Copy Crazy Bread Recipe from Little Caesars

LLittle Caesars is a household name and one of best pizza chains. They are famous for their “Hot-and-Ready” pizzas, and in 1982 they were the first pizza chain to sell a side of bread with their pizza (according to RSQ magazine). They called it “crazy bread” because the concept of adding parmesan cheese to garlic bread was, well, crazy. The bread is fantastic on its own, but tastes even better when paired with their crazy sauce (a spicy marinara sauce).

Since then, Little Caesars has introduced, discontinued, and reintroduced stuffed loaf (a cheese-stuffed version of loaf), but the original order is still our favorite. What makes these garlic breadsticks so good, and can you make them on a whim at home? We are happy to announce that yes, yes you can!

What is Little Caesars Crazy Bread made of?

Lindsay D. Mattison

We always start our copycat recipes by reading the ingredient list on the company’s website. Little Caesars Nutritional intakes detail everything in the pain fou: prepared dough, bread fou spread and parmesan mixture. There is nothing easier than that!

Here’s where things get weird, though. Ingredients in Crazy Spread show that it’s made with soybean oil, natural and artificial flavors, and lots of preservatives (like soy lecithin and sodium benzoate). Surprisingly, there is no butter and no garlic listed in the ingredients. We should have been warned when crazy bread is described on the menu as having “flavors of butter and garlic”. We tried making a version of the crazy bread without these two ingredients, but it didn’t turn out close to the original. So we did something that we normally never do when creating copycat recipes: we ignored the source information and created the recipe from scratch using only our taste buds.

When we created a combination of butter, salt, and garlic powder and brushed it over the breadsticks after baking, it tasted exactly like crazy bread from Little Caesar. So we don’t know what kind of craziness they’re working on behind the scenes, but the recipe we’ve created works somehow.

Do you have to make your own dough for Little Caesars Crazy Bread?

Lindsay D. Mattison

The next big debate was whether we should make our dough from scratch or use store-bought dough to save time. So we took to Reddit to see what the employees of Little Caesars had to say about how to make the crazy bread. In PWWA thread (people who work at), user GreenStrong says, “I worked on this about 20 years ago, it was a pizza crust with garlic butter and parmesan cheese.” Another one recipe thread confirms this, and user JayTS says, “I worked at Little Caesars for a year in college. Their crazy bread is just their pizza dough cut into strips…”

So we decided to use a tube of store-bought pizza dough as the base for these breadsticks. Because let’s be real: Little Caesar’s isn’t exactly a fine dining restaurant using a 100-year-old sourdough starter; they receive pre-made dough at each location in the chain. If you like making everything from scratch, feel free to use your favorite recipe instead of store-bought pizza dough. Here is a great recipe for Pizza dough house-madeif you are looking for one.

Little Caesars Crazy Bread Substitutions

Lindsay D. Mattison

Our Little Caesars Crazy Bread contains dairy and gluten, but you can make a few tweaks to make it allergen-free. To make this dairy-free recipe, you’ll need to replace the olive oil with melted butter and use dairy-free parmesan cheese or nutritional yeast. You can also use other types of cheese if you run out. Parmesan cheeselike Romano, Grana Padano or asiago.

If you want to make gluten-free breadsticks, the substitution is as easy as using gluten-free pizza dough. We never tried to spin cauliflower crust into breadsticks, so you’ll want to do some trial and error if you go this route.