Hostess Shamrock Cupcakes: It's Nice & Easy Being Green

The Novelty Items Keep Rolling Out
It's been a dizzying five years since the original Hostess Snack Cake company, then doing business under the legal ownership of Interstate Bakeries Corporation, shuttered operations.  Resurrected by private equity in July 2013 it grew so rapidly that its new owners were able to cash out and take the company public in 2016, and now Hostess Brands trades under the charming ticker symbol TWNK.

One great gift of Hostess' modernization of manufacturing and distribution has been the steady stream of seasonal novelty items that their nimble reprogrammable machines can now spit out.  Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and other major holidays all get unique-themed snack cakes and confections.  There are so many, in fact, that the Food Kingdom can hardly keep up.  For instance, we tried their delightfully rich, berry-infused, dark chocolate Valentine's Day cupcakes and were all set to sing their praises.  Alas, various delays prevented a full review from being ready before Valentine's Day, and by the time we were set to write a full review, they had mostly disappeared from shelves.  You can still find them at random service stations and convenience stores, though, so if you see 'em, snatch 'em.

Blink and you'll miss them: this limited-edition Chocolate-Raspberry Cupcake, released for Valentine's Day, had a mature taste and a dark richness that was utterly appropriate for the day of love.  You could have served it without embarrassment as the climax of a romantic dinner.  Its berry notes would pair well with a lush California red. Note the sticky/chewy texture of the moist fondant icing.

St. Patrick's Day Cupcakes: Making a Mint
Showing that it's agile enough to spin off variations for second-tier holidays, Hostess was able to place these "Shamrock Cupcakes" on the shelves about three weeks in advance of St. Patrick's Day.  Since the only unbending requirement for this day is that the snack cake incorporate green, they did have some flavor decisions to make.  Would they go with lime? Spinach? Jalapeño peppers and cabbage?  Wisely, they synched up with the McDonald's tradition of the Shamrock Shake and went with mint, pairing it with chocolate.

The now-publicly-traded Hostess Brands comes off as a place where the employees enjoy themselves, a place where graphic designers gleefully concoct new just-in-time packaging for the next creative bakery item that comes out of product development.

Different From the Default in Almost Every Way
If the only Hostess Cupcake you've ever had is the classic chocolate version of your childhood, you'll be in no way prepared for these new editions, which vary in crucial respects.  The most dramatic difference is in the frosting.  Normal Hostess frosting is rigid and somewhat crumbly, a strange hybrid between a fondant and a crunchy sugar crust; it's more brittle than chewy.  The icing on these Shamrock cakes is moister, more flexible, and somewhat tacky to the touch.  Further, it has a pronounced mint flavor, asserting the minty identity of the cake from the first taste.

Though it looks a bit like grandma's naugahyde couch covering, take note of the moist shine of the fondant icing.  It's a clue to its sensual, stretchy, chewiness.  This minty icing is one that you could enjoy peeling off and eating on its own.

The cake is different too.  Like the chocolate-raspberry cupcake mentioned above, the chocolate taste is stronger and darker and the crumb is denser and more moist, with an intensity and chewiness that marries well with its canopy of mint icing.  Indeed, the cake crumb is so moist that parts of it broke off and stuck to the plate where we placed it.  The green mint-creme filling adds another fresh, reinforcing blast of coolness, tying together the other elements into a luscious chocolate-mint unity.

Enlarged to show texture.  We can see all the relevant parts in harmony with each other.  The flexibility of the mint fondant gripping the moist and porous chocolate crumb matrix while the whipped mint creme explodes out from the center. If you're giving up voluptuousness for Lent, you'll have to keep these in the freezer til after Easter.

Conclusions

On the big green day, we recommend children enjoy these with a peppermint hot chocolate.  Adults during the day might pair them with a peppermint mocha.  Adults after dark would surely enjoy this with a hot Irish coffee, or maybe even a straight shot of Bushmills.

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"Big Game" Pizza, Day 5: Domino's Brooklyn-Style is Floppy, But Not a Flop

ABLC: Anything But Little Caesar's
It was late Friday morning and the weight of an impending decision hung upon J.N. and me.  Today would close out pizza week, and we had time for one last review before "Big Game" Sunday rolled around and consumers made their choices.  Thus far, every pizza we had tried had been pan-style.  Was it time to turn to a hand-tossed or thin-crust option?  Or should we be fair to all the major chains and give each of their pan or deep dish offerings a try?  Just about every option we considered presented major drawbacks.   Pizzeria Uno seemed like an obvious choice but they don't offer delivery and don't have anywhere near as many locations as the big four: Domino's, Pizza Hut, Papa John's, and Little Caesar's.  Vocelli Pizza had always been a decent place in our minds, but online research revealed that they only operate in 8 of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, leaving huge slices of the country in the dark.

Residents of 9 states know that Vocelli is one of our country's better regional chains, but their limited availability eliminated them from consideration.  My fave spot, Bertucci's, was also considered, but their locations are too spread out to be a realistic Sunday choice for most people.

 Cici's is one of the 10 largest national chains, but...well, they're an all-you-can eat joint.  Does anyone actually carry pizzas out of Cici's?  That seems like a joke.  And so attention inevitably shifted to Little Caesar's.  They are, after all, the 4th largest chain in the USA and they have a new DEEP!DEEP!^™ Dish Pepperoni Pizza with a Pepperoni-and-Cheese-Stuffed Crust announcing itself on their website.  But J.N. begged to be spared the eating ordeal that would be any Little Caesar's product.  It was not always thus.  Explains J.N. "Despite growing up on the classic rectangular LC and loving it, my most recent experience with LC and their “hot and ready” deal was almost inedible."  Besides, J.N. is vegetarian and getting a pie with toppings on only one side would probably have taken 20 extra minutes or an $8 surcharge.  Customization isn't LC's deal.  So, Little Caesar fans, you know who you are, but today is not your week.

Part of me is morbidly curious about this new Little Caesar's offering with cheese and pepperoni inside the crust.  But when something looks kinda gross, even in the advertisement?  Somebody fire that food stylist.

Domino's: Through Thick and Thin

So instead of closing out the pan pizza category we decided it was time to sample an entirely different style of pizza where the crust was minimized.  Fresh off yesterday's joyous experience with their rich yet lightly fluffy pan pizza, we decided to once again let Domino's do the honors.  Though they don't heavily advertise it, Domino's has a "Brooklyn-Style" crust that's a little thinner than their standard hand-tossed crust and designed to be floppy and foldable. That's never struck me as all that desirable a quality: I always figured that floppiness was a function of wet greasiness, but the Food Kingdom shall try anything once and so this time J.N. hopped into his car as the Pizza Tracker lit up and began its countdown to our final pizza of the week.

A little disclosure: the Pizza Tracker shown yesterday was a generic example taken from the web because I forgot, in all my excitement to head out the door, to take a screen capture of the actual tracker. You can see that this tracker is keeping tabs on the pizza in the take-out context.  The final stage is "ready for pickup" not "delivery."  If you look closely, you can see the name of the person who actually prepares the pizza.

Disclosure #2: You absolutely need to remember to enter your coupon to take advantage of Domino's advertised prices.  That "$7.99 large all day, every day" deal is indeed honored, but you don't get that price automatically.  You have to begin the ordering process in the special-offers section of the site.  I forgot to do this, but I noticed my mistake while J.N. was en route and the manager was kind enough to void the first sale and reprocess my order at the discounted price.

Will We Ever Find Out How the Pizza Tastes!?!?!?

Yes, gentle reader, presently.  This pizza is further proof that Domino's top-to-bottom redesign of its product lineup has been a success.  Floppy but not soggy, moist on top but dry on the bottom, sturdy enough to stay together but thin enough to let the toppings come to the fore, this pizza is actually a more interesting creation than its corny name would suggest.

This photos is a testament to the Brooklyn-style's durability and versatility.  At the far end, the spartan cheese half seems thin and almost fragile.  The addition of hearty toppings bulks the pie up but the crust easily handles the extra burden.

What Does It Mean to Be Floppy?

When we think of floppy pizza, we often imagine a weak crust that can't support the weight of its cheese and partially disintegrates as sauce and cheese oil render it like sodden cardboard.  That's not what's happening here.  As an engineer might put it, this crust has no strength in bending but a high degree of tensile strength.  Just look at the picture below: this slice isn't sagging; it's doing calisthenics.

The weighty mass of cheese tries to break away but the bonds between cheese and crust are strong and the slice maintains its integrity.

Here also the toppings cling to the crust, every scrap of goodness holding its position so to make a good impression on its way into the mouth.

Revenge of the Toppings

One reason to want a thin crust is simply to reduce the carb count and make each slice less filling. Pillowy, poofy pan crust is a singular experience but it can be a little bloat-inducing, and if you're primarily after the taste of cheese, pepperoni, and veggies, all that bread can get in the way, blocking the flavors that are meant to enhance it.  The Brooklyn-style crust, while almost leathery in its firm chewiness, steps aside where flavor is concerned and lets the toppings take a lead role.  The tomato taste was especially strong in this pie, so much so that I almost felt like I was tasting ratatouille, as chunks of tomato and suggestions of onion blended with green peppers.  Of course, most ratatouille doesn't have mushrooms and Italian sausage, but I do often top mine with a sprinkle of Swiss cheese, and serve some French bread on the side, so the resemblance of the two experiences is remarkably close.

The Brooklyn crust stays bone-dry on the bottom....

..while a wet, wild, and woolly flavor party rocks the night away up top!  And look! Is that a chunk of real tomato?  A first for a mass-market chain, in my experience.

Conclusions

Consensus was again the order of the day with J.N. echoing my own remarks, writing "I welcome the return to a thin crust and the fact that it makes the sauce more prominent, as all the pan pizzas were short on sauce in my opinion, though that may just be a factor of a thicker crust and thus a reduced ratio...If I were having a big game party with pizza, I’d go with a mix of the Domino’s pan and NY styles for delicious variety."

Numerical score

27: a solid running game, possession passing, and a reliable place kicker combine for three trips into the endzone and three medium distance field goals.  We don't have a dynasty here, but we have a solid contender for the championship.

And so closes pizza week with both Papa John's and especially Domino's boasting some surprisingly good casual cuisine for a couple of chains.  May the best team win, may the footballs be properly inflated, and may your bellies be not unduly distended by your pigskin revelries.

"Big Game" Pizza, Day 4: Domino's Magic Pan

Domino's Leaps Into the Lead
I have some experience with what was once the Domino's pan pizza.  26 years ago, I was delivering pizzas for them in Durham, NC, primarily to bratty college students who took perverse pleasure in taunting lowly delivery boys as they sprinted, pizzas-in-hand, across the rolling campus. I would never have believed that Domino's would ever produce a viable pan pizza.  I remember how their pan pizzas were made back then; they were preformed Frisbee-like slabs of frozen dough, defrosted overnight, slicked with yellow liquid margarine and left to fester unloved and barely regarded in the corner of the store, dense leaden pucklike masses of fattening dough, rarely ordered (and if I may anthropomorphize) they seemed acutely aware of their inadequacy.  If I had reviewed them then, I would have surely panned it.

Today, six years after Domino's first admitted to the nation in a controversial ad campaign that their products have, historically, left much to be desired, all that has changed and their redesigned and rebooted pan pizza is better than ever, better than J.N. and I ever expected.  As we near the end of "Big Game" pizza week and prepare to finally move on from the deep-dish category, Domino's has emerged as the clear category winner.  Let's see why.

Engineering a Fresh Experience
Any pizza chain, whether you place the order online or over the phone, can give you an approximate time when your pizza will be ready but Domino's Pizza Tracker™ has elevated the practice to a high-precision art.  The visual tracker display is primarily meant to help delivery customers track progress and properly anticipate the arrival of the driver, but it can be used for takeout customers to let them know when they should leave the house as well as to determine a target arrival date.  When I placed the order, the tracker told me the pizza would be ready in between 9 and 14 minutes.

With Dominos Pizza Tracker™technology there's no reason to pan-ic. You'll be kept apprised of the order if you're expecting delivery, and be tipped off on when to arrive if you're going the take-out route.

In order to optimize my chances for getting a right-from-the-oven pie, I aimed to arrive in exactly 9 minutes and prepaid by credit card so there would be no delays caused by the financial end of the transaction.  To my delight, I saw the pizza box placed on the pick-up shelf the moment I walked through the door.  Twenty seconds later I turned the key in my car's ignition and peeled out towards Food Kingdom headquarters.  The gorgeous results can be seen below.

It's a beauty.  Dripping and glistening with clear, limpid grease and vegetable juices, quivering with puffy tenderness, its cheese outstretched and its toppings reaching to the perimeter, this pie announced its place in the pizza Pan-theon.

Domino's Pan Crust: Deep Crunchiness, Surprising Lightness
The ever-present challenge for any pan pizza is to be thick without heaviness.  We want to be able to sink our teeth deep into a crust that is substantial enough to hold up a heavy coat of cheese and toppings but we don't want to struggle to finish a dense, glutenous mass that will sit like lead in the belly.  This pie's crust threaded this needle perfectly, providing the structure that a pie this substantial needs but sporting a delicate airiness rarely seen even in thin, bubbly-style crusts.  The lightness actually reminded me of some of the best gnocchi, in which the mashed potatoes in the dough are vigorously whipped until airy, then just barely blended with enough flour to hold the delicate pillows together.

The first view to demonstrate the lightness of the crust.  Notice the small air pockets, a lattice-like network of which holds up the toppings, which you can see on the right are weighty and rich.

Here we see an even larger bubble: bubbles within bubbles you might say, giving this pizza a bouncy agility that defies the deep-dish crust's usually excessive density.

The picture above also shows a hint of what makes this pan crust so special.  While it's taut on top and fluffy in the middle, it's positively crunchy down below.  It's common for the outer edges of a pan pizza to have crunchy bits, but savvy greasing on the bottom of the pan, combined with what must be a real blast of high-intensity heat, creates a crispy crunchy brown crust, encasing tenderness inside of crispness, topped by gooeyness and chewiness.  Are you hungry yet?

One of those rare instances where one look tells you how a thing tastes.  It's like chicken-fried pizza!

The Integrity to Taste of Itself
Even when Domino's was a bland-also run pizza with a cardboard crust, I was still impressed with the overall freshness of its toppings.  They always cut the mushrooms extra thick so they had a concentrated roasted exterior but a juicy, fresh, and fungal interior.  The green peppers tasted peppery and every flavor remained separate and distinct, forming crisp, tight harmonies.  That legacy lives on today in both the toppings and the cheese which has the piquant yet sweet dairy note that sings a melody persuasive of the very concept of pizza.  Sing, muse, sing of the chewy and tangy, the crisp and the crunchy, the salty and the sweet, the fresh and the savory, the steamy and the baked.  This pizza was positively symphonic.  Let's let J.N., a man given to neither pomp, pretense, nor gratuitous mellifluity have the last word: "This was by far the most consistently enjoyable pizza of the bunch. It was reminiscent of the good parts of Pizza Hut, the oily (in a good way) crust, but without the saltiness throughout. It also had a nicely toasted outer crust, although I wonder if the crust could have been even tastier with some of the seasonings Domino’s uses for their regular crust these days. That said, the cheese and sauce ran up so close to the edge of the crust that it wasn’t even really necessary. I’d actually get this one again."  Guest taster I.P.T. adds "The crust was fluffy yet had a distinct and mild crunch... Not too soggy, not too firm... The sauce is not overpowering or too bland... I personally liked this pizza a lot and would certainly consider it for game night!"

We three do not agree about healthcare, education reform, or much of anything on the national scene. But we agree about this pizza!

Conclusions
You won't get any better from a chain. At $13 for take-out, it's a fine value too.
Numerical Score: A blowout.  It's 38-0 at halftime.  You watch Lady Gaga, settle into the couch to maybe watch the rest or perhaps not, and let escape a gentle and modest burp, still fresh and flavorful from its origin's recency, and drift off, profoundly satisfied.

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"Big Game" Pizza Week, Day 3: The Homemade Option

Big Meeting Day at Food Kingdom Headquarters
Hello, foodies!  An all-day business meeting at the studios today is preventing J.N. and I from reviewing another chain pizza today, but I didn't want day 3 of our week-long challenge to pass without any additional pizza recommendations, so today I want to share with you what I believe to be the best, and one of the easiest, home-made pizza recipes out there.  Making your own is really a very viable option and it gives you ability to time the arrival of your pies perfectly, and to periodically re-supply your guests with additional bites as the game progresses without having to keep calling for delivery over and over.

It's All About the Sauce
There are many storebought crust options out there for the home cook, from refrigerated dough in a bag to frozen dough discs, from Boboli to my current favorite, prepackaged naan.  But the element that will make the biggest impact on the quality of your finished pizza is the sauce, and so I share with you here a super-simple recipe for a powerfully pungent, irresistibly aromatic sauce.  I first heard of it from legendary Washington D.C. chef Roberto Donna when he shared it on Julia Child's show Cooking With Master Chefs, but it's so elemental that it probably goes back generations.

INGREDIENTS:

1 28 oz. can plum tomatoes (I prefer Hunt's but any high quality brand's fine)
1 head garlic, cloves peeled and minced (I think that's a fair amount but it's hard for me to have too much garlic!)
4 tbs finely chopped fresh basil (you can also do a basil chiffonade, which is taking about 10 broad leaves of italian basil, rolling them up tight and then slicing the roll crosswise, as thin as you can imagine.  It makes a lovely presentation)
1 tsp olive oil
Fresh pepper to taste (you don't need extra salt, believe me)

First, drain all the juice from the tomatoes and reserve for another use.  Next, take each plum tomato and start pulling it apart into little mushed up strips with your hands.  This will seem a bit laborious compared to just pureeing it, but this is how you get the juicy chunks that make this sauce special.  After you've done this you'll have a raggedy mass of tomato pulp and shreds, the foundation for your sauce.  Drain off the additional tomato juice that has burst out of the plum tomatoes (you don't want a wet and watery sauce) until you're left with mainly tomato pulp and shreds and just a little bit of juice.  Add the garlic, olive oil, and 3/4 of the basil, reserving the rest for garnish.  Voila!  You now have enough sauce for at least five good-sized pizzas, probably more.

Fire It Up
Regardless of what dough or pre-made crust you use, you'll want to get those nice wood-oven style crispy edges.  This calls for an oven temp of at least 450 degrees and preferably a nice hot surface.  Pizza stones are everywhere now, and they're fine, but even better are unglazed quarry tiles, which you can get at any hardware store.  If you give them a good soapy scrubbing first, they're perfectly safe as a cooking surface.  Line your oven rack with these and they'll act like one big pizza stone and you won't have to worry about fitting the pizza to the size of your round stone.  If the inside of your oven is on the small side, you may need to cut some half tiles to get the right amount of coverage, but once you've got these things they'll last forever.  And they're dirt cheap anyway.

Which Cheese?
That's really up to you.  I like some nice fresh mozzarella slices for this sauce, finished with a sprinkle of Parmesan and basil for a classic Pizza Margherita.  But shredded mozzarella is fine if that's your preference.  Be sure not to overwhelm your pie with toppings because that's a recipe for messy disasters.  Other than that, let your creativity rule.  Happy Baking, and I'll see you tomorrow with another mass-market option.  If there are any particular ones you'd like to see reviewed, let us know.

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"Big Game" Pizza Week, Day 2: Pizza Hut Pan with Salted Pretzel Crust

Hot (and Cheesy) Tip: Save Money and Pick a Designated Driver
Before we begin our review in earnest, a note about pricing.  Take-out specials are proliferating in the industry right now and, unless cost is of no concern to you, you'd be foolish not to take advantage of them.  The Papa John's new Pan Pizza reviewed yesterday arrived by way of a delivery driver because the closest Papa John's to The Food Kingdom studios was over 6 miles away and I didn't want to invest that amount of driving time nor allow the pizza that much time to cool off in transit.  But we paid a hefty price for that convenience.  The base price of that pizza, absent any special offers was $15.60, but the $3 delivery fee plus a $4 tip and tax brought the total to $23.75.  Today's pie, Pizza Hut's classic pan with the special salted pretzel crust comes to less than half that amount, totalling $10.60 when taking advantage of their $10 take-out special.  So we recommend calibrating your ordering time such that the pizza can be ready 15 minutes before kickoff and picking an intrepid driving volunteer to head out to any location within reasonable distance.  Give 'em a few free beers (after they return!) or exempt them from paying altogether and you'll still come out way ahead cost-wise.

Take-Out Driver Duty: The Excitement and the Terror
Given that our $10 pizza would have cost us at least $7 more had we opted for delivery, I was brimming with satisfaction as I set out on the 1.5 mile drive to the local Hut.  However, the glee of the discount soon faded as the logistical difficulties of arriving at the site at the precise moment that the pizza left the oven became apparent.  Unless you want to take even more than 30 minutes out of your day and lounge in the waiting area tapping your foot and annoying the staff, you'll want to time things out so you arrive just as the pizza finishes cooking, certainly not later, but not excessively early.  This would be simple but for the vagaries imposed by unpredictable traffic lights that can throw your arrival time off by as many as five minutes.  This time, the trip there went off without a hitch, but the return trip saw me hitting every red light, each one robbing precious units of heat from the vulnerable pie, protected only by an uninsulated cardboard box.  Counterpoint: unless you're a bit more relaxed than I am, you may enjoy paying a little extra to let the professionals give your pizza the best chance of arriving piping hot.

The promised land!  And then the frantic U-turns and other possible moving violations began.

Shaking Things Up: Crust and Sauce Variations
Unless we order online, we may not always be aware of how much customization is available in these chain pizzas.  In order to set up a contrast with Papa John's new pizza from yesterday, we decided to revisit Pizza Hut's classic pan pizza but also implement some changes.  Pizza Hut actually offers five different sauces: Marinara (the default), Premium Crushed Tomato, Creamy Garlic Parmesan, Barbecue, and Buffalo -- and six crust types: "No Crust Flavor" (is that the default?), Hut Favorite, Toasted Parmesan, Salted Pretzel, Toasted Cheddar, and Garlic Buttery Blend.   We figured we'd add some excitement with the "Premium Crushed Tomato", which seemed to promise some real tomato chunks or at least bits, and Salted Pretzel, which I hoped would make every bite of crust worth finishing on its own.  I also attempted to get one half of the pizza spread with the crushed tomato and the other half with marinara so we could contrast the two, but this was a bit too much for the Hut and their response to our online request was to simply give us a big plastic cup of Marinara on the side.

Come Hungry, Finish Thirsty
Four paragraphs in, and it's time to taste the pizza.  This could get a little repetitive, because every other word, overwhelming any other verdict, must be salt.  This is some salty pizza, though it may be impossible to say exactly why.  Let's start with the actual taste and then we can begin apportioning blame.  The first bit of saline overload hit me with the first bite of the cheese pizza, taken at the very tip (the importance of this will become clear).  I couldn't tell if the salt was coming from the cheese or the sauce, but it was suppressing the tang the tomatoes were trying to contribute, and annihilated the sweetness of copious mozzarella ooze.  After three bites, I was gulping down the water from my stryofoam cup, and running down the hall to the cooler to refill it.

In some ways, this $10 pie recalled Pizza Hut's glory days: a thick layer of cheese studded with big nuggets of sausage and fresh peppers and mushrooms kissed with dairy grease.  But the party was ruined by the salt crystals hanging around on the "pretzel" rim.

What a Pretzel Isn't
As you may now be guessing, all that salt probably came from the salted pretzel crust on the rim of the pizza, and cascaded down onto the rest of the pie.  It's a shame because Pizza Hut's pretzel crust hasn't always been this way.  I've had it a couple times before and on earlier occasions there seemed to be more of a serious attempt to tweak the dough so that it truly had that smooth brown pretzel texture and just a smattering of salt.  Now they've just browned the crust a bit more than usual and coated it with loads of salt. And so a noble attempt has been ruined, a venerable brand sullied.

The damning evidence: coarse salt migrating from the rim of the pizza onto the toppings, and perhaps further inward where it melted into the cheese layer.  Our tasting certainly indicated as much.

Conclusions
The salt-induced ruin aside, Pizza Hut's Pan Pizza is still solidly constructed.  The cheese is plentiful, the toppings are fresh (though Papa's sausage is much more boldly spiced) and it's got the satisfying heft that you only get from a pan pizza.  As J.N. writes "It was fairly classic Pizza Hut pan pizza, with the deliciously oily golden pan crust. [But] there was absolutely no zest or tanginess to the sauce, maybe just because there was very little sauce at all. In addition, the salty pretzel crust was inedibly salty, to me."  So yes,  avoid the salted pretzel crust at all costs and don't expect the "premium crushed tomato" sauce to taste any fresher than the standard-issue paste-based sauces that most chains offer.

Numerical Score: 5 (Opening kick return for a touchdown, followed by a safety and four turnovers in the red zone)

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"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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