Pizza Hut (Back in the day)

[Jet_deck]

Back in the day, when Pizza Hut made the dough in store, and they had the big white dough sheeters and deck ovens, I absolutely loved the thin and crispy.  I don't know if thin and crispy (thin) would be considered a cracker crust, but I would think so.  Yesterday I got to visit with an experienced Pizza Hut guy from the 70's.  He acted as though he enjoyed my questions and he was happy to recite the thin crust recipe by heart.


25# flour (he said it was AP)
9# 105* water
6 oz yeast (kind not specified) by weight
9 oz oil (he said high quality vegetable) by volume
4 oz salt (kind not specified) by weight
Dough was made in a spiral mixer, proofed at kitchen temps. until up to a line in a dough container (which is similar to a large rubbermaid trash can) for about two hours

Procedure: grab a hand full of dough, run it through the sheeter, place on cutter pan and cut, then dock. The leftover sheeted dough from that one skin was added to the next handfull of dough and sheeted again. On a busy night cutter pans could be loaded with a skin, but they were never allowed to sit undressed for more than 30 minutes.  Because he said they would rise to much and not be right.

I have tried to the best of my ability to make a bakers percent version  of the recipe that he gave.  I hope someone will check it and make sure it is correct.

Flour 100%
Water 36%
Yeast 1.5%
Oil 2.163%
Salt 1%

He said it was mixed until it started to tear and looked scrappy.

The water and salt looks low as does the yeast, unless it was cake yeast. I really love thin and crispy.  Somebody care to weigh in on this recipe?

[Pete-zza]

Jet-deck,

The formulation you posted is for a cracker-style pizza crust.

If 9 ounces of oil by volume is used, that is 1 1/8 cups, or 54 teaspoons. For vegetable oil, that translates to 8.65 ounces by weight, or 2.163% of the formula flour.

A hydration of 36% would have been normal for a cracker-style crust. In fact, if you look at DKM's cracker-style recipe at http://www.pizzamaking.com/pizzainnstyle.php, you sill see the same hydration value. In fact, if you look at the other ingredient percents in DKM's recipe, you will see other similarities to the dough formulation you posted.

As for the yeast, the recitation of 105 degrees F suggests that the yeast may have been active dry yeast (ADY). IDY came into being in the 1970s and did not require rehydrating in warm water. It is possible that the yeast was cake yeast, even though it does not require 105 degrees F water to rehydrate (it can be cooler), so if you can follow up with the former PH guy, that will be a plus for you. However, I'm guessing that the yeast was ADY. If it were cake yeast, the equivalent baker's percent for ADY would be about 0.75%. I think that would be too low for a dough to be used in a couple of hours. I think 1.5% ADY was intended.

If you decide to try the recipe, you may have to do some experimenting with the amount of dough and try to get the right final weight of the dough skin. In my experience with the cracker style, that is important in order to get uniform, consistent results.

Peter

[Jet_deck]

I fixed the oil percentage in the orginal recipe.  Thanks Peter.

[Steve]

Thanks for sharing!

[Jet_deck]

I have left this alone until I finish my research, but something to me just doesn't add up.  I talked to another PH guy from the 70's again yesterday.  He said in the beginning they used straight AP flour, then PH started sending the flour in bags with a PH label.  He commented that the pizza crust was much better with the original AP flour than the new (at the time ) PH flour. 

Two things don't add up to me.
1) the new PH from the 70's guy said the dough was ready to go in 4 hours.  Even though I made and emergency DKM http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,11766.msg108999.html#msg108999 in a few hours, I feel that the PH environment would not have been as warm as my microwave. Thusly, letting the dough proof faster in the warmer microwave than it would in a rubbermaid trash can in PH.  What i am saying is that I don't think the dough would have proofed as much as mine did.

2)  I made a comment to both PH guys about the low hydration.  I said the dough must have been really dry and scrappy.  I also said that maybe it looked like cornmeal. Neither one of them agreed with my assumption.  They both said no, it did make a "dough".  Nothing I can think of can explain why they considered it a "dough" and not scrappy or dry.  The only other thing I can think of is the weight of the dough, all piled up in a trashcan would help it come together better than we do, by pushing the scrappy dough together in a ball.

Any other theories are welcome.

[Jet_deck]

Newer findings:

1) dry yeast
2) dough was not docked (hence the burns and no hair on his forearms)
3) dough was kept as far away from oven as possible.  He said the dough could blow, then it smelled like Cutty Sark
4) dough was allowed to double (about four hours) then it was used
5) sauce was Contidina tomato sauce, and mixed with a pre-mixed spiced bag.

[fazzari]

Even a dough as low as 36% hydration if let to proof for 60 to 75 minutes, "can" be soft and very easy to work with a sheeter.  I emphasize "can" because flours change, and at times the dough comes up very firm and in pieces....but I would say 95% of the time the dough is very soft and easy to work with.

John

[Pete-zza]

Jet_deck,

I tend to agree with John on this point. On the assumption that the yeast was ADY (because of the water temperature specified), at 1.5% ADY there would be a substantial likelihood of the dough doubling in about 4 hours. In fact, 1.5% ADY would be about 50% higher than one would normally use for an emergency dough that can be made and used within a few hours. It is also possible that the "mass effect" was at play because of the size of the dough batch and the increased biochemical activity as a result. See, for example, Reply 490 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.msg30150.html#msg30150.

Peter

[Jet_deck]

Thank you John and Peter for you comments and observations.

[Aimless Ryan]

I was a driver at Pizza Hut off and on between 1992 and 1994. Although I didn't work on the line, nor did I discover my passion for making pizza until several years later, I still remember a lot of Pizza Hut's procedures from my time there. (Yes, they did still make dough on-site when I was there, although the dry ingredients were pre-mixed and packaged at a commissary.) I'll try to organize my memories and post again later with some useful information.

[Aimless Ryan]

1) the new PH from the 70's guy said the dough was ready to go in 4 hours.  Even though I made and emergency DKM http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,11766.msg108999.html#msg108999 in a few hours, I feel that the PH environment would not have been as warm as my microwave. Thusly, letting the dough proof faster in the warmer microwave than it would in a rubbermaid trash can in PH.  What i am saying is that I don't think the dough would have proofed as much as mine did.

2)  I made a comment to both PH guys about the low hydration.  I said the dough must have been really dry and scrappy.  I also said that maybe it looked like cornmeal. Neither one of them agreed with my assumption.  They both said no, it did make a "dough".  Nothing I can think of can explain why they considered it a "dough" and not scrappy or dry.  The only other thing I can think of is the weight of the dough, all piled up in a trashcan would help it come together better than we do, by pushing the scrappy dough together in a ball.

1) My memory says the dough was ready in much less than four hours, but I’m not sure, so just forget I said that. I think they may have mixed the thin crust dough first thing in the morning, hours before I would arrive for a daytime delivery shift. The dough (stored in a trash liner within a Rubbermaid container at room temperature all day) did not change much physically throughout the day; it didn’t really rise. When you ripped off a new piece to sheet, whether it was noon or 9:00, it pretty much always looked like it had just been mixed. It never felt airy, nor were there any tiny gas bubbles.

2) The dough was very stiff but definitely not dry or scrappy. Your cornmeal comment reminded me of some pics I shared in the Tommy’s Pizza thread (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,12446.msg120916.html#msg120916). The first pic is what you mean by cornmeal, right? Well, PH thin dough didn’t look like that. It looked much more like my 2nd and 3rd pics, but a little more developed. (The only difference between my first and second pic is that I formed a ball out of the “cornmeal” by compressing all of it with my hands. However, Pizza Hut used a planetary mixer, not a food processor or a cutter-mixer, which makes me think they mixed for a couple minutes longer than it takes to incorporate all the dough ingredients.)

[Jet_deck]

... Your cornmeal comment reminded me of some pics I shared in the Tommy’s Pizza thread (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,12446.msg120916.html#msg120916). The first pic is what you mean by cornmeal, right? ....

Yes, the food processor method of "mixing" the 36% hydration "dough"  seems to produce the aforementioned cornmeal consistency.

Maybe the combination of Peter's advice of the "mass effect" and the possibility that AP flour was a little lower in protein back in the 70's, could yield a "dough". --Just sayin.

If one could make a Pizza Inn or Pizza Hut thin crust with a Ken's (predecessor to Mazzio's) or Mazzio's sauce, then I would likely marry them on the spot, no questions asked.  Except how to make the sauce that has that perfect acidic bite.

[DKM]

The yeast was ADY and the salt was normal table salt.

What I need is for someone to remember the dough weight per size of pizza.  One of the big mistakes made is people rolling the dough too thin.

[Jet_deck]

The yeast was ADY and the salt was normal table salt.

What I need is for someone to remember the dough weight per size of pizza.  One of the big mistakes made is people rolling the dough too thin.

Maybe one of my two PH guys can remember.  Maybe I can find out how they calibrated the sheeter, or what thickness it was set on for the final run through.

[Aimless Ryan]

The yeast was ADY and the salt was normal table salt.

What I need is for someone to remember the dough weight per size of pizza.  One of the big mistakes made is people rolling the dough too thin.

There is no scaling of the thin dough. You just rip a chunk from the dough mass, run it through the sheeter, then dock and trim it on the cutter pan. Regardless, I'm thinking a 10" pizza should be about 7-8 oz of dough. That would make about 10.1-11.5 oz for a 12" pizza and about 13.7-15.7 oz for a 14".

It's all about the sheeter. Without a sheeter, I think you just have to go by feel.

[DKM]

There is no scaling of the thin dough. You just rip a chunk from the dough mass, run it through the sheeter, then dock and trim it on the cutter pan. Regardless, I'm thinking a 10" pizza should be about 7-8 oz of dough. That would make about 10.1-11.5 oz for a 12" pizza and about 13.7-15.7 oz for a 14".

It's all about the sheeter. Without a sheeter, I think you just have to go by feel.

There was back when I did it.  Everytime we set the sheet for thin, we had to weigh out a medium until it was the right weight.  I just don't remember what the weight was.

[Jet_deck]

...Regardless, I'm thinking a 10" pizza should be about 7-8 oz of dough. That would make about 10.1-11.5 oz for a 12" pizza and about 13.7-15.7 oz for a 14"....
It's all about the sheeter. Without a sheeter, I think you just have to go by feel.

I revisited the test cracker dough that I sheeted with my manual dough sheeter.  http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,11459.msg108533.html#msg108533  I sheeted two skins to 12" with TF of .05 and .06 . The skins were only as thick as a penny, I felt that they should be roughly twice as thick as that.  PH from the 70's guy said he couldn't remember exactly becuse he didn't weight them either.  I think Peters rough guideline of TF= .1 for a cracker crust would be very close to do any testing or cooking with.

The GM walked in and joined the conversation, not much came out of it except he remembered 16 oz of oil in a 25# batch.

[Aimless Ryan]

I'm thinking a 10" pizza should be about 7-8 oz of dough. That would make about 10.1-11.5 oz for a 12" pizza and about 13.7-15.7 oz for a 14".

It's all about the sheeter. Without a sheeter, I think you just have to go by feel.

I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that. Having thought about it a little more, I'd say the higher end of my estimates are probably more accurate. That is, 8 oz for a 10", 11.5 oz. for a 12", and 15.7 oz. for a 14".

Also, I worked at 4 different Pizza Hut delivery units; two in Ohio, one in Connecticut, and one in Illinois. None of them scaled thin crust dough. I don't know why anyone would even consider scaling dough for a PH thin crust because every skin is trimmed on the pan. Scaling dough for that kind of pizza is simply unnecessary extra work.

[Aimless Ryan]

There was back when I did it.  Everytime we set the sheet for thin, we had to weigh out a medium until it was the right weight.  I just don't remember what the weight was.

Do you mean just once, early in the day? To calibrate the sheeter or something?

[DKM]

Do you mean just once, early in the day? To calibrate the sheeter or something?

Once in the morning, once in the evening and it was only with a medium.  It was weighed to get the correct thinkness at both Pizza Inn and Pizza Hut.

One of the biggest problems we had with new people was they rolled the crust too thin.