Chicago style

Pete-za Pete-za's been taking it easy lately.
I've been enjoying the idle pleasures of life.
In these idle moments, I find clarity.
The clarity to overcome a deep pizza funk (see previous post 3.18.08)

My original goal with this blog was to perfect a traditional Pizza Napoletana at home.

This requires an 800F+ oven. Not possible in my apartment.

As such, I began focusing on a more realistic goal:

Deep Dish Pizza

I've always liked deep dish pizza. Lou Malnati's, Gino's East, Pizzeria Uno, all pretty awesome as far as I'm concerned.

The best part is the pizza bakes at 425 degrees. Anybody can do that.

Many pizza snobs love trashing Chicago style pizza. Saying that at best Chicago pizza is a good casserole. This only slightly offends me as a Chicagoan.
I don't think it's worth comparing Chicago deep dish to thin crust pizzas (New York, New Haven, Neopolitan). They're completely different.
However, both can be made deliciously, involving essentially the same ingredients. So this blog will now celebrate pizza in all of it's delicious forms.

This is a photo of my new cookbook made by Cook's Illustrated. They have 4 pages dedicated to deep dish pizza. My deep dish challenge started here the other night.

We pretended what it would be like to make a pizza after the apocalypse (Earth Hour). I screwed the recipe up at least five times, but it still turned out great. It was incredibly easy, I can't wait to actually follow the recipe next time.

I'm going to try putting the cheese on the bottom next time.



Crust was too dense. I want it to be buttery and flakey.

I tossed some fresh basil on top.


More deep dish experiments and recipes this week.