Pizza Hut's executive chef Wiley Bates III has come up with a veritable Frankenpizza, a deformed creation consisting of the company's traditional pan pizza with 16 U-shaped wading pools of melted cheese affixed to the crust (two for each slice). The Crazy Cheesy Crust pizza debuted nationwide yesterday at $12.99 for one topping.

“Consumers always want more cheese,” wily chef Bates explained to Yahoo! Finance, without a hint of sheepishness. “The hand-tossed [crust] lends itself to absorbing some of those wonderful flavors, while again maintaining the integrity of the cheese.”

Pizza Hut customers “love cheese, and we want to give them not just cheese, but we want to give them the highest quality we can and the most flavor we can,” Dominique Vitry, director of menu innovation, added. The crazy cheesy crust contains a blend of five cheeses: Asiago, Romano, Fontina, Provolone and mozzarella. Several combinations of crusts and cheese blends were tested before settling on the final version of bovine-based bliss.

“It's a nice way to end your slice of pizza,” Sarah Beddoe, senior manager of brand marketing, told Yahoo! With a huge gob of cheese? Absolutely.

Pizza Hut has not posted the “crazy” nutrition data on its website yet. But by comparison, according to the website, one slice of a medium-size Ultimate Cheese Lovers Pan Pizza contains 260 calories (110 from fat), 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 25 milligrams of cholesterol and 530 milligrams of sodium (more than a third of the American Heart Assn.'s daily recommended amount). That's one slice of pizza without the cheese-infused crust.

Crazy Cheesy Crust pizza is crazy like a massive heart attack.

Pizza Hut, with nearly 14,000 stores in almost 100 countries, got its start in 1958 in Wichita, Kan., and is now headquartered in Plano, Texas. The company posted $5.5 billion in revenue in 2011 and accounts for about 15% of the American pizza restaurant pie and 5% of U.S. hospital admissions. (We're kidding about that last statistic. Sort of.)

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