A few months ago I made a post
https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=64537.0 about making a 1970s era Pizza Hut Thin & Crispy pizza and how to clone it. This post is a follow up to that, and adds a couple modification I made to that recipe to make it work better in a small batch, home kitchen environment, and here I also include a link to a video I made on how to do it.
I made two 10 inch pizzas from this batch of dough. In the how-to video link at the end, I show how I made the dough, and the end result. The video has no dialog, but commentary is in the closed captions, so turn it on. At the end you can hear some crunch, but that’s not dialog. It’s what crispy pizza heaven sounds like.
I worked at the hut during my senior year in high school and much of college in the 1970s. I made a lot of dough (real dough, not money). Thin was their original (like my paycheck). Scaling doesn’t always translate well when going from commercial sizes to home use. The best that I recall, the PH Thin dough was 36% hydration, and 3% oil. I’ve bumped that hydration to about 40%, and oil to about 4%. All else uses the same percentages. Doing that, lets this small batch dough smell, look, and feel more like what I worked with back in the 70s making those large batches.
At the huts I worked, they used Blodgett stone bottom gas ovens, set to 550F degrees. I use a 14x16” cordierite stone in my home electric oven. Turned all the way up, it will max out at 525F. Close enough. I preheat the oven for at least one hour before baking. It takes the stone a good bit to come up to temperature.
Based on the cutter pan size and number of pizzas to make, figure the amount of dough needed from the guide below. It’s a guide, and calculated for a thickness factor of .08. I tend to roll my dough so it lands thinner, between .06 and 07. Back in the day, Pizza Hut’s thin was around a thickness factor of .07.
Even at .07, this home small batch hangs in there well. I always up the dough batch size about 20% from the pan(s) total calculated, ensuring that there will be generous amount of overhang to trim. This dough is not like opening a typical pizza dough ball. Flour is cheap. Make more than you need so the pan doesn’t come up short.
If you were making large batches of this dough for commercial use, you’d take the scrap and toss it back in a bucket so it will continue to ferment and rise so it can be reused. It will do that, and it actually becomes easier to roll and sheet as it gets near the 24 hour mark. For home use, you’re going to toss it, but better to have too much dough and roll it as thin desired, than not have enough and can’t roll it any thinner to make it fit the pan.
This dough takes a while to rise, if you want to call it that. It does increase in volume, but not like conventional pizza doughs do. This dough puffs up a bit and becomes more pliable, but is still relatively stiff. It starts off like play-dough made for a super hero’s kid. It’s tough. At room temperature, figure a 6 hour minimum for the dough to rise. If warmer, perhaps a bit less. This dough will stay usable if it’s kept covered at room temperature for 24 hours or so. Make it, put it in a bowl, cover it, and let it get happy at room temperature for later use.
Any all purpose flour, bleached or unbleached will work. I’ve used store brands and name brands to make this thin crust pizza, and all have worked fine. Bread flour can be used, but it seems like a waste to me. This is a cracker dough. Chew, stretch, and high gluten development are not the goal. Cracker crunch is, like what you get with a saltine.
Once the dough is rolled, either dock it or be prepared to pop some dough bubbles. Cracker dough is prone to big bubbles. That’s why crackers have holes in them. It reduces bubbles. I don’t dock, but just check the pizza every 2-3 minutes and use a very pointy filet/boning knife to lance them. Bubbles usually happen in the first 3-5 minutes of the bake. Even if you dock the dough, still check for bubbles. They happen and nobody wants a tennis ball size bubble that’s been going for 5 minutes to kill the eye appeal of the pizza.
I have three cutter pans, two 10 inch and one 15 inch. I usually make the 10 inch, but on occasion, the 15 inch. It’s a bit of work to roll out the dough by hand for the 15 incher. I find rolling the dough by hand with a roller to be a bit more challenging, though doable, for a 15 inch pan. I find the 10 inch faster and easier to do. I need to put all my body weight into rolling the dough to my desired thinness. It’s more effective for me to put my weight into a smaller diameter pizza crust than the larger ones.
In my older post, I covered what I believe is a good match for the seasonings used in the original Pizza Hut thin sauce. I usually use my own sauce, or jarred pizza sauce when I’m lazy (a bit more lately), as many of them are on point, and it’s a lot easier. Use any sauce you like, but remember, with a cracker style crust, don’t over-sauce the pie so it won’t make it soggy, the antithesis of a crispy cracker style crust. I often thin-out my sauce with either water or tomato juice so that it will run as I tilt the pan. I didn’t thin it enough in this video, but it was still fine. It just a took a bit more shaking and tilting to make it move about.
Regarding cheese, again, use what you like, but for thin pizza, I tend to go with the low moisture part skim mozzarella so as not to impact the crispy crust with too much moisture and fat. I have a couple go-to brands that I like and stick with those. Nobody has ever complained, and using a low moisture part skim moz allows extra to be used if desired, without much effect on the crust.
I strongly recommend that pre-shredded cheese of any kind not be used. I’ve never made a pizza with them where the pre-shredded cheese didn’t burn. The starch or cellulose used to prevent the shreds from sticking in the package, will burn at high oven temperatures. Not an issue if you are melting cheese for inclusion where it’s mixed in a recipe as a sauce, but it doesn’t seem to land well for me as a pizza topping cheese.
Select the pan size you’re going to use, and use the dough weight below to determine how to measure the ingredients. If making two or more pizzas, then double, triple, etc., the dough weight.
Once I've determined the dough weight needed, I add 20% to it to give me some headroom. I can roll it as thin as I want and discard the extra, but I can't add more if I don't have enough. Flour is cheap.
Batch weighs for various size pans:
9" pan 64 sq/in requires 5 oz of dough
10" pan 79 sq/in requires 6.25 oz of dough
11" pan 95 sq/in requires 7.5 oz of dough
12" pan 113 sq/in requires 9 oz of dough
13" pan 133 sq/in requires 10.5 oz of dough
14" pan 154 sq/in requires 12.25 oz of dough
15" pan 177 sq/in requires 14 oz of dough
16" pan 201 sq/in requires 16 oz of dough
In my case, I was making two 10 inch pizzas, so that would be 12.5 ounces (6.25 * 2) of dough needed. Multiplying 12.5 by 1.2 (that adds 20% to the amount), gives me 15 ounces. I rounded it up to making a 16 ounce batch because I like that number better. Using 15 ounces would have been fine, but going with 16 ounces gives me the option to take this to my 15 inch pan if I decide later to do that instead of two 10” pans. Flour is cheap.
Once you have a dough weight, in my case I decided on 16 ounces, then multiply the dough weight by the decimal numbers below to get the amount of that ingredient you need to make the batch.
Flour AP, .707 (70.7%)
Water at 105-115F, .283 (28.3%)
Oil, .029 (2.9%)
Yeast (IDY) .01 (1%)
Table Salt .0071 (0.71%)
That will yield this recipe for about 16 ounces of dough in baker’s percentages:
Flour, all purpose 11.3 ounces – 100%
Water, 4.5 ounces – 40%
Oil, 0.45 ounces – 4% (about 2.75 tsp)
IDY, 0.16 ounces – 1.5% (about 1.5 tsp, but not critical for this batch. Between 1 to 2 tsp is fine)
Table salt, 0.113 ounces – 1% (about 0.5 tsp)
When my batch was ready, I divided it in two to make the two 10 inch pizzas. That’s about it. Follow the method in the video and you really can’t go wrong. Bake it in a cutter pan, on a stone, in a 500F degree oven that is pre-heated at least one hour, and a thin cracker style pizza is within your grasp.
NOTE: You can totally mix this dough in a food processor with the regular chopping blade, if the bowl is large enough. No need to use the dough blade. This isn’t that kind of dough. You will also make it in about two to three minutes. If using a food processor, I’d mix it by hand first in a bowl to combine and let it rest covered for 20 minutes after it gets shaggy. Then after 20 minutes, put that shaggy mess in the food processor and whirl away. It will make a good crumb for the dough puck that you will pack and need to rise.
PHOTOS, are screen caps from the video, and listed in order displayed:
The dough crumb after mixing.
The dough after making a ball from the crumb.
The dough after its rise.
Rolling out the dough.
Dough in pan being trimmed after rolling.
Pizza ready for the oven.
Pizza from the oven.
Pizza ready to eat. Very crispy.
Link to the how-to video below on my Google Drive. There is no dialog in the video, just background sounds. Turn on the closed captions to read the commentary instructions. Pause and rewind as needed. Download if you wish. The video is about 15 minutes long:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MBvkb3TBrs--RxGSngeRz3yyQohF4QNB/view?usp=sharing
