Although my wife enjoys a lot of my newly created pies, she does enjoy pizza hut so I tired this last night, since I just got in my new PSTK pan from pizzatools.com. I'll give my run down of what I did and my thoughts for you all.
Ingredients wise, I followed the original recipe exactly and I found the dough came together very nicely in the mixer, especially with the addition of the 2T of oil. I only used around 3 T of veg oil on the bottom of my pan due to the previous responses about potentially too much oil. Also, since the bottom diameter of my pan is 15.25", I also figured that I could use all the dough. After rolling it out, I plated into my pan, covered and put directly in the refrigerator. (This is where I deviated from the recipe.. not letting rise to 1.5'' before putting in the fridge) The dough initally was fairly thin and only rolled out to approx 2 inches from the end of the pan. This was all on Sep. 3. On Sep 4, I stretched the dough to the edges mid morning and put back in the fridge.
At around 4:00, I took the pan out of the fridge and left on the countertop. Oven was turned on at 5:50 and the pie was put in at 6:30 at 450deg, 2nd to bottom rack on 4 x 8'' unglazed quarry tiles. The pie cooked for exactly 15 min.
For my sauce, I used the 6-1 tomatoes with 1tsp basil, oregano, garlic salt and 1/2-3/4 tsp marjoram. I blanched my boars head pepperoni for 4 min in boiling water prior to cutting and putting on the pizza and I used the 4 cheese mixture from trader joes.
I didn't tell my wife that I was making a Pizza hut clone and while eating it, I asked her whether it tasted similar to any type of pizza. She said it reminded her of Pizza hut.
All things considered, I liked this recipe and it is very easy to do/replicate if this is the style pizza you're trying to do. I found the dough just slightly dry and wonder whether I would add a little more oil to the pan next time or slightly increase the amount of water in the dough. This pan seems to be just the right size for this amount of dough. The pie was a little over an inch thick at the crust but not too thick throughout. The timing in the oven was perfect and the crust was nicely browned on the top crust and underside. I think next time I would blanch the pepperoni a little longer because as you can see, I still had some decent grease pools on top of the pizza. Also, I thought the 6-1 tomatoes would replicate pizza hut more than san marzano, but my wife and I both agree that we like the san marzano taste better. also, if I had to do it over again, I may go a little lighter on the cheese.
Note, the last picture is after degreasing with a paper towl.
