"Big Game" Pizza Week, Day 1: Papa John's Pan Pizza

Are You Ready for Some F---ball?
Intellectual property rights being the utter mess that they are, businesses all over the country must each year engage in a charade whereby they promote their products as ideal accompaniments to the sporting spectacle known as "The Super Bowl" without ever admitting as much, lest they be sued for using the National Football League's tradenames for the purpose of promoting their products.  Since no entity, whether it makes any money or not, is ever really too small to sue, I shall only say that there's a "big game" coming up, so we at The Food Kingdom thought it would be nice to survey the pizza terrain and report back on which cheesy pies are most fit for consumption while viewing your local FOX channel at 6:30 PM on February 5th, as predatory birds shall attempt to fell proud men who love their country.

Does Papa John's Deep Dish Foray Pan Out?
While it must have its share of devotees, everyone I have ever talked to agree that regular Papa John's pizza is just the absolute worst.  The sauce, claims of it's fresh preparation notwithstanding, tastes like spaghetti sauce that has been run through a fine sieve so as to filter out everything rustic and interesting.  The dough is so sweet that it must have been optimized for dual use as the base for their Cinnamon Pull Aparts.  Nothing against pepperoncini as such, but they just kind of gross me out, and that lemon-yellow "garlic" sauce has as much real garlic as a mango smoothie.  But every product deserves its day, so when Papa announced his new deep-dish pan pizza, we had to give it a chance.

This deep-dish got off to a hearty and promising start, boasting a dense and stretchy layer of cheese, not mere scattered shreds, stretching all the way to the rim and over.  But, hey, is the half with toppings smaller than the cheese half?  I call B.S.!

Crusty and Edgy
Since there's no way for a 46-year old food critic to finish a large pizza and still stay upright, I am joined this week by vegetarian co-taster J.N., who shall daily consume the cheese half of each pizza while I, for reasons of consistency, order green peppers, mushrooms, and sausage on every damn pie. This may make me a vegetarian by week's end.  Both J.N. and I were impressed with the crunchy edge, crackling with deep brown toasted cheese fragments.  Surprisingly, this didn't make the entire pie particularly greasy.  It was only at the end that I noticed that I'd managed to consume my half without resorting to either any napkins nor to licking my fingers.  (This also was the case with Taco Bell's Naked Chicken Chalupa, to be reviewed fully in this space at the soonest opportunity.  Anti-greasing technology must be advancing in leaps and bounds.)

The Other Side of the Disc: Gummy Blandness?
Despite the copious cheese and the generous mounds of toppings, there wasn't a lot of flavor in the pizza's base layer.  Papa's mozzarella is still notable mostly for being white and inoffensive, its sauce is still sugary and timid, and the crust has a comforting sponginess, but certainly no notes of yeast, sourdough, or really any flavor to contribute.  J.N. also pointed out what looked initially like egregious undercooking of the dough, as you can see below.

Ew, is that a layer of undercooked, gummy crust?  That would be an instant fail.

But wait.  Further exploratory photography reveals a more complex reality that I'm still trying to decipher.  In profile, it does indeed appear that large sections of the crust have gone uncooked, but a head-on cross section shows that the dough fluffed up and cooked fully.  Perhaps the blade used to partition the pizza compressed the dough into a compact mass at the site of bi-section?

Raw-seeming in profile, but fully cooked when viewed frontally, Papa John's crust remains something of an enigma.  But a bite is pleasingly chewy if overwhelmingly plain.

A Bold Sausage Rescues the Flavor on the Toppings Side

As I mentioned, for toppings I chose green peppers (for freshness), mushrooms (for texture and umami), and spicy sausage.  Papa wasn't kidding with the spicy designation.  The peppery heat from these chunks of pork really woke up the pizza and gave it the heft that a true deep dish (are you listening, Little Caesars?) requires.

A true pan pizza should really stand up to each bite and crowd the mouth with chunks of bursting flavor, and Papa John's truly does deliver here.  But that yellow garlic sauce is nauseating.  I want to meet the person that enjoys it.  Or do I?

Conclusions
For a chain as usually forgettable as Papa John's, this was a real step forward.  Satisfying, spicy if you get the sausage, and sporting a spongy dough that is either pillow-comfy or cotton-bland, depending on how you approach the question, it will keep your stomach full and your mouth happy while you concentrate your considerable mental power on, well, the "big game."

Numerical score: 19 (two 30+ yard field goals, two passing TDs, and one missed extra point)

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