Better Than Papa Johns And Domino's: The Birthplace Of Stuffed-Crust Pizza Remains The Hands-Down Best Slice

Pizza styles have diversified in many creative directions, and the stuffed crust pizza holds a special place in fast food pizza repertoire. A cheese pull from the front and back is a decadent experience that has converted many of us into stuffed crust pizza fans. And while you can get stuffed crust pizza from various popular chains, not all of them are made equally. In a tasting of stuffed crust pizzas from Papa Johns, Domino's, and Pizza Hut, Pizza Hut reigns supreme.

Pizza Hut has popularized the crust style for decades. It's also still the best option out there for cheese lovers. We judged our taste test on the flavor and texture of the crust and the cheese filling, and the ratio of cheese to crust. Domino's had a completely tasteless crust, but Papa John's cheese stuffing was melted, gooey, and delicious with an equally flavorful crust. However, Papa John's stuffed crust was much more expensive and only came in one size. Pizza Hut is the winner of the stuffed crust competition because it hit all the criteria we were looking for at a low price.

The crust itself was coated in Pizza Hut's wonderfully flavorful seasoning blend, while the cheese offered a complementary saltiness to round it all out. Furthermore, the crust was perfectly even, with soft dough, a nice outer crisp, and a pleasant greasiness from the oozing cheese.

Customers took to Reddit, Facebook, and other social media sites to post reviews of Pizza Hut's stuffed crust pizza. A glowing Facebook review stated that the "crust had a lovely soft texture." There was a hint of garlic and salt. "The cheese in the crust had a beautiful smooth stretch," they continued. Unfortunately, not all reviews were good. 

One Redditor called the stuffed crust pizza "hot garbage," noting that the cheese-to-crust ratio was way off, bemoaning how floppy the undercrust was and how "rubbery" the dough was. To that effect, we ranked Pizza Hut's stuffed crust pizza a middling third in a tasting of five Pizza Hut pizza styles partly due to an undercooked doughiness.

While Pizza Hut's stuffed crust pizza was what many of us know to be the first of its kind, the title of stuffed crust pizza inventor is up for debate. One story is that a food scientist named Patty Scheibmeir invented the stuffed crust pizza in 1992. When Pizza Hut debuted the stuffed crust pizza in 1995, the chain was sued by a family-run pizza company called Angelo Mongiello's Children, LLC, which had patented the stuffed pizza crust way back in 1987. Pizza Hut may not be the inventor of stuffed crust pizza, but certainly helped make it popular. And, as the longest-lived stuffed crust pizza of all the pizza chains, Pizza Hut's recipe continues to win according to our taste tester.