Vern;
Only YOU know what YOU want in a thick crust. So here is the way we calculate dough weights. Stare with your 12-inch format. Calculate the area of the 12-inch pan (Pi X Rsquared) or 3.14 X 36 = 113.04 square inches.
Now, put just enough oil in at least 3 pans to just cover the bottom when you pick up the pan and tip it to flow the oil around. Then pull a little of the oil up around the sides of the pan using a brush.
The next step is to scale dough pieces at 12, 14, and 16-ounces (make these the day before and store in the cooler, allow to temper AT room temperature for 2.5-hours before putting into the pans).
Place one of the different weight pieces into each pan and form to the pan by hand or you can sheet it out to the pan diameter and drop in into the pan. Cover and let rest for 1-hour, then reshape to fit the pan again, let rest for 30-minutes and take to the cooler for storage (at least 2-hours). Remove pans from the cooler and dress as a cheese pizza. Bake as normal and remove from pan immediately after baking. Allow to cool for about 10-minutes, and turn each pizza over and cut in half. Look at the crust thickness and decide which dough weight works best for you.
Now, divide the dough weight you liked best by the pan surface area (113). This will give you the dough loading factor. Lets say you liked the 14-ounce weight. 14 divided by 113 = 0.12389 is you dough loading factor. Said another way, for every square inch of pan area there was 0.12389-ounces of dough. So now you just calculate the surface area for the other sizes: 9-inch (31.4 X 20.25 = 63.585) 16-inch (3.14 X 64 = 200.96) To get the dough weights for these sizes all you do is multiply the surface area by the dough loading factor. 63.585 X 0.12389 = 7.87-ounces (8-ounces) and 200.96 X 0.12389 = 24.89-ounces (25-ounces). I know that appears to be a lot of math, but it is really pretty easy once you think about it.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
