The Pizza Parlor Process

My wife and I rush out the door for another morning headed to work. The commute isn't far, but still a decent drive. My wife drops me off on the way to her job, and I hang out for an hour in Hardee's lobby writing songs. At about 9am, I walk over and wait for my manager to unlock the doors. He has an even longer drive than we do, so sometimes I wait patiently while he finishes his morning commute to the store. We meet there at 9-9:15 on MWF to make pizza dough for Godfather's Pizza.

When I come in, we flip on all the lights and begin getting our work stations set up for the morning. Me coming in to make dough allows my manager to kinda roam around accomplishing things for the store that may have been neglected a while. Since this isn't his store, he often is able to go handle business at other stores as well.

I start by measuring my water for original dough. Once I've measured that out, I put a pack of seasonings/yeast in the mix and use a large whisk to activate the bowl. I then open a big pack of flour and pour it in with the rest of the ingredients. After setting up the machine with its proper parts to mix the dough, I turn it on and wait for it to be completed. During this time, I'll throw out pans of dough made yesterday that are no longer good for sale. While the dough is mixing, this gives me a pretty good amount of time to throw out yesterday's dough and also butter new pans for what I make today. As I set these things up, I check to make sure the dough has been thoroughly mixed and I begin breaking down the machine to remove the dough and begin portioning it for the pizza pans.

We also use a machine that flattens the dough as it gets placed in the pan. So I'll flatten the prescribed amount as much as I can, keeping it in a good circle shape, then gently drop it through the machine that flattens the dough for placing in the pan. This is the toughest step at times, just getting the dough to remain even without holes, but also to the overall shape it needs to be to cover the whole pan. After the shape is suitable, I then texturize the dough in the middle of the pan with a specific tool. After that step, I can use the roller to press the outsides of the pan to cut the pizza right where it needs to be. I place these finished pans on a rack, place a trashbag over the top, and wait for them to "proof" or rise to a certain level in order to now store them in the cooler.

After making original dough, we make golden. This process just takes more water, and no texturizing the dough. Working the dough is really soft and fluffy, and we measure out exactly how much goes in each pan. When enough medium and large pans are made from the above process, same as with original, then the sides like monkey bread, breadsticks, and foil pan pizzas are made with the remaining golden dough. I only make so many per day, so it just depends on how much is already made up, considering the golden dough lasts 2 days, unlike the original that only lasts for one. With monkey bread, I just slice them myself with my pizza dough tool. The small pieces then get spread into a foil pan and covered with butter while they proof. Making breadsticks, I just do the same except with a pre-set cutting tool. The foil pans I just weigh out and place in the pan after flattening them out.

Any of our pans are lubricated with either spray, or a thick butter alternative used in many restaurants. This is what tops the monkey bread and what coats the foil pans. After proofing these menu items, both the monkey bread and the breadsticks are "half-baked" by putting them in the oven at a door designed to be the halfway point in the baking process. They run through this half bake and then get stored in the cooler until purchase. My only other job is to make the pizza if ordered!

However, the gaming scene in Illinois is what pays our bills. The slots customers come in, and not even very many of them, but they are far more frequent than pizza customers. I just let them do their thing and offer a drink if they need it. I have a foodtruck idea to pitch to the owners to expand and sustain sales more than just the gambling profits, but I may never meet them in order to share the idea and try to implement.

All things aside, even entrepreneur minds and inventors and coaches and fathers and jack-of-all-trades can cook pizzas and make dough. Even intellectuals can work task oriented jobs. Doesn't mean we'll wanna be around the people that come with those jobs, but that's the challenge of society whenever you're attempting to radically change the world you currently have to honor and exist in during the struggle. Even then, make your dough and keep coming up with ideas, even if they never happen.