Deep-Dish Pizza Quest, Part IV: New Toppings!

 Jesse Sutton-  Hi everyone! After our recent podcast episode on the joys of Italian-American cuisine, I was inspired to knock out a couple of projects.  The first of those is the next installment of the great Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza Quest, my quixotic plan to learn the ins and outs of this most Chicagoan, this most American, this most excessive gastronomic treat.  

Here's where we're at going in:

-Our crust game is strong.  I've been using the recipe for butter-crust deep dish pizza I got from Sally's Baking Addiction, an excellent blog.  (Notes: a single recipe is enough for a 14" pizza, the recipe needs a little extra salt, and ignore the toppings on that blog, I only used the crust method.)

-Our toppings game is lights-out.  The spinach-and-sausage pie build is as follows: 18 ounces of raw Italian sausage, in a thin layer, topped with 2 frozen packs of Bird's Eye spinach, thawed and drained.  Scatter that with 6 cloves of garlic, sliced and fried, then 545g (!!) of shredded mozz.  For sauce, 2 foil boxes of Pom chopped tomatoes, well drained, topped with oregano leaves, a pinch of salt, chile flake, and some shredded or grated parmesan.

-We've only ever done 14" pizzas.  Not a huge issue, that that's enough pizza to kill 2-3 people, and kind of overkill for the kind of gatherings we've been having, lately.

 Goals for this attempt:

-It's time to start varying the toppings.  We have perfect Malnati's-style sausage and spinach pie toppings figured out, so it's time to branch out.  Today, we got pescatarian: anchovies and artichoke hearts!

-Let's make a smaller pie.  I got a 10" cake pan.  It's got sides that are a little high, but I think it'll be okay.

The Toppings: 

Pretty straightforward.  In lieu of spinach and sausage, I got myself a giant can of artichoke hearts that I'm still trying to work my way through.  My only note here is that you should avoid the oil-packed ones, or making this pizza will be a greasy mess.  I got a can at the US Foods store for like $10.  Add to that a couple of cans of anchovies (ignore the fact that they are different brands, I just happened to have 2 different cans on hand, the products are interchangeable), and we are in business.  (Note that I only used 1 and a half cans, but the rest were consumed readily.  I love anchovies.)

The cheese and tomato toppings were the same, except I cut the cheese down to a much more reasonable (but still certifiably insane) 375 grams, and the tomatoes down to 1.5 boxes of drained, chopped tomatoes.

I liked the garlic character from the previous pies, so I decided to continue adding a few cloves of fried garlic to the crust, this time on the very bottom, over the oil-brushed crust.  I let them get a little darker this time (quite by accident, I must confess), and that really boosted the flavor!  Dangerous, though.  Garlic goes from perfect to bitter in a heartbeat.

The Crust: 

Rather than risk running out of dough from a misguided guess, I just went ahead and made a full batch of the dough.  I ended up using 480g of dough, leaving 542g to waste.  Don't read too much into these numbers, they are off.  Reason being, I ended up rolling the dough a little thin.  Instead of being pillowy and abundant, it was a little too thin and cracker-y.  That '2 packs of grissini' effect.  So I need to take another crack before I start scaling the recipe for different sizes of pan.

The End Results: Another 3.5/5.  The crust was a little too thin, and therefore too tough.  Oh, and those slightly higher sides on the cake pan?  Big, big pain in the ass.  If I use this pan again, I may put a piece of folded foil under the crust, to make a sort of 'pull tab', so one can more easily extricate it from the pan.  Having said that, the flavors were absolutely fantastic.  Tomato, garlic, anchovy, artichoke, and oregano!  Amazing stuff.  Still, we both agreed that it doesn't hold a candle to the real thing, the classic sausage and spinach pie.  This made a nice pie, but for our next attempt, we are getting back to basics and continuing to refine the platonic ideal.  Ideas include subbing broccoli rabe for the spinach, using some fresh mozz, or making sausage 'balls' rather than a smooth layer.  Stay tuned.

Here is a photo series, showing the build.

Lookin' good, right?  

-JS