The MOST Chicago Pizza EVER?! | Tavern Style Pizza ft. @nachosandlager

that's true, many people who aren't from Chicago associate cookie dough with deep dish

pizza

, although that assumption isn't entirely wrong, the city's Pizza Escape is a little different and ninety percent of the time We locals eat something a little thinner, actually a lot thinner, go figure. a thin cookie crust with perfect leopard spots on the bottom a little corn flour thrown into the mixture and cut into very important square cubes that is Chicago Tavern

style

pizza

, let me get to the point today we are going to go over how to make Chicago

style

pizza Tavern from scratch entirely so you can bring a little slice of the city of Bay Shoulders to your crib, but before we get to work making sure we're making Chicago proud and making this pizza right, I thought I'd pick up some Intel from a main source John Carruthers has become my pizza friend and mentor over the last year.

He is a fantastic guy and makes some of the best

tavern

style pizza in all of Chicago. John runs a pop-up. from his garage called Crust Fund Pizza, where all profits are donated to local charities. He was kind enough to let me collaborate with him and do a special 2-1 fundraiser for our local food pantry and two get real-life hands-on experience. at a pizza service, this is how it works first, you get lucky on Instagram, you buy a ticket, then you make a donation to the charity that John decides, then you drive to the designated address, you arrive at the garage with the mysterious barrel of whiskey in the front and then grab your pizza and beer, yes street pizza is good pizza.

John taught me a technique that took my original idea of ​​

tavern

-style dough and turned it up to level 100 and it has to do with something called curing the dough, which we're going to go over here. for a second, the white cake you're looking at here was my special, it was a three peppercorn creme fraiche, sauteed chard and the Speck joint is basically smoked ham and it goes really well with the creme fraiche. We are not going to prepare it. today, but I will include the recipe on my website in this video post, the recipe and technique you will see in this video for the Original Tavern Style Pizza are either taken directly from John and his research or closely informed by them . so thanks John, you are a beast and also thanks to

ever

yone who came out to support the event.

It was a lot of fun, really nice to meet you all right now. Let's make some pizza. The sauce for tavern-style pizza cooks up rich and robust. That's because it needs to be flavorful and spicy enough to stand up to the meaty, cured, and spicy dressings we've been making for the last decade. San Marzano tomatoes have become popular, which is amazing because it's now easy to get great canned tomatoes, but it's also not entirely necessary. Italian pizza makers tout tomatoes grown in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius as the best in the world, while the San Marzano tomato imported from Italy is fantastic.

You can also use other brands and varieties if you have a canned tomato. brand you trust maybe something that is very high quality local then use that, that's really all there is to do 2. A medium sauce pot over medium heat, melt the unsalted butter and olive oil, once melted, add the minced garlic and simmer for about 30 seconds until I can actually smell it without bending face down in the pot, take the tomato paste and beat it up while cooking for another minute. Dried herbs include thyme, oregano, basil, marjoram, and chili flakes. It's a little Italian blend that I made.

Go ahead and add them. cover the tomato paste, then add the salt, sugar, red wine vinegar and canned tomatoes, stir

ever

ything together, then bring it to a simmer and let it simmer for 25 minutes, with a lid, the sauce is quite thick. and it tends to sizzle everywhere, so the lid part is very important, don't forget. I like to make sure the sauce is super smooth by blending it with an immersion blender or just use a regular blender if that's what you have. last ingredient, finish with a teaspoon or two of fish sauce, yes fish sauce, if incorporated correctly, you shouldn't taste the fishy flavor of it, just the fishy flavor it brings, I mean, think about it, nonas have been adding anchovies and Sunday sauce for decades and decades and decades.

This isn't much different, transfer all that sauce to a resealable container and set it aside until we need it. You can do this up to five days in advance. Alright, next let's talk about the all-important tavern-style dough. This is really what sets the style of pizza apart now John's recipe calls for using one of these things: A food processor, many of us have this however I understand many of us don't but yes you can use a stand mixer or even do it by hand and I will provide it for you. examples, text and technique on how to make it on the website place the dough blade in the food processor, a regular blade works if you don't have a dough blade, then pour in room temperature water and olive oil, then our bread flour and corn flour. and I've found that adding wet ingredients before dry ones usually mixes a little more efficiently than the other way around in the processor until a lump of dough forms and starts to come together on the mixer blade once it counts up to 30 seconds and then it stops. the machine and walk away, just walk away, let it rest for 20 minutes, then release the dough from the blade, add the instant yeast and process for another 30 seconds, then cut it again and walk away, letting it rest for another 20 minutes, finally it's pretty good .

Release the dough from the blade one last time, add the kosher salt and sugar, and then run the machine for, you guessed it, another 30 seconds. This time we don't have to wait for him to rest. Drop the dough onto a clean portion of the counter. Cut the dough into four equal pieces of about 295 grams each. Lubricate the balls and the inside of a sealable container with olive oil, then place each portion inside and let the dough rest at room temperature for 30 minutes before refrigerating it. for up to a week for the sake of the video. Have a batch of pre-made dough ready to roll, be sure to take the dough out of the refrigerator at least two hours before you want to roll it out, otherwise rolling it out will be a nightmare this time, you'll want to lightly dust your work surface with flour to prevent the dough from rolling out. dough sticking because yes, let's roll out the dough now, some pizza makers consider rolling out dough a sin, but those people have probably never made tavern style pizza, I mean, how?

Otherwise we're supposed to make the pizza so thin that it's a rolling pin or a dough cheater and I'm willing to bet a lot of shillings that you don't have a dough sheeter in your crib. I mean, I know I don't have it, so we're going to use a large rolling pin to apply even pressure applying a light dusting of flour where necessary. Make sure you roll out the dough into nice, perfect circles which should be between 14 and 15 inches long once all the zedo is rolled out. We can't. forget a crucial, very crucial step, a really important thing to do with tavern style dough is called docking, just another way of saying, poking holes in the dill, which which will keep it from rising too much because remember we want a thin cookie crust if not I don't have one of these fancy Docker things just use a fork to dock each piece of dough front and back and then just place them on a large tray lined with parchment sandwiching each piece between more parchment to prevent them from sticking when it was.

Telling you about that thing that John taught me and that made my pizza so much better. Well, this is it. We need to let the cut dough rest overnight in the refrigerator to cure. This will help remove unwanted moisture and prevent things from rising. too much, remember we don't want that thin crust pizza, we want that Cracker thin crust pizza. Now keep in mind that the dough starts to harden if left to cure in the refrigerator for more than a day, so plan accordingly as this extra step may seem like a problem. a lot for the hospitalized pizza maker, but I can't stress its importance curing the dough, do you want to be good or do you want to be great?

Come on, okay, Z-day has finally arrived to bake our zaz. The good news is that this. The style of pizza does not depend on live fire. It is made in commercial ovens and luckily for us, we can equip our home ovens to be quite similar. To make our oven pizza friendly, we really need to make sure we have the right equipment to Good job, so here I have a pizza stone, it's a heavy piece of ceramic that is basically loaded with heat in the oven. I've been using it for years. This is completely new to me.

This is something John told me about baking steel and yes, this thing. It's like literally 25 pounds. I mean I think it's more than that according to John and I've seen it first hand, this blisters the bottom of the crust much better than this, however I understand these are like two specialty items and if I'm going to make pizza at home. I recommend picking them up, but you can also use a sheet pan if you don't have any of these. If you don't have steel or stone, a large sheet tray can do the job. It's okay, you can use it as a pizza stone and a pizza peel.

Just do the same thing I do in the following steps with the pan if you are using it before doing anything, preheat your oven to 550 degrees Fahrenheit or 500 if your oven doesn't go any higher, then place the pizza steel on the center rack of your oven, close it and let everything heat up for at least an hour before baking pizza. Now my kitchen is not necessarily designed for baking. pizzas and if you are in a similar boat I suggest you take precautions, close room doors, open windows and a makeshift box fan is a decent bandit. If you don't have good hood ventilation, today we're using whole milk mozzarella to Our pizzas have a fantastic, rich flavor, fantastic stretchability, and brown at the perfect price for the style of pizza.

Most of the time, you'll buy them in loaf form, either pre-wrapped in plastic and somewhere in the refrigerator, or you can. Go up to the deli manager and ask him to cut you some good bread. Either way, shred it with a grater, then place it in a container and keep it ready to prepare the pizzas we are going to cover. peels or baking sheet if you are using it with a pinch of fine corn flour, then place a piece of cured dough right on top, place the dough once again on the peel, then drop some of our cooled pizza sauce and spread the edge thinly to edge, as John would say, bring Icarus closer to the edge.

Tavern-style pizza has many charms, but cornichone is not one of those wise words, so sprinkle moths all over the top for this pizza, let's go with a Chicago. Classic spicy Italian sausage and giardinera, for which I have recipe instructional videos so you can go ahead and watch them if you want. I'll go ahead and leave a link somewhere, but you know, feel free to add any toppings you want. I would like your pizza. I mean, after all, this is your pizza. You know, do your thing. Oh, and if you don't know yet. I like my giant sausage.

My girlfriend would say that those sausages are more like meatballs, but yes, I like them. a little big, let me know what you like in the comments below, go ahead and pour as much or as little of the planter you want, just make sure you drain

most

of that oil. A little is fine there, but you don't want a ton of oil on the pizza, finish with a little more mozzarella and a light grating of Parmigiano Reggiano on top and boom, my friends it's a Chicago Tavern style pizza ready for the oven before Toss the pizza, go ahead and shake it a few times. just to make sure it's not stuck to the peel this is where the cornmeal comes in so tossing the pizza may take a little practice just go ahead and aim for the back of the pizza steel and once touch the dough lightly, pull the pizza peel back by sliding the Zar directly onto the surface, don't worry if you mess it up, everyone has to do it a few times before they get it right, so do your best at minute eight.

Mark, go ahead and rotate the pizza and then let it When it's done cooking, remove the pizza from the oven and let it cool for a few minutes on a rack before cutting it. The rack will only help keep things from getting soggy if cooked properly. The cheese should brown well on the bottom. with some spots and the crust Mega crispy foreign crust between the corn flour that likes the super crispy texture of the pizza the big thick toppings the robust sauce and the chard edges for me in my book, this pizza has it all Zion , these corner pieces never make it to the table they are always eating in the box, so in honor of that, I haveI have to go see my boy John, he finances the money.

He delivers pizza monthly, so if you're in town, contact him, you might find yourself in possession. for a very rare and potentially even the best pizza in town, that's a big statement, but I'll say it too, as always, if you try to make this, send me a photo of what you made on Instagram. I love seeing your creations, thank you. bajillion times more to watch it if you dug the video, got value out of it, are going to make your own tavern style pizza, like the channel if you're new, all that good stuff and see you very soon.

Thank you soon I want to try it yes