Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza

Ever Since I saw Sally's Baking Addiction's Blog Post on Facebook I was thinking about making this pizza.  Last Saturday I finally got my chance to make it! She has tons of step by step pictures for making the pizza, and a ton of other great recipes.  Just click on the link above to check out her blog.

I made some modification to the recipe and dough prep since I do not have a stand mixer.  I seriously need one my two hand mixers are on their way out.

Yield:  2 Deep Dish 9'' round (probably could do a square if you want)

Total: 4 1/2 hours-5 hours (with rise times)

Ingredients:

Pizza Crust (2 crusts)

• 3 and 1/4 cups All-Purpose Flour
• 1/2 cup cornmeal (I had white on hand use yellow or white)
• 1 and  1/4 tsp salt
• 1 TBS granulated sugar
• 2 and 1/4 tsp yeast
• 1 and 1/4 cups slightly warm water
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, divided (1/4 cup melted, 1/4 softened)
• olive oil for coating

Tomato Sauce for Both Pizzas

• 2 TBS unsalted butter
• 1/4-1/3 cup onion (I did some red and white onion) *may want to reduce depending on taste preference)
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 3/4 tsp of crushed red pepper flakes (optional) (original recipe reduced to 1/2 tsp) 
• 3 garlic cloves, minced (I added about 4.5 garlic gloves minced)
• one can of 28 ounce crushed tomatoes
• 1/2 tsp dried basil or 1 tsp of fresh basil (unless you get flavored tomatoes) 
• 1/4 tsp granulated sugar

Toppings for Both Pizzas

• 4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (I used about 3.5 cups shredded fresh mozzarella and about 1/2 cup finely shredded regular mozzarella cheese)1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese 
• Optional toppings: I  used pepperoni, bacon and mushroom slices.  Any cooked toppings such as sausage, vegetables or fruits could be added if you like.

My directions are the condensed version of my steps/basic directions, if you need more instructions please check out Sally's blog for the full directions and step-by-step photos.

 Sauce cooking

 Fresh Mozzarella shredded before I added regular 

 Love to buy the double logs of fresh mozzarella at Sam's Club

 Dough working in breadmaker beyond the steam

 Greased up dough ball ready for oven

 Ready to Roll out on a floured surface

 Ready for its butter bath

 Buttered now time to roll up the short side

 Nice buttered layers 

 Chop the buttered layered log in two

 Form the two halves of the logs into balls and place in greased bowl place in refrigerator to rise for 1 hour

Ready to roll out dough ball #1

 Crust number one rolled out

 Crust number #1 transporting to pan

 Crust #1

 Crust #2 Repeat steps to move crust and trim excess crust

 Pizza crusts with excess trimmed

 Building the Pizza: Cheese

  Building the Pizza: Cheese

  Building the Pizza: Bacon, Mushrooms

  Building the Pizza: Bacon, Mushrooms

  Building the Pizza: More Cheese

  Building the Pizza: More Cheese

  Building the Pizza: Pepperoni and more Cheese

  Building the Pizza: Pepperoni and more Cheese

  Building the Pizza: Parmesan Cheese

 Building the Pizza: Parmesan Cheese

 Building the Pizza: Sauce

  Building the Pizza: Sauce

 Cooked and Ready to Eat!

 Yum!

 Its worth the work!

 Are you drooling over the pictures yet? 

Yum! Got to love Chicago Style Pizza and Fresh Mozzarella cheese!

Directions

1. Make sure you have two 9 inch by 2 inch deep dish round cake pans if you plan to make both pizzas at the same time.  (You can freeze the dough for later if you only want to make one)
2. For the crust you are going to all your dry ingredients in your bread maker or large bowl. Then you will need to use the dough hook to your stand mixer or mixer with dough hooks. 
3. I used my bread maker to prepare the dough.  Same principle add dry ingredients (except yeast), mix them up a little, add warm water (heated to 90 degrees F) and melted butter.  Make sure butter is not to hot ( I temped both to make sure, otherwise it will kill your yeast).  In the bread maker make a well in the dry ingredients to  put the yeast, add the liquid ingredients.  (yeast should NEVER come in contact with liquids in bread maker.)  Use Dough setting on bread maker and let the dough mix until it forms a uniform dough ball that easily removes from the bread maker (approx 5-6 minutes may vary by brand)
4. IF Using a Mixer: Mix the ingredients together with a mixer until dough is formed together and pulls together and fulls off the dough hook.   (approx 5-6min)
5. Remove the dough from either the bread maker OR the mixing bowl.
6. Grease a large bowl with Olive Oil or Grape Seed Oil (my favorite)
7. Place your dough ball inside this bowl and make sure its coated in oil.
8. Cover bowl with aluminum foil.
9. Allow bowl of dough to rise in a WARM environment for 1-2 hours or until its DOUBLE in size.   Ideal environment: preheat oven to 300 degrees F, put bowl with dough in once it oven temperature decreases to 250 degrees F.
10. Close the bowl in the warm oven and allow the dough to rise. (1-2 hours or until DOUBLE in size)
11. Once the dough is doubled in size, flour your work surface and remove your dough from the bowl.  Keep your bowl and aluminum foil for use later.  
12. Punch down the dough gently, to remove an air bubbles.  Then roll the dough out into a large rectangle about 15 x12'' in size.
13. Rub the 1/4 cup of softened butter on top of  the dough until it is evenly spread across it.  
14. Then roll up the shortest side into a log.
15. Cut that log in half.  Form those two logs into balls and place back into the greased bowl that was set aside earlier.  
16. Cover with the aluminum foil and put in the refrigerator to rise for 1 hour.  
17. For the Sauce:  Melt butter in a saucepan, add grated onion, salt, oregano, basil and red pepper flakes.  Once the onion starts browning, add the garlic, tomatoes and sugar.  Simmer on low until the sauce has thickened.
18. Preheat Oven to 425 degrees F.
19. Assemble the Pizza:  Dough balls should come out out of the refrigerator puffy.  Leave one dough ball in the fridge while you roll out the first ball.  Roll out the dough ball on a lightly floured surface till its 12'' round.  Place over the deep dish cake pan using your rolling pin to move the dough over to the pan.
20. Trim off excess dough off edges with a knife or cooking shears.  Repeat process if making both pizzas.  Brush the edges of the dough with oil to give the crust a little shine.  Fill each pizza with about 2 cups of cheese, then your toppings, then your sauce (1 and 1/4 cups on each pizza approx depending on your sauce preference).  Then sprinkle the Parmesan cheese on each pizza about 1/4 cup on each pizza.
21. Place pizzas on a baking sheet to prevent overflow. (Nothing did, could always put tinfoil in oven rack below also).  Bake 20-28  minutes or until crust is nice and golden brown.  It may be necessary to cover with tinfoil after 15 minutes to prevent over browning or uneven cooking (just keep an eye on them)  Cool pizzas on a wire rack for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.
22. Pizza can be stored up to a week in an airtight container and reheated in 15-20 minutes in a 300 degree F oven.

**I only cooked one pizza but prepared two whole pizzas and froze the second one. **  You could also just freeze the sauce separately (Can freeze up to 2 months).   Dough freezing instructions below.

****Freezing Dough*****

If you would like to freeze the dough:  Remove the dough from the warm rise, punch out the air gently, and freeze the dough without allowing the dough to go through the second rise in the refrigerator.  Freeze up to 2 months.  Dough will need to thaw overnight in the fridge and rise at room temperature for 1 hour before pizza can be assembled.