Buitoni Instant Pizza

[jopps]

Hello, I am new here and and I am on a mission to find the recipe for Buitoni Instant Pizza that I had when I was a kid.

[petef]

I've been here a while, and to my knowledge it's not been done yet. I'd like to give it a try if you find anything.

Back when Butoni Instant Pizza was on the market we only had Toasters to heat up the frozen pie. Problem was in getting the inside to heat up evenly. When we were successful, the darn thing was so hot that we'd burn our mouth eating it.

Today we have the microwave to initially defrost and slightly heat it up. Follow that with some toaster oven heat and I believe we can get some excellent results.

With all that said, perhaps someone can suggest a dough recipe to begin with and a technique for creating the shell.

---pete---

[Tscarborough]

Never heard of it, but here is everything you need to know to re-create it:

http://www.google.com/patents/US6156356

[petef]

Thanks for the reference, that's close but not it. However, it did lead me to a similar one with listed Original Assignee: Buitoni Food Corp.
http://www.google.com/patents/US3615679

This seems to be the dough formula..

b. each dough layer having been made essentially from approximately the following quantities of ingredients with unit weights of durum wheat flour: 35-42 unit weights of water, 1-3 unit weights of corn oil, l-2.3 unit weights of salt, 2.3-3.7 unit weights of compressed yeast, and 2.3-3.3 unit weights of malt;

I'm not quite sure what to do from here.

---pete---

[Tscarborough]

It also has oregano and garlic in the dough. It is then parbaked before forming the discs.

[Tscarborough]

I moved this here because I think this is a neat idea.  I think I will try it too.

[petef]

It also has oregano and garlic in the dough. It is then parbaked before forming the discs.

The Buitoni toaster pizza shell is not crimped as shown in the link of reply#2.
Instead, the shell more resembles that of a Thomas English muffin where one side is perfectly flat and the other side is flat but the edges are rounded. But it's also thinner than an english muffin and has a harder stiffer crust.

So the first mystery to solve is how to form that shell. How do we seal the top & bottom parts if it's par baked?  Why does the original Buitoni shell have that english muffin characteristic shape?

Perhaps we can begin by using a small 6" dia cast iron fry pan to form the bottom, fill it, and then attach the top cover. Parbake just enough to stiffen the bottom, then flip over and transfer to a hot flat grill to parbake the top. Now it could be frozen for baking later, or baked immediately in the toaster oven.

To me the method of assembly, par bake and toasting is first priority to figure out. We could begin with any dough formulation and fine tune the dough formula later.

---pete---

[Tscarborough]

Yes, the next link is the proper one, my link showed that one as prior art, I think.

[petef]

Ok, here's my first attempt at making one Buitoni Toaster Pizza..

* Dough, use a 2.5 oz piece, divided:
1.5 oz for bottom, 1.0 oz for top.

* Use rolling pin and/or tortilla press to form a 7" disk for bottom
and 6" disk for the top.

* Place 7" disk into 6" fry pan pre-heated to about 140 degrees. The heat will assist in stabilizing the dough so that you can use fingers to form the vertical sides about 3/4" tall.

* Add pizza sauce & top with cheese, but be careful not to get the fillings too close to the edge because later you will be folding the edges inward to seal the top on.

* Cover with top dough and pinch the top & bottom with fingers while rolling the edge inward. This will cause the pizza shell to be slightly smaller than the pan.

* Turn on heat to medium and heat about 3 minutes until bottom is browned.

* Flip over using a spatula and brown the top side too.

* Freeze the pizza for reheating later.

=======

REHEATING FROZEN PIZZA

* Microwave 30 to 40 seconds until center feels warm.

* Use toaster or toaster oven set on TOAST and toast it just as you would a slice of bread, but watch carefully in case you get any leaks that might catch fire and to avoid burning the crust. Goal here is to slightly crispen the pizza shell.

* Allow to rest at least 3 minutes so that you don't burn your mouth.

-enjoy-

[petef]

continued...

[petef]

Ok all the above was my first try. Next time I'll use a dough that has no oil or very little oil because a stiffer harder shell is needed to hold in all the fillings.

Next time I'd use more fillings too because once the cheese melts the fillings kind of disappear. At the same time, I'd be extra careful to keep the fillings about 1/4" from the edges to allow for crimping on the top dough and rolling the edges inward.

It came out very well for a first try, but try it for yourself and post your methods and results here.

---pete---

[petef]

Here is the original product from the 1970s or 80s...

[TXCraig1]

Looks like you did a good job recreating it.

[petef]

Looks like you did a good job recreating it.

Thanks but, pics can be deceiving, there's lots of room for improvement. Now that I have a basic method to create the shell, it's a matter of getting the texture just right and more fillings too.

It would be interesting to see what others here can do and what their memory of the original product is.

The funny thing is how impractical it is to make this thing. I must have spent 15 minutes getting the 2 pieces of dough to open up to a thin disk. Plus all the other steps, including freezing & reheating. LOL  I guess It's more about the challenge and desire to have something from 30+ years ago that no longer exists.

---pete---

[caymus]

My memories include my mother yelling when they would leak in the toaster.