At a large Christmas party yesterday, our hosts ordered six different new recipe Domino's handtossed pizzas to supplement the food they prepared in their kitchen. Having so many different pies to look at and sample, it became obvious Domino's did not increase the quality of their raw ingredients by a large amount. The people who bash Domino's will not fall silent. The changes were most noticeable on a plain cheese pie. I did find the sauce better. (To taste the sauce, I had to lift a cooled clump of cheese off the slice.) To me, the old sauce was 'astringent'. I didn't find the new sauce to be sweeter, but to be less astringent. There was more seasoning in the sauce, making it closer to the sauce recipes found in the best of the new frozen pizzas, or to a good canned sauce like Pastorelli. The cheese was curious. IMHO, it is "pizza cheese" made by someone like Leprino Foods. It had a smoky smell that hit you when you opened the box, but tasted like a lot of "pizza cheeses" used by makers of budget frozen pizzas and some other pizza chains. Then there is the dough vs. crust issue. I believe the dough balls they use are of the same old recipe. There is nothing new mixed into the dough balls. The modification is that they are brushing a mixture similar to Hungry Howie's Garlic-Herb Crust flavor onto the outer edge of the piece of dough. When you break off the crust from a slice and eat it, it is very similar to a soft garlic finger. The flavor of garlic was not overpowering.
Once you start sampling slices with pepperoni, extra cheese, sausage, ham, jalapeno, onions, garlic, bacon, etc. you can no longer notice any changes in the sauce or cheese, though you still can taste the garlic on the edge of the piece of dough. These stronger flavors overpower the taste of the sauce and cheese.
Thankfully, I tried these slices on someone else's nickel. Maybe this recipe change will soon be forgotten, like previous Domino's recipe changes.
<message edited by David_NYC on Mon, 12/28/09 2:46 PM>
