Try offering a dessert pizza. Use your regular thin dough skin, brush with melted butter (edge to edge) then sprinkle with cinnamon ans sugar. Apply apple slices, and or sliced strawberries, halved grapes, blueberries, peach slices work well too. Then bake just as you do your regular thin crust pizza. Allow to cool for 20-minutes, then drizzle on a powdered sugar water icing (put it into a squeeze condiment bottle) to finish. These can be held at room temperature or served cold right from the cooler, or, don’t apply the icing right away, instead, store the pizzas without icing, then when a dessert pizza slice is ordered, ask if they would like it warm or cold. If warm is the order of the day, place back into the oven for warming, then drizzle with icing and serve. If you want, offer it ala mode, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for a dollar extra. We normally make then on a 14-inch format and slice into 6 or 8 servings. If you want to go over the top, buy a bag of ready made strussel and sprinkle over the top of the pizza just before baking. It really adds a “WOW” factor.
As for a deep-dish pizza, you will need to get the pans, (dark colored, 2-inches deep work well). Try greasing the pans with butter flavored Crisco, or use Whirl. To keep things simple, use two of your thin crust dough balls and fit into the pans. Allow the dough to rise in the pan for 60 to 70-minutes. The dough is then ready to use. Normal sauce, cheese, and toppings are used. Try this to have the dough available over a period of time. Allow the dough to rise in the pan for 30-minutes, then transfer to the cooler and store on a covered tree rack until needed to fill an order. Try this during your slowest night of the week. Begin by advertising “limited availability”, and buy more pans as dictated by sales.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
