My pizza experiment had a big night tonite with the consumption of four different pizzas at our weekly game night so that our frends could help us test (and enjoy) the pizzas. They hadn't had Malnati's pizza before, but they were still able to weigh in on the taste and texture of the dough and on the tomatoes and cheese varieties. In my picky fashion, I gave them the whole spiel about the history of Chicago style pizza and Malnati's. Hopefully I didn't annoy them too much. Or, if I did, then hopefully the delicious pizza helped make up for it.
The four pizzas I tested tonite were mostly for the sake of testing the amounts and types of oils/fats in the dough. After testing several crusts and baking multiple pizzas, I have gotten pretty close to the correct recipe. However I hadn't nailed down exaclty what sort of fat is used. It really seems like there should be butter in Malnati's dough, but Marc Malnati always says it's just oil. Most recipes give a combo of olive and vegetable oil, sometmes corn oil. I made some with those oils and some with butter - one with cold butter and one with melted butter. And honestly, the ones with no butter seemed much closer to Malnati's.
I actually think I am done testing now. Maybe next time I make some pizza I'll play with the recipe a tad, but mostly I think I'm not going to get much closer. Tonite's selections were very very close to the real deal. All of us agreed that Pizza A was tastiest and Dan and I definitley thought it was passable for a Malnati's mimic. I'm happy enough with the recipe that I'm going to call it good.
We've had a lot of pizza in the last few days and there is still a ton left over. Luckily I'll never get sick of it!
Happy eating!
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