American Chains
American Chains
The doughs behind the big names — reverse-engineered clones of the pizzas a lot of us grew up on.
Recipes · 8
Pizza Hut-Style Breadsticks
Chain-style breadsticks built straight from a Pizza Hut pan dough: a 16-ounce, ~56% enriched dough pressed into an oiled rectangular pan, sprayed, baked, then cut into ten salty, chewy sticks. A general manager's method, it doubles as the base for cheesesticks with a couple cups of mozzarella before baking.
Quad Cities-Style Malt Dough
A Davenport-native clone of Quad Cities pizza, this lean bread-flour dough runs a stiff ~50% hydration and trades sugar for a heavy 8% pour of dark malt syrup, which gives the crust its signature color and toasty sweetness. Cold water and a long, cool rise suit the style, which is dressed to the edge and cut into strips.
Les' Sebastopol Sweet Dough
A deliberately low-hydration (56%) American dough built for big bubbles and a fat outer rim, its sweetness coming from a touch of raw honey rather than sugar you can taste. It is mixed with crushed ice for a long, friction-free knead, then cold-fermented two days so it can be stretched with the gas still in it.
Randy's American-Style Pizza Dough (Thin)
Pete-zza's downsized take on Randy's celebrated American style, the dough that drinks like a Papa John's hand-tossed: high-gluten flour at about 60% hydration carrying an unusually generous load of sugar, honey, oil and salt, balanced by a full hit of yeast. A two-day cold ferment yields a soft, tender, well-browned crust.
Pete-zza's Pizza Hut-Style Pan Dough
A faithful 22-ounce clone of the Pizza Hut pan crust for a 14-inch pan, this enriched dough runs about 56% hydration with soybean oil, a little sugar and dry non-fat milk for color and tenderness. The real trick is the pan itself: a generous pool of oil fries the bottom to the signature crisp, chewy crust.
Randy's Little Caesars-Style Dough
Randy's home clone of the Little Caesars crust pairs high-gluten flour with both sugar and a spoon of honey at roughly 61% hydration, leavened with a full packet of instant yeast. An overnight-to-three-day cold ferment and a quick screen bake give the chewy, easy-stretch dough that workers remember from the cooler trays.
buzz's American Thin Crust
buzz's quick American thin crust — a Giordano's-meets-Varasano mash-up with a short autolyse and a generous slug of canola oil for a crisp, tender base. Volumes are the original's.
Papa John's Clone Dough
Pete-zza's reverse-engineered Papa John's dough — low hydration with a lot of sugar and soybean oil for that soft, tender, faintly sweet chain-pizza crumb, built for a multi-day cold ferment. One 14-inch pie.