Can anyone give me details on a thin & Crispy Base and the procedure for producing stuffed Crust bases. I am looking for the recipe for the Stuff Crust too.
Stuffed crust is a pain. It’s best left to the mass producers who ship finished crusts to the stores. It’s labor intensive without the machinery.
We teach making stuffed, AKA double crust, pizzas at our annual October pizza seminar. Begin with any dough formula, sheet it out as thin as you want, I normally go for about 1/8-inch thick, then fit it into a 2-inch deep pan that has been greased with Crisco or margarine. Leave the excess dough draped over the top edge of the pan. Using your fingers, fit the dough into the pan, then allpy some ricotta cheese and (my favorite) a few chopped fresh basil leaves. Sheet another dough piece as thin as you can, then hand stretch it a little more (you want it very thin), fit this dough piece over the filling in the pan so it completely covers the filling and drapes up over the top rim of the pan. With your thumbs on the outside of the pan, and your other fingers inside the pan pinch/crimp the two pieces of dough on the side of the pan together. Now, using your fingers, push and lightly crimp the top dough layer into the bottom of the pan around the circumference of the pan. Tear a hole in the cwenter of the top dough sheet, and using a rolling pin, crimp-cut the scrap dough from the top edge of the pan. Put in the oven to parbake just until the crust begins to turn brown, about 5 minutes. Remove from oven and sauce, cheese and desired toppings. Place back into the oven to finish baking (about 5 to 7 minutes more). Allow to set a couple minutes before cutting with a rocker knife and serving. You can turn this into a Chicago style stuffed pizza by putting the toppings in the bottom with the ricotta cheese and then after par-baking, putting on a layer of sliced mozzarella, followed by the sauce, and then baking it. You can experiment with this to make it unique to your store. Try using a blend of three or four different cheeses in the bottom rather than just the ricotta.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
Tom and I answered two seperate questions. By “stuffed crust”, do you mean that stuff that Pizza Hut had a few years ago with cheese stuffed into the edge of the pizza or a “chicago-style” stuffed pizza where all the toppings and cheese are on top of the first crust but beneath the second one?
I was meaning the one that Pizza Hut did a few years ago, around the edges.
Now a thin style.
What about a recipe for a thin style base. any unique base recipes there that any one knows of.
I can speak from experience about the PH style stuffed crusted. It was basically their hand tossed. Technially they did have a different dough formula for the stuffed crust but when when that ran out handtossed was subbed and in many stores used as the instead. it’s pretty easy to do especially when prepped before hand. You stretch the dough to over lap your pan and then you place string cheese around the edge of the dough tucking it to the lip of the pan. Then you just fold the overlapped dough over the string cheese and press to seal it. Sauce, top, cook and serve. To finish it a garlic spary was used on the edge of the dough after cooking.
While it does take a bit longer if you need to prep as you go, it’s not a deal breaker. After your cooks get used to the procedure it won’t add that much time IF you are using string cheese.
hth,
PM
What you are referring to here is the “cheese in crust” AKA “cheesy crust” pizza. Like has been said, no special formulation is needed to make this type of crust, just a case of string cheese. I’ve introduced a unique variation of this crust that comes across pretty good. Just before you apply the string cheese apply a thin string of basil or sun dried tomato pesto. To do this, just put the pesto of your choice in a squeeze bottle and squeeze out a thin string of pesto about where the cheese will be placed. It adds a different dimension to the flavor of the crust.
All this talk about pizza is making me hungry!
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
We have recently attempted to create “cheesy crust” pizzas here, though because we have just implemented the idea it is hard to say how well it will do. Being a very small business, we have used simple adaptations to our normal items. Also to note, do not use pans, only screens. We stretchthe dough out maybe half an inch larger than the screen, and place pre-quartered string cheese pieces in a ring. After that, well fold the dough over the cheese and tuck it in as best as possible. Then, a light coating of garlic butter is applied to crust. From there, it’s finished as any other pizza.
Your method should work well, if you experience any problems with the dough/crust coming apart where it wraps around the cheese, try adding a very light application of water to the area where the seam is formed, this usualliy does the trick. The only real down side to this type of crust is CALORIES. I saw some numbers on Pizza Huts cheese in crust slices and if I remember correctly, they were coming in at about 470 calories a slice. Considering the way I tend to eat pizza, this makes a Big Mac, fries, and milk shake look pretty healthy. But SUSHHHHHHHH, we won’t tell anybody our little secret. If it tastes that good, why worry about a few calories, there is always tomorrow to diet!
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor