Friday mornings at the Hut

Since school has started and I have classes through the week from Mon-Thurs, that allows me to work only on the weekends. Working Saturdays and Sundays aren't the best, but it's a real treat to work on Fridays. How are they different? -you might be asking yourself. Well on Fridays, I get to make dough! Pizza dough that is. Bremen is one in only a handful of Pizza Hut's that actually make their dough fresh in the mornings instead of buying it pre-made frozen. That means that I have to wake up at 6am and be at work by 6:30am to make (15) 220oz bags of dough. But the thing is, I love it! It's like going to an art class. Portioning and mixing the water, oil, and bags of powder that contains all the bread-making ingredients (flour, yeast... you know, the usual). Then rolling it out and stretching it to fit the pan. *Sigh* I just love it. Being alone from 6:30am-9am with my dough. Just a little slice of heaven. I love it so much that I decided to give my readers a peek into Pizza Hut to see how things are done. Here is a gallery of my pizza dough-making sequence. This is how to make Hand Tossed dough.

Below is the powder with the water/oil mixture in the massive mixer. We've recently added oil to the mixture to make the crust less tough and taste sweeter.

And here's what it looks like after 6 minutes when it's done mixing. The big hook swirls around in circles and comes out of the mixer.

After the mixing is over, I take out the dough and put it on this table. This amount is only two bags of dough so it was easy to get out of the mixer :)

Next, I have to cut and weigh each individual piece of dough. I cut a piece off and weigh it: a small weighs 9oz, mediums are 16oz, and larges are 22oz. I only made smalls and mediums with this batch.

By hand, I have to get the dough as round as possible, making sure to get rid of all the rough edges. With this batch, I made 10 smalls and 25 mediums. Only 25 more mediums and 40 larges to go!

Now it's time to roll out the dough. We use a machine to roll it out flat and this is how they come out onto the pan.

Then, by hand, I have to stretch the dough to the edge and perforate it. The perforations keep the dough from rising in the cooler and also keeps it from getting huge bubbles in the oven. This dough is ready to be sauced, cheesed, topped, and put into the oven!

But until then, it will get a lid and be kept in the walk-in cooler to be used throughout the day.

So there you have it. My Friday mornings at the Hut. Fridays are our busiest days therefore we make the most dough on that day. Last Friday I made 1 bag of thin dough, 7 bags of pan dough, and 8 bags of hand tossed dough. That's 10 smalls, 50 mediums, and 30 larges of pan dough. Plus 10 smalls, 50 mediums, and 45 larges of hand tossed. To sum it up, it took me 3.5 hours to make. If you liked this post and want me to show you how I make pan dough, let me know in a comment. I would be happy to :)

-Abby