Deep Dish Pizza

Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, my family would often get a yummy treat from Lou Malniti's. After learning to cook during my time at college, I decided to expand my horizons from mostly stir-fry to include some baking. At first I tried to bake this one at a time on our gas grill. It's possible, and I'll talk about it a bit below. But I eventually settled on waiting for the cool of autumn, or the chill of winter, and baking two of these at a time in the oven.

The dough recipe here is heavily based on a recipe I found online, but I've modified it to use some whole wheat flour and other custom additions. I also found that it works really well to use a bread machine to prepare the dough; this saves some babysitting early on, and seemed less likely to burn out the bread machine than our stand mixer.

Deep Dish Pizza Dough

Makes enough dough for two 12” deep dish pizzas

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 tablespoons active dry yeast
• 2 cups warm water
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil (canola is fine)
• 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) olive oil
• 5 1/2 cups flour (2 to 3 cups whole wheat flour, and bread or all purpose flour for the remainder)
• 1/4 cup corn meal
• 1/8 cup wheat bran
• 1/8 cup flax meal

Directions

Option 1

1. Add all items to a 2 pound loaf or larger bread machine in order listed (reversed if your bread machine needs liquids on top)
2. Run the dough cycle
3. If not starting the dough immediately, consider keeping the yeast away from the liquid.

Option 2

1. Dissolve yeast in water of a stand mixer.
2. Add all ingredients except for half of the flour.
3. Beat for 10 minutes.
4. Add remaining flour.
5. Switch to dough hook if you have one, and knead for several more minutes.
6. Let the dough rise on a counter top until doubled in size.
7. Punch down the dough, and let rise again.

He said

As a general guideline, expect the dough to take about an hour to make. Our bread machine uses a dough cycle of an hour and three minutes, and letting the dough rise manually takes a similar amount of time. Use the time while your dough is rising to prepare your toppings.

Deep Dish Pizzas

Toppings for pizzas are an expression of personal choice. When you're choosing them by hand, it's tempting to add all the vegetables (or meats) that might go well together. Be careful. Many ingredients give off moisture as they cook, and too much moisture results in a soggy pizza.

For ease I've shown some ingredients as a common base, with several options of specialized toppings. This is just how I prefer my pizzas. For instance if you can't stand onions, you can remove them from the base recipe just like you might if they were in a specialized topping list.

Ingredients for a 12” Pizza

Core ingredients

• Pizza dough
• 1/2 pound mozzarella cheese, grated
• 1/4 pound provolone cheese, grated
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 medium onion, diced
• dried oregano
• crushed red pepper flakes
• 14 ounce can diced tomatoes (or half of a 28 ounce can), drained

Sausage and mushroom topping

• 1/3 to 1/2 pound browned sausage (I like to brown a whole chub and freeze the remainder).
• 2 to 3 cups sliced mushrooms (6 to 8 ounces)
• 1/2 red bell pepper, sliced or diced

Chicken and asparagus topping

• 1/3 to 1/2 pound cooked chicken, diced. (This is a great way to use up leftover grilled chicken.)
• 8 stalks asparagus (lay them out like the spokes of a wheel).
• 1/2 red bell pepper, sliced or diced

Directions

1. Grease a 12” pizza pan (I often use a non-stick spray), or sprinkle with corn meal.
2. Punch down dough, splitting in two if necessary, and forming a ball.

3. Flatten the ball and push and stretch into the shell for your pizza. If the dough springs back too quickly, let it sit there for a few minutes (work on the other one), and try again.
4. Press the dough into the edges of your pan and try to form a crust wall, especially if you like to use too many toppings.

5. Spread 2/3 to 3/4 of the cheese out on the pizza shell, pressing into the dough as necessary. You can mix the cheeses, or try to save the provolone for the top.
6. Sprinkle oregano and red pepper flakes over the cheese.
7. Spread garlic and onion over the cheese.

8. Add specialized toppings, spread loosely across the whole pizza.

9. Spread diced tomato over your toppings.

10. Sprinkle remaining cheese over tomato, optionally grating some parmesan on top

11. Bake in 400° oven for 45 minutes, or 450° for about 40 minutes, until crust is browned and cheese is melted through.

12. Remove from oven; let rest at least five minutes (this is the hardest step, other than grating the cheese).

He said

This dinner take some commitment. It's not particularly difficult to make, but it requires a lot of time. Especially your first time I would suggest starting more than two hours in advance. Some people swear by keeping their dough in the refrigerator overnight.

When I first started trying to make this, I burned a few while figuring out how use a gas grill for the 40 plus minutes of cook time. The method I settled on was to put a pizza stone on the grill, stack a cooling rack on top, and place the pan on top of the cooling rack. This diffused the heat enough to avoid a solid black carbon crust.

In the pictures I show, I substituted mushrooms in for the asparagus in the chicken recipe. Don't get confused by the lack of green.

She said

Oh, I soooo wish I could eat this pizza. Maybe we'll need to try making with a cheese substitute sometime. I have had Mike's thin-crust pizza without cheese, and it is amazingly good, even without the cheese.