Have you ever wondered how to make crazy bread? You are in luck. Years ago in college, I fell in love with Little Caesar’s Crazy Bread. This delicious butter and garlic flavored bread is a treat. The Crazy Bread is even better when you make it with this copycat recipe.
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What Makes Little Caesar’s Crazy Bread so Good?
Almost every pizza place sells its own version of garlic breadsticks, but it’s the Crazy Bread Little Caesars serves that a lot of people crave. Maybe it’s the chewy, slightly greasy dough or the heavy hit of garlic and the coating of crispy Parmesan cheese.
Whatever the reason, there is nothing quite like Little Caesars Crazy Bread.
Why This Is the Recipe You Should Try for Homemade Crazy Bread
Nothing tastes better than fresh, straight out of the oven Little Caesars’ garlic bread, but if you can’t get to a Little Caesars restaurant, you can always try making this Crazy Bread recipe at home.
Baking these breadsticks may not be as easy as picking up an order, but the extra effort is well worth it when you can customize the flavor to get the perfect breadsticks for your palette.
What Is Crazy Bread?
Crazy Bread is the name of the breadsticks sold at Little Caesars’ pizza restaurants. Fans of Crazy Bread love the side’s garlic butter and Parmesan topping.
If you have never had this freshly baked bread topped with the flavors of butter and garlic, then sprinkled with Parmesan cheese, you are missing out on one of the best side dishes to have come out of a pizza place.
These are served with their Crazy sauce, but you can eat this fluffy breadstick plain or with your favorite marinara. Whenever I have ordered pizza here, I have always ordered some of their crazy bread.
Crazy Bread (Little Caesars Copycat)
We will start this recipe with a basic bread dough that you can use your food processor to help you put it together. This recipe also works well with a mixer, or even by hand.
Crazy Bread Recipe Ingredients
You only need a few simple ingredients to make crazy bread:
- Instant yeast
- Water
- Olive oil
- Bread flour
- Salt
- Butter
- Garlic salt
- Parmesan cheese
Ingredient Notes
Unlike the restaurant, we will use real butter for this recipe. I bet you will find it makes the crazy bread even a little bit better. You could also make this recipe with a can of pizza dough if you desire.
For this recipe, I like to use yeast that I buy in bulk. I find it when you buy a pound of yeast it costs a lot less than buying individual packages of yeast at the store. I have found yeast at big-box stores such as Costco, Sam’s, or even Amazon.com.
How to Make Crazy Bread
Here are the steps for making this copycat Little Caesar’s Crazy Bread recipe:
- Proof the yeast in warm water. Add oil and more warm water.
- Place flour and salt in a food processor and pulse to combine. You could use a dough hook if you are using a stand mixer.
- With the processor running, add yeast, olive oil, and water through the top tube. Process until the dough forms and is smooth and elastic.
- Place the dough ball in a greased bowl. Cover the dough and let it rise until doubled.
- On a floured surface, pat out the dough into a rectangle. Cut the dough in half then into strips, you may want to use a pizza cutter to make the slices even.
- Coat a baking sheet with non-stick spray and place the strips on it.
- Bake at 375°F for 18 minutes or until the breadsticks become golden brown.
- Combine melted butter and garlic salt. Brush the garlic butter mixture over the breadsticks. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the breadsticks.
What to Serve with This Crazy Bread Recipe
Little Caesars bundles their breadsticks with Crazy Sauce, a spiced-up version of the restaurant’s marinara sauce. In addition to Crazy Sauce, customers can purchase other dips at Little Caesars, including:
- Cheezy Jalapeno Caesar Dip
- Buffalo Ranch Caesar Dip
- Ranch Caesar Dip
- Butter Garlic Caesar Dip
You can keep it classic and stick to pairing your copycat Crazy Bread with one of the options above, or you can go a bit wild with these other ideas:
- Roast Shallot Chutney
- Bacon Jam
- Brown Gravy
- Mango Chutney
- Pizza Sauce
- Garlic Aioli
How to Store, Freeze, and Reheat Little Caesar Garlic Bread
Crazy Bread is best fresh, but you can keep any leftovers in a paper bag on the counter overnight.
If you are going to make this Little Caesars Crazy Bread recipe, you might as well double up and keep some extra in the freezer for later. You can freeze the breadsticks by wrapping them individually in parchment paper and putting them in a larger container for up to three months.
If you plan to freeze the Crazy Bread from the start, it’s best to bake the breadsticks without the buttery coating and add it later when you reheat the bread.
To reheat:
- Let the Crazy Bread thaw in the fridge. Meanwhile, you can make a new butter, garlic, and cheese coating, if desired.
- Put the thawed breadsticks on a parchment-lined baking tray and pop in a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven until hot, about 8 to 10 minutes for cold Crazy Bread and 3 to 4 minutes for room temperature breadsticks. Turn the breadsticks over midway through the baking time.
Little Caesars Breadsticks FAQs
Why Do They Call It Crazy Bread?
This classic menu item first appeared on Little Casaers’ menu way back in 1982 as Crazy Crust, but later changed the name. In a 2009 article, the company claimed that it was the first pizza chain to sell a “side bread item”.
As for why Little Caesars decided to call it “crazy” in the first place? Well, the company tweeted in 2013 they named it after the guy who created it, “Crazy” Brett.
More legend than fact? Who knows, and when Crazy Bread tastes this good, who really cares?
Does Little Caesars Crazy Bread Have Cheese?
Little Caesars sold Stuffed Crazy Bread with mozzarella cheese inside, but many locations no longer carry it. However, Italian Cheese Bread is a standard menu item that caters to cheese lovers.
Love Other Pizza Favorites? Try These Recipes
- Pizza Hut Cheese Stick Recipe
- Pizza Wonton Recipe
- Pizza Margarita Recipe
- Garlic and Parmesan Bread
- Monkey Pizza Bread
- Crescent Roll Veggie Pizza with Hidden Valley Ranch
- Pepperoni Pizza Rolls
- How to Make Pizza Crust from Scratch
- How to Make Pizza Bowls
- How to Make Chocolate Pizza at Home
Do you have leftover bread? Make these recipes
Be sure to check out more of my easy bread recipes and the best copycat restaurant recipes.
Little Caesars Crazy Bread
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup warm water ~100° to 110°F
- 2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast 1 package
- 1 1/4 cups water
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 4 cups (22 ounces) bread flour plus more for working the dough
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 3 tablespoons butter melted
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
- 3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
Instructions
- Place 1/2 cup of warm water and yeast in a medium bowl and whisk together briefly. Allow the yeast enough time to bubble up and become active. This should take a few minutes. If the yeast is inactive, you may need to replace the yeast and try again.
- Add room temperature water and oil to the yeast mixture, and stir to combine.
- Place the flour and salt in a food processor, and pulse to combine.
- Add the yeast mixture through the tube of the food processor and process. The dough will form into a ball. Process until the dough is smooth and elastic.
- Place the dough in a bowl that has been sprayed with non-stick spray, and cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough rise until doubled in size, up to 2 hours.
- Preheat the oven to 375°F.
- Gently pat out the dough on a floured surface into a rectangular shape.
- Cut the dough into two equal portions down the middle. Then make about 8 cuts horizontally across the dough.
- Roll each portion of dough into a breadstick.
- Spray a baking sheet with non-stick spray and place the dough strips onto the baking sheet.
- Bake for about 18 minutes or until the breadsticks become golden.
- Mix the melted butter and the garlic salt.
- Brush the garlic sauce over the breadsticks and sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top.
J
They are so different…
I love little Caesar crazy bread, Olive Garden breadsticks and Pizza Hut breadsticks.
All three are my favorites.
Olive Garden is my 1st fave, because paired with their amazing Alfredo sauce, and ice cold salad, the others don’t compare.
For that reason only. LC and PH ar tied.
I miss little Caesar’s breadsticks being a dollar. I would go there’s four times a week otherwise. Instead making my own next time.
Thank you
Stephanie
I hope you enjoy them.
Stephanie
I hope you enjoy the breadsticks.
Melissa
So, after we portion the dough out into individual breadsticks, do we let them raise on the pan before baking or do you put it straight into the oven?
LousivillesMark
TIME SAVER: Similar to Manny i also managed a LC store many years ago. We used the hand tossed dough which was made fresh that morning and allowed to rise at least 4 hours (as opposed to the pan pizza dough which was cooled and set overnight). We simply stretched it out on the pizza pan – used a pizza cutter and cut it into strips then straight to the oven (no forming them into breadsticks). When they came out we brushed them with garlic butter (yes real butter) then using a large shaker (filled with 50% Parmesan cheese and 50% kosher salt) we coated them then in the bag and out the door.
Lori Macgregor
Did you ever make the pepperoni crazy bread. It’s been off the menu for YEARS but was amazing. Its essentially crazy bread with pepperoni inside….any ideas how to make that?
Stephanie
I have never made this before, I would guess you could just add some pepperoni to the dough, and make it just the same.
Nat
Ahh, there are very few things that tempt me to cheat on my diet, and that’s rolls from Ryan’s, breadsticks from Olive Garden, and Crazy Bread! It’s so worth the consequences of eating gluten.
BUT I love you so much, because I just made this gluten free and it was great! I used Great Value GF AP Flour and I had to add nearly a cup extra of water. I just dumped it in 1/4 of a cup at a time until it formed a dough ball. Then I stopped mixing it, since kneading does nothing to GF dough. I used half the dough to make breadsticks and froze the other half to make pizza later. I pulled them out after 18 minutes, they didn’t turn brown at all, but the insides were fully baked. Obviously the texture is not the same as kneaded regular bread, but it’s pretty good for GF. The cheese and garlic spread on it was spot on. Thanks for the recipe!
Heather
Turned out great, will be making again, the kids polished them all off.
Deana goetz
I used to make a crazy bread type loaf years ago, using a no knead dinner role recipe garlic powder/margeribe
and topped with parmesan plus a tiny sprinkle of the club house garlic plus
Thanks I will try with garlic salt instead and use a pizza dough this time
Stephanie
Your recipe sounds delicious!
Lois May
Do you have a recipe for _stuffed bread? The cheese is on the inside. I am not looking for recipes like this. The cheese must be on the inside.
Heather
You couyld possibly make this dough and wrap it around mozzarella sticks?
Ashley
Even better than the recipe is the phrase :
“lil muthafkkn treats outt da sky”
My world is complete
Marvin
Classy
Foxxy
????
Foxxy
That was for Ashley. Dude clearly loves Crazy bread!!!!
Missie
If I’m not planning to use this right away do I store it in the fridge?Can it be froze?
Stephanie
You should be able to leave the dough in the fridge for a day or two before making it. I personally have not frozen the dough before.
cheryl
do I let the pizza dough rise in the fridge or at room temperature?
Stephanie
I would let the dough rise at room temperature.
cheryl
Your recipe calls for instant yeast. I only have traditional dry yeast at home. Can I use that instead?
Stephanie
It should work just fine, it will need more time to raise.
cheryl
how much longer do I need to wait for it to raise?
Ryan
Until it’s doubled in size I’d say.
Coffeelove
Wow! !
This is crazy delicious!! Comes very close to the original and is so easy to do. .
I used all-purpose flour and also stuffed each with a Mozzarella CheeseStick. So Yummy
Thank You for that awesome recipe
Manny
I managed a Little Caesar’s years ago. Crazy bread was made from the pizza dough and from what I remember that is the basic dough recipe. Only thing different was that we used stick of butter/margarine mixed with a tablespoon of minced garlic and heated it in the microwave to melt.
Stephanie
I didn’t know you used real garlic! I will have to try it this way.
BrandyLyn
Do you know how to make the Italian sub? I can’t remember what meats & cheeses were used.
Angie
Genoa salami, cotton salami, and provolone cheese. The sandwich bread as simply pizza dough baked in a semi-circle.
Tammie
So they actually do use real butter because in this write up she says they don’t. Call me confused because I am…. ??
Taryn
I LOVE crazy Bread! And this recipe is as close to taste as it gets! I’m a bread fanatic and garlic lover so combining the two is great. Thanks for this recipe!
Stephanie
I am so glad you enjoyed the recipe!
Reeve
Hey, instead of Olive Oil, do you think I could use canola oil?
amna
best sub for bread flour..? I was thinking mix of AP and whole wheat?
Stephanie
I think I would just make the recipe using the AP flour. Whole wheat flour isn’t a good substitute for bread flour. Bread flour has a different protein content, I would use the AP flour.
kyle jarnevick
go make me a sandwich
Joel
Do i have to use bread flour, I have all pourpose and self rising will either of those work?
Stephanie
You can use all purpose flour. Do not use self-rising flour.
Tyler
I love this recipe. I’ve been doin somthing similar, however I just use pre made pizza dough from the bakery. 1/2 tsp of garlic salt and the 2 tbls of butter is a good ratio, however I also add a few cloves of fine minced garlic and a pinch of parsley to the butter mixture before I heat it up. This gives it an extra lil kick and makes it better than crazy bread!
Ballicimo Buster
Love anything made using garlic, maybe even ice-cream. This presentation I liked because it went to the subject without any loud fanfare music like so many do to glorify their own ego and in doing so diminish .joy of learning different methods of home style cooking and baking.
Stephanie
I just want you to know you really can create delicious food at home, and it isn’t difficult to do!
Stephanie Manley
Do you like these or the Olive Garden Breadsticks the best?
C. B. J.
olive garden
CRAZYLUVR69
Nah B, U b Str8 Triipn, CRAZY BREad be lik god;;s lil muthafkkn treats outt da sky
Marvin
Really? Your parents must be proud.