i’ve been working alot latley and had to have surgery but now i’m back to 100% and looking to tackle take and bake! i’ve got over 25 years in the pizza biz and have every copy of pizza today dating back to 1989 which iritates the hell out of my wife by the way. point is i know alot about pizza but nothing about take and bake so any help would be greatly appreciated as i would like to start with selling in my restaurant and then try to get them in to local stores. any info - dough recipe, cooking instructions, packaging, getting into stores, shelf life, equipment needed, ect, ect. once again it would be greatly appreciated and hopefully help me get my name out there if i can get into stores in surrounding communities as i’m in a small town pop 5-6k alot of people drive a ways to get to town and wont pick up a pizza because it will be cold by the time they get home also alot of surrounding towns dont even have a pizza place and was thinking if i could get convience stores in those towns to carry my pizzas i could make some money.
Thanks,
Andrew
Be sure to check the RECIPE BANK for formulas, and also check through the THINK TANK archives as well as article archives as we have had a lot of discussion on T&B pizza over the past few years.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
FYI- I am interested in re-visiting Take and Bake. Using the search feature does not help me. It omits “take” because the word is too common. When left with the word bake, the search is not relevant.
Tips? Suggestions?
You can do a Google search like this…
site:pmq.com/tt “take and bake”
In a nutshell…
Having been in the wholesale pizza b4, my 1st thought is your market is not big enough to support an operation you desire, putting your pies in local markets…
I reckon they already have the national DiGigorno/Freshetta/etc. - why will/would the market stock yours?
There are/may be some labeling issues to contend with & some extra government regulations too.
Your in-house product will never be exactly like one you prepare for the c-stores.
If it is frozen, you’ll need extra equipment to flash freeze it…
If delivered “fresh” it will only last 5-7 days…
You can choose to proof & par-bake a crust or develop a simple crust, using a special chemical leavener (like those in DiG/Freshetta) but there is still a freshness point-in-time to consider…
Hope that helps a little bit…
When looking for T&B flormula in the RECIPE BANK use the word"dough" for your search word. I have several very good T&B dough formulas posted there.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor