Chicago-Style

We are a family of pizza lovers in this house. When my children were small, we ate a lot of the kid-friendly cheese and pepperoni pizzas. Now that they are older, we enjoy a wide variety of topping and crust choices. One specialty pizza I had heard about, but never tried, was the Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza. I decided now was the perfect time to give it a go!

I quickly learned there are many recipes for deep dish pizza. After looking at several recipes, I decided on the King Arthur Flour recipe found HERE. In my opinion, King Arthur Flour has the best recipe, hands-down. Ideally, I would make this pizza in a cast iron pizza pan or skillet. I don't have a cast iron skillet, so I used a 10-inch ovenproof skillet. It worked wonderfully. If you don't have a deep dish pizza pan or skillet that's ovenproof, use what you have - a cake pan or even a roasting pan will work just as well.

What makes this pizza so different and so delicious - other than the crust - are the toppings. Most traditional pizzas have a tomato-based sauce, meats, vegetables, and cheese. You can certainly use those toppings on a deep dish pizza. The Chicago-style pizza uses crushed or diced tomatoes (well drained) blended with basil, oregano, garlic, and olive oil instead of a sauce. At first, I was skeptical about not using a sauce, but the tomatoes are fantastic. (I've now come to prefer tomatoes instead of sauce on my pizzas.) The pizza shown below has Italian sausage, mozzarella, tomatoes, and Parmesan cheese for toppings. Again, you can use whatever you like for toppings.

Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza

And this is a slightly less traditional Chicago-style Deep Dish Pizza made with pepperoni instead of Italian sausage. As you can see, I'm getting better each time I make it!

Enjoy!

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