Chicago-Style Deep-Dish Pizza (pg 616)

According to Joy, the key to a Chicago-style pizza is to use plenty of cheese and to put the sauce on top. Otherwise, you can fill it with whatever you like. We had some red peppers and a random andouille sausage to use up and were not disappointed by the flavor combo at all. For inspiration, there are some recommended combos on pg 615 that look fun to try: @Dad... if you still have leeks laying around; "melted leeks", mushroom, cheese & olive oil?

Here's how this recipe went...
THE DOUGH
What I (this is Jess) know of deep dish pizza is what I've eaten at Uno's which always had a VERY buttery crust. Spoiler: this was not that. Joy only recommends adding 2 tbsp of melted butter to the basic pizza dough recipe (pg 614) of flour, water, yeast, olive oil and salt and it didn't really seem to make a difference. On the bright side of dough making... The molten butter didn't kill my yeast and kneading with the Kitchen Aid worked just fine.

Pictured above is a cat paw dent. Dough and cats like the same warm spot in our house.

After a 90 minute rise, the dough gets spread out into a round sheet and placed into a buttered/corn-mealed cast iron pan. 10/10 would recommend buttering with bare-hands. It was very fun.

THE FILLINGS

On top of the dough, go the cheese and goodies. As recommended, we used shredded mozzarella and sliced provolone (there's never a shortage of cheese in our house.) Then on top of that, put our sliced red pepper, onions and andouille. Note: use MORE MEAT!!! Like a lot more meat.

We didn't have the ingredients to make marinara (pg 556) so topped with a jar of spicy red pepper sauce we had in the pantry and a LOT of grated parm.

We threw our (literal) pie into the oven for 5 seconds at 425 and pulled it right back out because we forgot to drizzle it with olive oil. 34 minutes of baking later, we had a golden brown crust, gooey cheese and really great sausage/pepper/onion flavor. Would definitely make again with MORE MEAT!!!!

⭐⭐⭐⭐ from Jess whose crust expectations were ruined by Uno's.