Pizza Today - September 2020 - 54

pizzeria's greatest tool to establish
their unique style and brand is in
their pizza dough. Pizza dough
gives you the ability to show off what makes
your pizzeria unique and different. Your
pizza dough has so many factors that create
it: the rise time, the flour choice, the humidity and several other contributing factors
to make your dough 100-percent yours.
To limit your dough's use purely to pizza
is shortsighted. This relatively inexpensive
item is your No.1 brand ambassador. It
should be cross utilized as much as possible
inside your pizzeria. You can choose your
cheese and sauce, but odds are they won't be
vastly unique to you. Dough style is.
Your pizza dough is your flag bearer of
what you, and your restaurant, are. Having

multiple dough styles isn't typically feasible
for pizzerias just starting out because of the
logistics. It's not easy to make one style of
dough great from scratch, let alone many.
So rather than having multiple dough styles,
find a way to do numerous things with your
one dough style.
Find ways to create dough-based
appetizers, desserts and even sandwiches.
Your dough is a menu swiss army knife
ready to be put to use. The fundamentals
of successful pizzeria ownership rely on
cross-utilization and finding cheaper ways
to sell items with a higher perceived value.
Multiple applications of pizza dough checks
all those boxes.
Appetizers
Garlic knots are a very typical and classic
pizzeria item. To put a spin on it at Andolini's, we deep fry them. They can be baked
instead. Again, it's your choice. In New
York, they're typically sold as three massive
knots in Reynolds' foil. At Andolini's, I

serve them as several small knots covered
in butter, garlic, oregano and Romano in an
entree bowl. It's my go-to item for a donation, an incentive, a fix-it for a late table or
mess up, and generally anything in between.
Stuffed pizza bites. A simple variation of
the garlic knot is akin to ravioli but baked
in bread. Ricotta or some cheese variation
makes for a solid appetizer. If you serve it on
a nicer plate in a line, it will have a higher
perceived value than if it is in a plastic bowl
with wax paper. An extra few moments of
thought on the presentation can earn $2 to
$3 more per appetizer.
Pepperollies and dough roll. Classic
pepperollis are a dough pushed out wide,
add cheese and pepperoni, then roll and
cut it like it's sushi, and bake it off. You can
choose to top it with Parmesan or mozzarella. This is
extremely cost-effective and
100-percent unique because
your dough is different
from the other place down
the street. However, don't
stop with only pepperoni.
That's not the limit of what
you can do with a dough
roll. At Andolini's, we
use pesto and San Marzano tomatoes to make an
upscale item that actually
costs less than a pepperolli
but could be charged for
more. San Marzano's and pesto are cheaper
than protein while being a higher perceived
culinary item.
Mini strombolis and mini calzones.
Stuffed pizza makes your pizza portable
and more accessible to sell to groups who
mandate individual items as a catering
requirement. How you fold, roll, stuff and
top your strombolis and calzones is your
unique decision. These are fun extra items
that can be a successful add-on to any group
purchase.
Garlic bread. Baking lines of dough and
coating with butter, garlic and oregano are
super cheap. Five bucks is a reasonable price
for garlic bread and gives you a food cost of
under 10 precent on average.
Garlic cheese bread. Add some mozzarella for an extra 50 cents in food cost, and
now you can charge another $2 to the garlic
bread price.
Detroit garlic twists. To make garlic
bread different, I do this; I cut a 20-ounce
dough into six lines, then make three twists

of them that I drench in garlic butter. Then
I bake it off in a Detroit pan with cheese.
This appetizer gives a fun spin on Detroitstyle pizza that is an easy win. Since starting
to sell garlic cheese bread this way, I have
built a loyal and devoted fan following for
this item.
Sandwiches
Sandwich bread can cost anywhere from
$.50 to $.90 a roll. When you want to
charge around $5 to $6 a sandwich, that's a
costly item. Rolling out a pizza dough thin
and creating a focaccia-style bread, or even
a mini Stromboli, gives you the ability to do
a small sandwich at a significantly reduced
food cost - all while being completely
100-percent brand specific to you. I highly
suggest naming them something that's
different. For our small sandwich-style
Strombolis, I call them Strombolicchios, the
name of the lighthouse island off the coast
of the real island of Stromboli.
Desserts
Funnel cake and Churro knots. You could
also do the same exact process as garlic
knots, deep fry them and turn them into a
makeshift funnel cake or makeshift churro,
which gives you two different options for
desserts - all with your dough.
Cannoli. I've even taken pizza dough,
rolled it extremely thin around a metal
tube to make a makeshift cannoli shell. No,
they did not look or taste like your classic
cannoli, but I'm not looking to make things
that look like something everyone has had
before. I prefer making something unique
more than trying to fit in, and a cannoli
tube made out of pizza dough is just that.
The benefit of dough-based appetizers and menu items are countless: better
appearance, unique, excellent food cost and
multiple uses of an item. Before buying a
frozen food option, choose you, choose what
you create. Your customer wants to purchase
from you, not from the company whose bag
of product you reheated. Always find the
win in making your product creation on
display first. This way, the profitability and
loyalty to your brand increase rather than
stay stagnant. n
MIKE BAUSCH is the owner
of Andolini's Pizzeria in Tulsa,
Oklahoma. Instagram: @andopizza

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Pizza Today - September 2020

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