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St. Louis-style pizza with Provel and a cracker-thin crust

An unleavened or barely-leavened, cracker-thin dough topped with Provel — a smooth, low-stretch processed cheese blend distinctive to the St Louis area — and cut into small squares. One of the most structurally distinct doughs in the whole catalogue: almost no rise at all.

For St. Louis-style pizza in Domestic fan (convection) oven. One 32cm round, rolled cracker-thin, cut into a grid of small squares.

Dough spec

Flour
All-purpose flour
Hydration
45%
Salt
1.8%

Scale this guide

Pan area
875 cm²
Dough (typical)
438 g
Range
350-525 g

Thin, cracker-leaning pan styles such as tavern-style or St Louis.

This dough is rolled to a round rather than portioned by ball weight — use the pan/tray dough calculator with an equivalent round pan diameter and the thin_pan loading band for a different diameter. Open the full dough calculator for more control, or the fermentation schedule builder to work backwards from a target bake time using this guide’s same day direct approach.

Related techniques

Rolling pin shaping

Steps

  1. MixMix flour, water, and salt to a firm, low-hydration dough. Keep leavening minimal — this style is meant to stay flat and cracker-like, not to puff.
  2. Bulk fermentRest briefly (30-60 minutes) at room temperature, just enough to relax the dough for rolling — this is not a fermentation-driven style the way most of this catalogue's other guides are.
  3. ShapeRoll out very thin and even with a rolling pin — thinner than tavern-style's already-thin roll. Docking the surface with a fork helps prevent uneven puffing in the oven.
  4. TopApply sauce, then a generous layer of Provel (or an approximated blend of provolone, low-moisture mozzarella, and white cheddar if genuine Provel isn't available), then toppings.
  5. BakeBake at 230-260C for 8-12 minutes, until the crust is uniformly crisp and the Provel has melted to its characteristic smooth, low-stretch finish rather than browning or bubbling like mozzarella.
  6. RestRest for a minute before cutting.
  7. ServeCut into small squares ('party cut') and serve.

Bake notes

Substituting a standard stretchy mozzarella changes this pizza's identity more than most cheese swaps elsewhere on this site — Provel's smooth, low-stretch melt is as defining to St Louis-style as the unleavened dough itself.

PizzaHQ's flour catalogue doesn't yet model a genuine unleavened/minimal-leavening dough class distinct from standard yeasted doughs; this guide uses a conventional flour with deliberately minimal bulk fermentation and same-day handling to approximate the style's near-flat result, rather than asserting a specific unleavened technique as directly sourced.

Generally accepted · Historically documented practice

Show sources and evidence
  • St. Louis Post-Dispatch — history of Imo's Pizza and Provel cheese — St. Louis Post-Dispatch