Fantabulous Food! Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza

Ok, so we made the dough and the sauce last week. Now we are ready to make a pizza!

If you froze your dough, make sure you take it out of the freezer the morning you want to make the pizza and it will be thawed in time to have the pizza for dinner. Also, the recipe I am going to post calls for fresh tomatoes instead of pizza sauce, but I have substituted the sauce every time I have made it before now and it is delicious.

Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza:


Ingredients:
1 recipe of pizza dough
3/4-1 lb of mozzarella cheese
1 (28 oz) can of plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped - I used about 2 cups of fresh tomatoes chopped up, reserving as much juice as possible
1 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
2-4 garlic cloves - I used about 3 tsps of minced garlic
salt
grated parmasean cheese
2 tbsp olive oil
shredded asiago and romano cheese
*Can substitute tomatoes, basil, garlic, and oregano for pizza sauce 


1. Before actually assembling the pizza, you need to prep and chop all your other ingredients. So, first I sliced my tomatoes and peppers:

Don't they look yummy :) My visiting teacher from church gave me some from her garden and there are a few of mine in there as well :) So, I diced them up (and they were perfectly ripe too - yum).

2. Then I sliced my mozzarella. I used a block of mozzarella this time, but I have always used shredded before - either way works fine.

3. I decided to use ground chicken this time, but I have used sausage, pepperoni, prosciutto, ham, etc. Really any meat is good, just make sure you cook it before it goes into the pizza. For my ground chicken, I put oil in the pan and heated it up on medium high.

Then added the chicken and two laughing cow swiss cheese wedges - these give a lovely creamy tecxture without overpowering the flavor too much.

If you use the cheese, make sure to smush it up in the chicken so it mixes evenly.

When most of the pink color was gone, I added a little milk, lemon juice, pepper and garlic salt for flavor.

and just cooked it down until the liquid evaporated completely.

4. Now to assemble to pizza. Once dough is pressed into pan and risen like dough recipe states, layer the bottom of dough with mozzarella cheese.

5. If using fresh tomatoes, etc, put the tomatoes on top of the cheese.

Then spread garlic, basil, oregano, and salt evenly over the tomatoes.

Then add peppers and whatever meat you choose.

6. If using pizza sauce, put your meats and toppings on the cheese, then cover with your sauce.

7. Sprinkle top liberally with grated parmasean cheese (and asiago and romano if you want).

And drizzle olive oil over top.

8. Bake at 475 degrees F for 35-40 minutes or until top is light golden brown.

Let it sit and cool for 15 or 20 minutes before you eat it! I speak from personal experience, this baby is really hot, especially if you use sauce - it will burn your mouth. Also, it's not as crumbly if you wait. Here is what my traditional style pizza looked like:

it was pretty crumbly, but tasted fantastic! It was different from the pizza we are all used to, but still very good. If you want a flavor like you are used to at a restaurant, use pizza sauce! The pizza with fresh tomatoes was good, but if I had been excited about having pizza similar to what I am used to, I would have been very disappointed. This was is really good, but definitely a different flavor (honestly, a little more of a sophisticated flavor if that makes sense).

So, I hope you enjoy your pizza :) Post pictures of yours if you make one so we can all see how yours turned out!