Deep Dish Pizza Quest, Part 1

Jesse Sutton--  Hi readers,

So two things you should know about me are 1) that I spent my formative chef years in Chicago, and 2) I used to be the chef of a restaurant that featured pizza (the dear, departed Social Wine Bar).  Now, I have never brought those two parts of my personality together before, but this pandemic has me wracked with a culinarily boredom that has a way of spurring me to take on insane projects.  Just today, I pledged to recreate a four-course Fredy Girardet lunch, from a Saveur magazine from 1998.  (It'll be easy, I will just need to figure out a way to wrangle squab, langoustines, truffles, veal stock, and foie gras into my home pantry at the same time.  It says something about culinary shopping opportunities that the most annoying of those is likely to be the veal stock.  Anyway...)

So given my new proclivity for insane projects (you know, like blogs, podcasts, that kinda thing), I have decided to combine my intense love of gut-busting, inch-plus-thick, cheese on the bottom, sauce on the top Chicago deep dish pizza with my fussy, dorky, hands-on need to learn to cook everything in the world in my small, poorly-appointed home kitchen.  (It's not that bad.)

This is new for me.  The pizzas we sold at Social were of the Roman style.  OO pizza flour, given a quick ferment and rolled almost cracker-thin, so they barely held a gossamer-thin layer of often exotic toppings (although Roman toppings are rarely exotic), and baked up crispy in 2 minutes flat, in a roaring wood fire, in a gigantic brick oven.  Nothing wrong with that pizza.  I truly believe that we were the best in town.  

Chicago-style pizza is something different.  The crust is dense and bready, and used to line a 14" by 2" pizza pan, a pan that, to my knowledge, has no other application in the modern kitchen.  The toppings are mainstream and homespun.  The mozzarella cheese goes down over them in a thick layer that would overwhelm a Roman-style crust.  The tomatoes go on top, spread edge-to-edge, to completely obscure the mozz.  Then, a sprinkling of parmesan (not I did not specify Parmigiano-Reggiano, no one uses that in Chicago), and into the oven for 45-55 minutes.  A regular, gas oven.  You know, like regular people have at home.  (Note that a real deck oven would be preferable, but I'm just happy my little oven works...)

Now, this type of pizza is controversial.  There are three distinct camps: people from Chicago (that like it, unreservedly), people who aren't from Chicago who love it (the good ones, the decent people, the people worth knowing), and people who don't get it, due to lack of personal sophistication, or perhaps poor upbringing.  It pains me to say this, but my good buddy Nate falls among this third group.  He is from New York, and he thinks that makes his opinion important.  (Just like every New Yorker you've ever met.)  He says it's not pizza, a point I am almost willing to concede.  It's something better.

{It's pizza casserole.  Calling a deep dish pizza pizza is like calling meatloaf a hamburger.  -NW}

Anyway, I was working on a review for The Italian American Cookbook, by John Mariani, and I came across a recipe for deep dish pizza crust.  Since I was recipe testing that book anyway, I added that to my list.  (That review, by the way, is in the works, and will be out within a week.)  

So the photos are my first attempt!  I should say for the record that I was only interested in the crust recipe, just as a place to start.  I already had strong ideas about how Chicago-syle pizza should be filled and topped, just no idea where to start with the crust.  Bread doughs aren't my strong suit, as you'll know if you read my review of The River Cottage Bread Handbook.  But as soon as I saw the recipe, I went on Amazon and ordered a comically large pizza pan, and set to work.  

First Attempt: 3.5/5, surprisingly good, overall, but by no means perfect.

My first attempt was a spinach-and-sausage pie, in my opinion the platonic ideal of the deep dish pizza.  I am not going to do a recipe, at least not yet.  This is chronicling my pizza journey.  When I arrive at a recipe worth publishing, I'll let you know.  Here's how it went, layer-by-layer:

The Crust: This was the main recipe I got out of the John Mariani cookbook.  The first thing I should tell you is that was surprisingly good, especially for a first attempt.  The second thing is that it was the weakest link of the pizza.  Don't take that as too much of a knock, however.  The toppings for deep dish pie are pretty straight-forward, and I have a fair amount of pizza experience.  The crust was the unknown quantity, and the recipe fared OK.  I was forced to use AP flour instead of bread flour, but that didn't seem to hurt the texture much.  What it really lacked was flavor, which was a shame, since it got 2 rounds of fermentation, plus sugar, salt, and a large proportion of cornmeal.  It was just a little drab, and a little cakey.  Also, I need to get better at pressing the dough thin enough, there were bites that were really bready, but that's a human error thing and I'll get it down.

What I'll do different next time: Well, for increased depth of flavor, I plan on swapping the sugar for honey, or even cane syrup, and adding more salt.  I want to try it with bread flour, but I don't want to change too many variables at once.  Also, I will be weighing the housewife-ass cookbook recipe and putting it into baker's percentages, like I should have this time, so I can modify it like an adult.  Embarrassing.  

The Sausage: This worked out perfectly.  My secret for sausage pizza is to put the sausage in raw.  Sausage cooks way faster than pizza crust.  For deep-dish, and I know this sounds insane, you want to pat the sausage into thin patties and leave a layer all the way across the bottom crust, so it looks like a gigantic sausage patty.  This seems crazy, but it means moist, perfect sausage in every bite, and it doesn't get dry or mealy.  I used 5 links (18 oz) of hot Italian from the grocery store.  It seems like a lot, but it was just enough.

What I'll do different next time: Well, eventually, we will be trying different toppings, but until we get this perfect, nothing at all.

The Spinach: I used one brick of Bird's Eye frozen spinach, thawed and wilted with a few sliced and sauteed cloves of garlic.  

What I'll do different next time: There just wasn't nearly enough.  I'm going to add a second box of spinach.  Also, I'm not fully convinced that wilting the spinach was necessary.  The pizza gets a lot of oven time.  I'm going to try leaving it just thawed and wrung out, and just scatter it with the sauteed garlic.

The Mozz: I know I'm a food snob, but i used bag mozz.  Part-skim, pre-shredded, bag mozz.  Just like nearly every pizza place in the universe.  Don't you judge me.

What I'll do different next time: One day, I may try this with fresh mozz, but I didn't want to monkey with the formula on the first attempt, and certainly won't until I can get the crust perfect.

The Tomatoes: That's right, Chicago pizza doesn't always use sauce.  Sometimes, it's just diced canned tomatoes with a little seasoning.  I took two 26-ounce boxes of organic diced tomatoes, shook them in a strainer to drain, got them all over my shoes, and then spread what was left in a thin layer over the cheese.  It was just enough to make a perfect layer.  I seasoned this with a pinch of chili flake, a pinch of salt, and some oregano from D's garden.  

What I'll do different next time: Not a goddamn thing.  Perfection achieved.

The Parm: Bag parm.  Lots of pizza places use bag parm.  One time I texted Nate "I think I'm the only chef in the world who has ever finished a farro risotto with walnuts and vincotto with bag parmesan and bone marrow, before topping it with seared quail."  He made fun of me.  But still.  Maybe one day we will mess with improved cheese toppers, bur for now, industry standard reigns supreme.

Look at the size of this slice!

This is going to be a fun project.  Stay tuned.

-JS