Deep, Deep Dish Pizza

We had Deep Dish Pizza last night for dinner. Rob spent some time in Chicago going to school, and fell in love with deep dish pizza. We have tried more than one recipe to capture the flavor he was used to, and finally found one. I've tweaked it, and we had it for dinner last night.



This is a big stuffed pizza. You need a deep dish pizza pan, or a 10 - 12 inch spring form pan.

The crust comes from a recipe I read in Cook's Illustrated. It's a little detailed, but well worth it.

Dough: 3.25 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1.5 tsps table salt
2 tsps sugar
2.25 teaspoons, or 1 package of yeast
1.25 cups water, room temperature
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus 4 tablespoons, softened
1 tsp plus 4 tablespoons olive oil.

Mix the flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar and yeast in a bowl until incorporated. Add water and melted butter and mix until fully combined. Knead if for a few minutes until it is a glossy elastic ball. You can use a stand mixer, but I do all my dough by hand and it comes out great.

Coat large bowl with olive oil and and let rise at room temperature until nearly doubled, 45 to 60 minutes.

You will make the sauce for the pizza during the rising period. The recipe is below.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll into a 15 x 12 inch rectangle. Spread the softened butter over surface of dough, leaving 1/2 inch border. Starting at the short end, roll dough into a tight cylinder. With seam side down, flatten cylinder into 18 x 4 inch rectangle. Cut rectangle in half crosswise. Working with 1 half, fold into thirds like a business letter; pinch seams together to form ball. Repeat with the other half.

Put both balls into an oiled boil, cover tightly and put in the refrigerator to rise again until nearly double in volume, 40 to 50 minutes.

Sauce: 2 tbs. unsalted butter
1/4 cup grated onion, from 1 medium onion
1 tsp of italian seasoning
2 medium garlic cloves, minced
8 roma tomatoes, grated.
1 small can of tomato paste
1/4 tsp sugar
1 tbs. olive oil.

Melt the butter in a saute pan and add the onion along with the Italian seasoning. Saute until the onion is golden and then add the garlic. Saute again for about 30 to 45 seconds, and then add the tomatoes and tomato paste along with the sugar. Bring it to a boil, drop it to a low simmer and put it on the back of the stove. Don't cover as you want to get rid of the liquid. Let it cook for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Once it is finished add the olive oil, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

The fillings:

You can fill this with anything you want to. Our favorite is Italian turkey sausage, pine nuts, and spinach. So here's the process.

1.25 lbs of italian turkey sausage
1/4 c. pine nuts.
1 pound of spinach.
4 cups of mozzarella cheese
2 cups of cheddar cheese
1 cup of parmesan cheese
5 tbs. olive oil.

1. Take 1 tbs of olive oil and grease the springform or pizza pan. Take one of the balls of dough from the refrigerator and roll it out into a 15 inch disk. Put it into the dish, and make sure the dough comes up over the sides of your pan, so you can seal it with the top crust.

2. Cook the turkey sausage, you can add the other 1/2 onion (diced) from the sauce. I added 8 ounces of sauteed mushrooms as well today, I had them and needed to use them. Don't salt the mushrooms or onion, as it makes them sweat, and then you have too much liquid in the pizza. Remove from the pan.

3. I then toasted the pine nuts. Removed them from the pan and added 2 tbs. of water along with the spinach and wilted it.

4. Now, cover the bottom of the dough with the grated cheddar cheese and 2 cups of the mozzarella cheese. Cover this with 3/4 of the tomato sauce. Cover this with the turkey sausage mixture, the pine nuts and the spinach. Then cover this with the remaining mozzarella.

5. Roll out the other ball of dough and cover the pizza. Crimp the two disks together and take the remaining sauce and spread it over the top of crust. This is why you want it to be really dry, not liquid at all. Cover the tomato sauce with the parmesan cheese and then drizzle the remaining olive oil across the top.

Bake at 400 for 25 minutes. Remove from pan and let sit for 10 minutes. Cut into wedges and serve.