Okay, so this is kind of cheating, BUT it's deep dish pizza so it's an automatic pass, right? Last year (in my old apartment with questionable lighting), I made this to watch the season finale of The Good Wife so we could celebrate with some Chicago fare to say goodbye to a Chicago-based show. Now that the blog is up and running and the spinoff, The Good Fight is up and running, I thought it was a great time to post this instant favorite. Although it's a huge oversight that (to my recollection) we never see them eat deep dish in the show, it can be inferred, right? I live in New York surrounded by amazing pizza, but there are times when deep dish pizza is the only answer. I was really nervous to try this out, considering when you go to the original Uno in Chicago, you order about an hour in advance, I thought the process invited more than one way to completely mess up. Turns out, it's time consuming, but I didn't have much to worry about and I was treated to leftover deep dish for days (it's just as good re-heated).
Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza
(loosely) inspired by The Good Wife and now The Good Fight
makes 1 9-inch pizza
crust
- 1 5/8 cups flour
- 1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
- 5/8 tsp salt
- 1/2 tbsp sugar
- 1/2 packet active dry yeast
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter, divided (half softened, half melted and slightly cooled)
- olive oil
Mix the flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar and yeast in a bowl and give them a quick mix together either by hand with a wooden spoon or with an electric mixer on low. Add warm water (around 90-100ºF) and melted butter. Beat the dough ingredients together on low. If you do not have a dough hook, when the dough starts to form, knead it by hand. It should become soft and pull away from the sides of the bowl when it is ready. If it needs softening, add warm water 1 tsp at a time or if it is too soft, add flour 1 tbsp at a time.
Remove dough from the bowl and form it into a ball. Place the dough ball in a mixing bowl lightly greased with olive oil and cover tightly with aluminum foil. Let it rise in a warm environment for 1-2 hours until it doubles in size. (You can place the bowl in a preheated then turned off oven to help it rise).
Once it's risen, flour a work surface and punch down the dough to remove air pockets. Roll the dough out, spread the 1/4 cup of softened butter on top, roll it up and form it into a ball. Place it back into the greased bowl. Cover with foil and let rise in the refrigerator for 1 hour. In the meantime, make the sauce.
sauce
- 1 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1/2 small onion, grated
- 3/8 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp dried oregano
- 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
- 1 1/2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/2 28oz can crushed tomatoes
- 1/8 tsp sugar
Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Once melted, add the grated onion, salt, oregano and red pepper flakes. Once the onion has begun to brown, add garlic, tomatoes and sugar. Allow the mixture to simmer over medium-low heat for about 30 minutes. It will become thick and fragrant. You should end up with about 1 1/4 cups of sauce. Remove from heat and set aside.
assemble the pizzas
toppings
- 2-4 cups shredded (or fresh) mozzarella cheese (I used both)
- 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
- any toppings you'd like!
Preheat oven to 425ºF.
Roll out risen dough on floured work surface into about a 12-inch circle. Place the dough over a deep dish cake pan or a 9-inch springform pan (which I used) and press the dough into the pan with your fingers. If this is problematic for you, I started with a thicker circle at the bottom of the pan and used my fingers to press the dough up the sides once it was already in the pan. If you have extra dough, cut it off at the edge of the pan. Brush the top edges of the dough with olive oil.
Fill the bottom of the pizza with cheese. This is where I used fresh mozz, but you can cover the bottom with shredded and it works the same. Add the toppings next. I just used sliced, slightly sautéed mushrooms. Cover the toppings with sauce. Sprinkle the top with the parmesan cheese. Because my audience loves cheese, I went against Chicago protocol and added a layer of shredded mozz to the top because you can never have enough cheese.
Bake the pizza for 20-28 minutes in the pan on top of a baking sheet in case anything spills or until the crust is golden brown. You can cook it while loosely covered in foil if your oven sometimes cooks things unevenly. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Serve and enjoy!
Re-heat the leftovers in the oven at 300ºF.
adapted from sallysbakingaddiction.com.
[made while watching The Good Wife (series finale) because it took a while!]
Think there's deep dish in that box? Image: CBS.