Baked A Deep Dish Pizza From Scratch

July 12, 2011 Filed in: Food | Cooking
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"I make myself pizza if it comes down to that drastic measurement."
--Corey Haim

In 1943, former Texas Longhorns football player Ike Sewell introduced a new kind of pizza at Pizzeria Uno in Chicago. After World War II, many American servicemen encountered pizza in Italy, but Sewell complained that pizza's thin crust was not substantial enough to make a meal. After experimenting with different recipes, he opened his pizzeria in December 1943. This is how Chicago-style deep dish pizza was born.

It's no secret that I love Zachary's deep dish pizzas, but I had not ever made my own deep dish pizza before. Tonight, I gave it a shot. I tried using a recipe from Jeff Smith (the Frugal Gourmet).

I started by dissolving rapid rise yeast in the bowl for our stand mixer.
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I added oil to the mix.
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I added flour and mixed that up in the stand mixer for ten minutes.
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After adding more flour and mixing for a little bit longer, the dough was almost done. The next step is to let it rise.
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While I waited for that, I prepped the ingredients that were going to go into the pie. I drained whole, peeled, Italian style tomatoes and squished them.
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I sliced up mozzarella in large, flat pieces.
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The dough rose to a pretty large size.
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I punched it down and let it rise again.
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I kneaded the dough into a round pan.
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I placed a layer of cheese on the bottom of the pie and followed that up with the tomatoes.
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I added mushrooms and spinach on top.
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I drizzled some olive oil and grated some parmesan cheese over the spinach.
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I baked it in the oven for 40 minutes and let it cool down for a few minutes.
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I was pretty happy with how it came out. The dough was pretty good, and I was surprised it didn't require any parbaking. It was cheesy and delicious. It was not too difficult to put this all together. It was nice to be able to make a deep dish pizza because it's one of my favorite foods.

I'm definitely going to make this again. This was a good recipe and I'm looking forward to using it in the future.
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