D is for Deep Dish Pizza (sort of)

by Nicole Weston, Posted Jan 18th 2006 @ 11:29AM

I really wanted to make a deep dish pizza for our D-themed day at Slashfood, not only because it starts with the letter "D," but because I have never made one before. I really only like thin crust pizzas. I generally find deep dish pizza to be too gooey, with a soggy crust and far too much cheese and sauce ladled in. It is inconvenient to eat because you cannot - certainly not easily, in any event - pick up a slice and eat it from your hands, as you can with thinner pizzas. However, I thought I should still give it a try.

I took my homemade dough and pressed it into the pan. It turned out not to be enough dough to reach more than an inch up the sides of the pan. I covered it in cheese, followed by sausage, onions and sauce and topped it with a sprinkle of parmesan before baking. There were no problems filling the pie, but I still was not thrilled with the softness of the bottom of the pizza. I assumed that the cheese was put on the bottom to insulate the crust in some way and perhaps it did, just not enough for my tastes. Overall, I'm glad that due to the size of my dough I was unable to really fill my pizza to proper deep-dish depth. Don't get me wrong: the pie tasted good. It still had a fairly crisp outer crust, but I know that that would not have lasted with higher sides and another cup of sauce ladled into the pizza. Deep dish is just not my cup of tea. Or slice of pizza.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]

Filed Under: Food Quest, Brought to you by the letter D, Ingredients, How To, Methods
Tags: bad pizza, baking, cheese, deep dish, deep dish pizza, DeepDish, dinner, Food Quest, grains, homemade, homemade pizza, pizza, pizza sauce, thin crust pizza

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

1-18-2006 @1:00PM JavaDog said... Try par-baking your crust (remember to dock it lightly) first. Makes a world of difference...
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1-18-2006 @2:07PM Mike G. said... Yes - par bake the crust. And if having a hard time getting around the inability to hand hold a slice, think of it as "pizza cake". Remember it's much easier to make a BAD deep dish pizza than a bad thin crust - even here in Chicagoland.
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1-18-2006 @7:06PM Miranda said... Cook's Illustrated (9/99) offers a recipe for deep dish pizza with potato in the dough for the crust. It's wonderful and well worth the effort.
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1-18-2006 @7:55PM Ed said... Deep dish is, to my mind, one of the hardest pizzas to really get right. The other is a perfect neapolitan pizza.

The most important component in a chicago style deep dish pizza is the sauce. It should NOT be a cooked sauce. It should be very bright tasting.

The crust can be helped by par-baking it. The most important thing about the crust is that it should be a rather short crust. High (for crust) fat content is key. The taste should be buttery.

As for the sausage, the sausage generally put on pizzas outside of chicago is completely wrong. You should be using a high quality italian sausage. It should be cooked completely in the oven, if at all possible. The ideal size for a chunk of sausage is about the diameter of a quarter and a half inch high, but it should not be cut that way. Just grab of a ball of loose sausage and stick it on the pizza.

If you're doing the traditional application of sausage to a deep dish pizza, though, you want to have the sausage spread in a thin layer over the cheese.

If you're looking to taste a real chicago deep dish pizza without traveling to chicago, don't go to one of the lame-ass "Uno's Chicago Grill" places. They're awful. Get a half-baked pie mailed to you from Lou Malnati's and finish it in your oven. Nearly as good as being there yourself.
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