Every Little Caesars Pizza Style, Ranked

If you’re like me, then you grew up seeing ads for Little Caesars and thinking that the truncated orange emperor mascot was awfully cute. And if you’re like me, you also went around in the third grade saying “Pizza! Pizza!” whenever you saw any pizza and thought it was truly original and hilarious. Perhaps we should hope you are not like me. Regardless of this, I’ve had Little Caesars pizza only a handful of times in my life, so I had no idea what to expect when it came time to do a taste test.

Little Caesars had a number of different types of crust to choose from (though curiously, none of them was New York style, which I still think every pizza place ought to have, despite learning in our recent Pizza Hut taste test that some chains do not). That said, various kinds of stuffed and unstuffed crust, regular and deep dish, and thin crust give you plenty to choose from when ordering at this pizza joint.

It’s interesting to note that Little Caesars does limit its ingredients compared to other chains. For instance, they offer only one sauce (vine-ripened California crushed tomatoes) and one cheese variety (a mozzarella and Muenster blend). In comparison, we tried several sauces from Domino’s most popular options and Papa Johns pizza styles included several options too. Originally, we thought this would be boring, but found both sauce and cheese to be so high-quality that we wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. As for crust? Well, let’s see how they stacked up in the opinions of two children, one partner, and one writer.

1. Thin Crust

For one of the most common types of pizza, Thin Crust is both surprisingly polarizing and surprisingly hard to get right. Little Caesars did nothing to change this. Their Thin Crust was simultaneously soggy, hard, chewy, and oddly flavored. If we didn’t know better, we’d have thought it was gluten-free. But we *did* know better, because Little Caesars doesn’t have a gluten-free option, which we only discovered after searching for it on the menu for a good 10 minutes.

If you’re a thin-crust fan, though, take heart. This is definitely better than the options at some of the other places we tried, such as Papa Johns. “It tasted like hardtack there,” my kid recalled, and we all agreed. My husband thought the crust was fine, “but there would have to be some health reason to choose it over anything else, and I don’t know what that would be.” As a general rule, thin crust isn’t the best option for our household, but if you like it, you might feel differently.

On the other hand, it is important to note that Little Caesars’ Thin Crust gets soggy nearly instantaneously. If you don’t eat it hot out of the oven, it will have lost much of its appeal. This crust is much better once it’s reheated in the air fryer, but since the point of a delivered pizza is not doing any work, this kind of obviates the strategy. If you like to buy big batches of ‘za for reheating, though, the Thin Crust does improve.

2. Stuffed Round Crust

I personally think stuffed crust, in general, is kind of too much, but I realize I’m alone there. Everyone else in my family lives for it. More to the point, the majority of people I’ve encountered love that extra ring of cheese around the outside of a pie. Overall, Little Caesars’ Stuffed Round Crust was decent. The cheese-to-dough ratio was balanced, which was good since we’ve had explosions of cheesiness that were hard to control as well as underwhelmingly cheesed versions.

Any time you rank a stuffed crust below a regular ol’ plain crust, though, something is wrong … and you’ll notice that No. 4 in our ranking is the standard, unstuffed round. Why? Because the flavor was ho-hum in the Stuffed Round Crust, so it just ends up having a fattier mouthfeel without much additional appeal. Basically, there’s nothing to be gained from putting cheese into a plain crust here. If you’re going to go plain, just go plain. Don’t bother getting stuffed unless you’re going to get the Crazy Crust or the DEEP!DEEP!™ Dish, both of which were better.

As for toppings? Naturally, we had to try their pepperoni (it is pizza’s BFF, after all) and were confronted with a choice to make: regular or Old World. For this one, we chose the regular kind, and it was not half bad. Since the quality of its pepperoni is a mark of a good pizza restaurant in our book, we were pleased by how tasty and crispy it was.

3. Round Crust

The Round Crust is Little Caesars’ version of plain or regular. There’s nothing fancy about it, so it’s the litmus test for how good their dough is. Frankly, we were pleasantly surprised. Both the Husband and I were under the impression that Little Caesars was a cut below Domino’s, Pizza Hut, and Round Table (the options with which we are more familiar). Come to find out, it holds its own just fine.

No, the Round Crust wasn’t amazing. It was bland on its own, though the tomato sauce improved it. Add cheese and toppings, and it’s A-OK. As my young one put it, “It checks the boxes of what a pizza crust should be.” And it does: chewy, puffy, and a bit crispy on the outside, no one could accuse it of being substandard. It just wasn’t that exciting, is all.

More exciting than the crust were the Hawaiian pizza toppings it came with. The pineapple was good and the Canadian bacon was pretty decent, though to be honest, it tasted more like ham. Most members of this household prefer pepperoni with their pineapple, which I’m sure is even more sacrilegious than pineapple to some (though pineapple pizza does have ancient culinary roots). That said, this topping combo got the thumbs up.

4.Stuffed Crust DEEP!DEEP!™ Dish

Now things are getting really good. The Stuffed Crust DEEP!DEEP!™ Dish was an ooey-gooey mess that was truly a sight to behold when it was hot, with cheese stretching everywhere and spilling out of the crust itself. The main conceit, which we haven’t encountered before, is stuffing a deep-dish pizza crust around the edges, with the obvious cheesier-than-ever result.

Yes, it was good. We were not into the canned mushrooms or the boring olives, but the rest of the pizza was pretty darn delicious. Maybe … too delicious? There was too much cheese for me and the kids, resulting in a lot of chewing and hoping you don’t choke on those long, melted mozzarella strings. My husband, however, can never get enough cheese. His words? “It’s a stroke of genius.”

The only downside is that extra cheese made the DEEP!DEEP!™ Dish kind of soggy, and it was definitely hard to pull apart compared to the others. We had to whip out the ol’ pizza cutter, so if you don’t have one, consider the Kitchy Pizza Cutter Wheel with Protective Blade Cover, which is highly reviewed. However, a pair of sharp scissors such as the KitchenAid All Purpose Kitchen Shears will do as well. Just make sure to use the tip when you hack into it, or the crust will get stuck in the pinch point at the back of the shears.

5. Detroit-Style Deep Dish

Once again, we did not see this coming. Once again, we ranked an unstuffed crust over its stuffed cousin, which just doesn’t seem possible. Little Caesars (with the best of intentions, no doubt) once again overdid it with the cheese on their DEEP!DEEP!™ Dish, but brought things back into balance with the Detroit-Style Deep Dish. It was thick, pillowy, and had plenty of cheese even without stuffing the crust.

Plus, something about the dough was richer in flavor, as though it had been allowed to sour for longer. We loved it. If you’re a deep-dish fan, then this is the best option from any pizza chain we’ve ever had. We do advise eating it right away, though, as the crust gets a bit dense after it sits for 15-20 minutes. That said, it was delicious when reheated in the oven. Even after it had been refrozen for days, the quality remained high.

Also, the sausage was really good. Unlike the overly spiced crumbles or balls you usually see on sausage pizza, Little Caesars’ sausage version was different. These pieces were cut into strips from an already-cooked sausage in its casing, with a firmer and more flavorful result, more juicy than crumbly. As with the crust, we recommend it highly.

6. Stuffed Crazy Crust

Our top-ranked pizza crust was, hands-down, the Stuffed Crazy Crust. It’s just their Round Crust stuffed with cheese, brushed with garlic butter, and topped with parmesan cheese. Although I’m not sure why I said “just” when they’re adding three kinds of dairy; that would make most things more delicious, right? In this case, the effect was not one of overwhelm, as with the DEEP!DEEP!™ Dish, but rather of salty, savory balance. The dough was crispy, chewy, and fragrant, and we were all in heaven. When it was hot, it was especially decadent, and reheating it brought back all the same effects.

The garlic butter actually reminded me of ghee. Next time I make my own pizza, I’m going to try brushing some 4th & Heart Original Grass-Fed Ghee on the crust before and after baking. I love this brand and its deep, rich, buttery flavor, so in combination with some garlic flavoring (the Simply Organic Garlic Salt is the bomb), I think this could be a game-changer.

As for toppings, we tried the Old World pepperoni and the bacon on this one. The Old World pepperoni is very good, though quite spicy. If you’re into heat, then you should definitely choose this over the regular pepperoni, because it was crispier and more flavorful. As for the bacon, it wasn’t great. Much like the Canadian bacon, it had more of a ham-like consistency, which we did not love. Overall, our ranking favorite was the Stuffed Crazy Crust with the Old World pepperoni, and you can take that to the bank.

Methodology

We brought all the discipline to this that two children and two adults possibly can. Pretty much everyone loves pizza, and we are likely representative of an average family in that our tastes vary from person to person. I, for instance, like things thin and crunchy. My husband loves all things sauce, while my son loves strong flavors, and my daughter avoids them like the plague. So, you know, we’re a reasonable sample group.

As for how we judged the pizza, we tried each twice: once with crust alone, and once with all the stuff on top. The crust-only bite was necessary to establish factors such as chewiness, crunchiness, structure of the dough, and flavor. The with-toppings bite was critical, of course, because most of a pizza slice does have sauce, cheese, and toppings on it. Our rankings were based on a blend of the two.

The ranking itself was by committee. For the most part, we agreed on everything. There were a few instances in which someone disagreed — for instance when my daughter voted for the Stuffed Crust DEEP!DEEP!™ Dish over the Detroit-Style Deep Dish and was roundly voted down. Even then, though, we all agreed that the stuffed version was third place, so it was a pretty minor scuffle. (Then again, this is pizza crust we’re talking about here, so one would hope it didn’t cause too much bloodshed.) Overall, this ranking represents our best shot at letting you know which crust to buy next time you hit up Little Caesars.