Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza

Here’s the recipe that I follow. I don’t claim it as my own, but I like it a lot. This works well in a gas oven. You’re on your own if you try it in an electric–I know my dad has done it, but he’s had to adjust the times. A picture is posted in the “Pizza” topic.

I make my dough in my food processor. You could do it the old-fashioned way or use a bread machine, too.

Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza
Crust:
1 ¾ cups flour
¼ cup cornmeal
½ teaspoon salt
½ package yeast
½ cup + 1 ½ tablespoons water
3 tablespoons olive oil

Place all dry ingredients, including the yeast, into a food processor. Pulse to combine, then pour the combined wet ingredients through the feed tube in a stream with the processor running. When the dough forms a ball, let the dough process for an additional 2 minutes.

Put the dough in a bowl, cover, and let rise. If time permits, allow it to rise overnight in the fridge.

Oil a 10 ½ inch cast iron skillet. Pat the dough in the skillet to cover the bottom and up the sides. As you add toppings, it will help hold the dough up on the sides of the skillet.

Pizza:
Layer the following into the skillet:
½ pound mozzarella cheese (I prefer to use sliced in this pizza)
½ cooked and crumbled sausage
2 or more chopped cloves of garlic
14-ounce can of diced tomatoes, drained well in a strainer
1 ½ teaspoons dried oregano
2 tablespoons parmesan
I usually also add pepperoni

Place the skillet in the middle rack of a cold gas oven. Turn the heat to 500. When it hits 500, turn the temperature down to 400, and bake for 30 minutes.

That sounds delicious! With all this pizza and beer talk, I’m getting quite hungry and thirsty!

Do you use AP or a higher gluten flour? For Chicago deep dish, I like that flaky crust.

All-purpose. I’d consider this a flaky crust.

looks awesome, I like a thinner crust so I’ll try a #12 cast iron pan

Here’s a twist for anyone with the ceramic or pellet grills(Kamado Joe, Big Green Egg, Traeger, Green Mountain, Yoder, etc).

On a ceramic grill set up for pizza with your heat deflector as you normally would. Bring your temp to 450. Time was closer to 25 minutes or so but you’ll have to figure it out on the fly.

We did it with both a cast iron pan and a ceramic baking dish. The cast iron resulted in the better crust.

Assume you could do the same method on the pellet grills.

Follow Mr. Wiggum’s instructions for the rest. Looks great!

Just for information, you assemble the pizza in a separate pan before placing it on the thoroughly heated through cast iron or ceramic? Or when building a deep dish crust, how do you keep the cast iron pan hot enough while the assembly is taking place?

Cold at iron skillet. Start in a cold oven.

Here are a couple videos that I think you guys will really like.