How to Make Deep Dish Pizza in a Cast Iron Pan (Chicago Style)

Pizza is one of those foods that some people get really uptight about, unnecessarily, about which

style

is better, what ingredients are better, which

pizza

place is better, whether it's a light-hearted debate among friends or, you know , from a more serious debate that turns into a street fight conflict. It will almost certainly come up, but not today, today we will all be friends in the city where I am from Chicago. Two

style

s reign supreme, those are the thin tavern style and the

deep

dish

, as the title of the video says, today we are going to be talking about the ultimate Chicago style

deep

dish

pizza

, so at the end of the day, whether Whether you think it's casserole or not in these parts, deep dish is pizza and of course pizza comes in many different forms with many different toppings, today I've chosen Make a Classic Italian Sausage Pie, but if that's not your thing , feel free to explore the endless expanse of other pizza topping options.

Well, let's start by making the dough for deep dishes; It's more like a cake or puff pastry base than an actual dough. We will see to

make

our dough, we will need bread flour, olive oil, instant yeast, salt and a little corn flour. The cornmeal is optional, but it gives the crust a nice extra kick in the bowl of a stand mixer or any other bowl. First add all the dry ingredients i.e. 250 grams of bread flour, 25 grams of corn flour, 5 grams of kosher salt and 3 grams of instant yeast, mix the dry material until combined and then pour in 75 grams of olive oil and mix again.

Coat the dry ingredients in olive oil before adding water to stop gluten from forming. Gluten formation would simply explode and cause the dough to rise, which is not what we want. We need a tough but flaky crust once the oil and ingredients dry. They are roughly combined and look crumbly, so pour in 100 grams of warm water and mix until a shaggy dough forms, cover with plastic wrap and let everything sit or self-roast for 20 minutes. This step is what will give our dough a chance to hydrate after 20 minutes have passed, place your double in the stand mixer and using the dough hook knead the dough on speed two for four minutes, it's totally fine if you need to stop the mixer to push down any dough that wants to rise, all good.

After four minutes, turn off the motor and let the dough rest for another four minutes and then continue with one more kneading session for four more minutes. This probably sounds confusing, but giving the dough a chance to rest will help it come together more easily, just remember four four. and four, stop the mixer when it forms something that looks like a dough, then pour it on the counter, although you don't need to use flour because you know this dough is a pretty greasy dough, bro, just do your best to round it out the dough and then put it back in the cover the bowl and set it aside let it rest for two hours so yes this dough is high in fat and low in hydration which

make

s it eat more like a cookie , the fat also helps them remove moisture from the meat, cheese, and tomato. sauce, which is crucial for this heavyweight, use the time it takes for the dough to rest to arrange the other ingredients, so deep dish pizza requires a thicker tomato sauce than usual and, to achieve the best slice , I like to use these San Marzano don tomatoes I'm not going to talk about these canned beauties, these are very high quality whole peeled tomatoes that are picked at the peak of their season and are delicious and yes, I prefer to use whole tomatoes so I can completely control the final texture of the sauce, but feel free to use pre-mashed tomatoes if that's all you have or all you can find, just stay away from tomato puree or any thin tomato sauce, it will be too runny for this type of sauce. pizza.

Add the mates until they break up. As an aside, I really like my immersion blender for this, but a few pulses in a Reggie blender should work too. Place a bowl under a strainer and pour over the now crushed tomatoes. Just reserve the juice for Bloody Marys or Bolognese or something and then pour. Those drained tomatoes into a bowl and I should mention that I used about two whole cans of tomatoes for this. You may have a little sauce left, but you know how you'll complain about that. To the tomatoes you add salt, sugar, dried oregano, red wine vinegar and fish sauce.

I know the fish sauce is optional, but a little goes really well with the umami-rich tomatoes. There's really no need to cook this tomato mixture, it will cook and reduce slightly in the oven, so there's no need for that good cheese time. For the cheese, here we have two types: whole milk mozzarella and part-skim mozzarella, both in block form, the whole milk mozzarella will ensure that our cheese mixture is rich and creamy, while the skimmed part helps tame the milk whole, adding some texture and making things nicer. a little less greasy, okay, just one more thing to talk about about our Italian sausage mix.

It would be a shame to go over this sausage recipe and although it takes a bit of time, I think it's worth doing if you're interested in making your own Italian sausage. Provide a link to my video on all that, but if you want to skip that, that's great too, a lot of grocery stores sell sausage in bulk now, but if you can't find it, just grab some pre-made Italian sausage and cut it up. Getting the meat out of the casings The great thing about this pizza technique is that it is made in a

cast

iron

skillet, so there is no need for any special deep skillet.

Here I'm using this large 10-inch

cast

iron

skillet and I prefer a 10-inch pan, but a 12-inch pan works well too, you'll just need to spread everything out a little more when using a 12-inch pan. Buttercream, take a butter crayon, also known as a stick of butter, and rub the inside. of the cast iron down really reaches the bottom and the walls don't skimp on the butter or your pizza might stick to the pan below is a tribute to pequod's pizza, a famous deep dish place here in

chicago

, we're just going to sprinkle the bottom and sides of the pan with crumbled Parmesan cheese, some of the cheese will bake into the crust, giving the crust a nice extra brown into a beautiful, crispy cheese crisp.

After the two hours have passed, drop the dough onto the countertop, now we have to press it. Roll it out to fit the cast iron, use your fingertips and palms to gently press and pull the dough into a large circle, turning the dough as needed to make sure you get a really nice consistency. circle, I would refrain from trying any fancy pizza toss here because our dough is not as stretchy as a regular toss, but I mean, maybe you know something that I don't, so I've added now that we build, start by laying out our pizza paddle. freshly grated mozzarella cheese. all in and it seems like a lot because the next thing is to flatten the sausage by hand to about a third of an inch or eight and a half millimeters thick, then place it on top of the cheese and now drop our tomato sauce until it can no longer see the sausage, but also remember that you don't have to use the exact proportions I've included in this recipe if you want less sauce, that's up to you.

Finish it off with a little more parmesan crumble and then we bust that out. directly into a preheated oven at 425 degrees Fahrenheit and 218 degrees Celsius for 35 to 40 minutes, when the timer goes off, remove the pizza from the oven and let it cool for about 10 minutes before doing anything. Now you must choose a path, you can cut your pizza. directly into the cast iron, but then you risk scratching the cast iron and dulling the knives. The other option is to remove the pizza from the cast iron hole and cut it from the pan. My path is kind of a mix of both.

I prefer to take the pizza out of the cast iron, slice it, and then return it to the cast iron. Serving this in a cast iron skillet is cleaner, keeps the pizza warmer, and is easier to transport, but I mean, who's going to deny the natural beauty of a deep dish naked pizza, this is a cross section of A cold test pizza, it had a little sausage, but I think it's a good photo and useful to see the anatomy of a pie because our crust is made from a high fat dough. It can repel water and resist sauce and humidity, which is crucial for this type of za.

Serve this stunner piece by piece with a fork and knife and I know it seems strange, but trust me, a fork and knife are. how it's done, so I have to keep it real. I was never a big fan of deep dish growing up but my whole family loves it so it was always in the house for special occasions and although I still prefer a thin crust. Tavern style pizza, you know, deep dishes managed to find their way into my heart and I know if you try this one you'll like it too, so if you decide to make it in your own crib, tag me on Instagram anyway.

Send me a private message send me questions, comments if you have them. I love interacting with all of you and as always, thanks for watching and I'll see you next week. Double peace.