So I’ve been having a few guest complaints that we don’t put enough sausage on our pizza. We grind our own from heritage breed hogs and put 3 oz on 12" and 5 oz on 14" we put it on raw and under the cheese. It is not a fatty sausage. In Chicago you pinch it small and all over the pie but under the cheese. Do I try and educate or just go with the tide and put on top so people can see how much?
Educate, tho just like school. Some will never learn.
It depends on what kind of pizza you are making. Growing up working/eating in the NYC area pizza world we put raw on top of the cheese and not a lot of it. Our 18" pies get 4oz of sausage. My recipe came over with my grandfather from Italy at the turn of the century. It gets continual compliments on taste and never a complaint that there isn’t enough and I live in central Ohio where pies are covered completely with toppings. IMO if you make a pie that is in balance and with top ingredients complaints will be very few and compliments very high. Second picture was on a funky camera. Walter
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y237/waltertore/photoshootaddingsausage_zpsb7c55f42.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y237/waltertore/tony%20G%20sausage%201_zpsquie6gpr.jpg
Being from the Midwest, you don’t dare skimp on the toppings, especially sausage. I put sausage under the cheese in my conveyor oven so it doesn’t get dried out but in a deck oven I’d put it on top of the cheese since the heat comes mostly from below. I also cook my sausage ahead of time so my employees aren’t dealing with raw meats during the rush times. Plus pinching raw sausage takes for fucking ever! 8 oz on a 14". One of our mottos is “where you get what you pay for”. We don’t skimp on anything.
it depends on what they ordered, our “Upside Down pizza” (AKA, Tomato Pie) gets everything on top of the cheese/sauce, our normal pies get the meats under the cheese, unless it is only pepperoni, then the pepperoni goes on top.
If it is a sausage pepperoni, the pepperoni gets oriented somewhat vertical under the cheese by sticking it to the sausage so it sticks up through the cheese.
For here, it is all about being visually appealing, and a ton of toppings (Midwest area)
Sausage portioning on a 16" pie is 8 ounces raw here
@Joe
A trick to pinching raw is to get some sauce on your hands, it acts like lubricant to make pinching raw sausage go so much faster, and easier cleanup after the fact. I teach my guys to take put a bit of sauce on the web of their hand between the thumb and forefinger, squeeze out the sausage, and use the other hand to pinch to flatten and place on the pie.
If putting the raw sausage under the cheese, especially when utilizing fast baking times, be doubly sure that the sausage is getting completely cooked (165F). Remember, in Chicago a thin crust pizza is typically baked in a reel type oven for just under 30-minutes so this is not a major concern.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
We put everything above the cheese. We build: sauce, cheese, pepperoni if ordered, then everything else on top of that. If they order extra cheese, it goes on top of everything at the end. We cook our sausage for 5 mins then store chilled. Our pizzas bake in a deck for 10 mins.
sausage goes under the cheese…we build sauce, sausage, veggies and anything else, cheese, then pepperoni always on top. we use a old midleby marshall rotating oven. and get an amazing thin crust pizza in about 8 to 12 min depending how much is on the pizza.