Better Ingredients, Better Pizza

Last Winter, and the beginning of this Summer found me working at Papa Johns Pizza. Yes, yes it is true. Better ingredients, better pizza is actually quite factual.  I've come to realize that after working at Papa Johns for around three months.  It really doesn't even compare, just look at the commercials of the competitors.  Pizza hut has their "Big Dinner Deal" which includes a square pizza, some breadsticks and something else for a very low price.  First off, you just can't toss dough into a square. That shit is pre-made and it's oh so obvious to the trained eye. Second, if they were to put out that many breadsticks and square pizzas all around dinner time for such a cheap price, they probably get bombarded.  And, as I've come to learn, when you get loaded with orders they take longer and longer to make and put through the oven. I'm sure they wouldn't keep the prices so low if they knew it'd slow their service so significantly.  But it only takes half the time to make because all they have to do is sauce a pre-made dough template and top the pizza, pull the frozen breadsticks out of the freezer and throw them in the oven. Easy. At Papa Johns we would've had to grab dough out of the tray, still in a lump mass, aerate the dough with spiked rollers and flatten it, toss the dough, stretch the dough and then sauce and top the pizza.  All before putting it in the oven.  The process of tossing dough can take anywhere from 1-3 minutes depending on experience.  This may seem insignificant, but when you're working a dinner rush or a big pre-order it can set you back a very significant amount as opposed to doing the same work with a pre-made dough.  Breadsticks are another story... Well, not really, it's much the same. Making breadsticks involves aerating the dough, just as before, much more stretching, and then cutting before topping them with Italian season and then putting them in the oven.  Bottom line, I dislike Pizza Hut and the way they go about pizza. Oh, and stuffed crust is a very complicated concept if you actually make the dough. It'd actually require tossing the dough, which in some of their deals it seems that Pizza Hut does not, then finding a string of cheese that could span the circumference of the pizza which would have dough rolled over it.  It can be done with legitimacy, but again it would slow production in a very significant way that I cannot believe would be practical to a businessman. If anyone has worked at Pizza Hut and can disprove my claims I'd love to hear it. But for now and until I hear otherwise, I'm siding with Papa Johns and their real tossed dough and fresh ingredients when it comes to pizza.

On another note, Papa Johns is not my favorite type of pizza, just my favorite fast food version.  My favorite pizza comes from a small, family owned pizza parlor in Troy, New York where my old school was located.  This parlor was named "Big Apple Pizzeria", but we called it "Pizza Bella".  I'm not totally sure why. Anyways, this place had an excellent sauce to dough to toppings ratio and had the greatest combinations of ingredients in their pizza. My favorite being a nice slice of chicken, bacon, ranch. Also, they're open until two in the morning so that was always a great late night snack. It's not as big as a Benny's slice but I assure you, the taste for just $3 is absolutely superb.