust still had a very white-bread flavor, but at least it wasn’t hard and cooking it on the stone prevent the deep-fried taste that hindered the Control Pizza.

Conclusion

Yes, in this case you can help bad ingredients by applying good technique. But is it worth it? No.  I had to do a fair amount of work to improve this crust and it seems like a waste of time and effort to apply that work to these ingredients. It obviously defeats the purpose of the quick pizza-in-a-box concept if you need to give the dough a full day to rise, so I would never recommend anyone actually go through all this work if you’re starting with Chef Boyardee.

This was, after all, just an exercise to satisfy my curiosity rather than to unlock a secret method for creating a stellar pizza from a $3.59 kit. But after eating all this boxed pizza, I am really going to have to seek out a good pie to erase the aftertaste.