Deep Dish Pizza

For a couple years now, I've had a nagging desire to make a Chicago-style deep dish pizza, because sometimes the wait between Chicago visits just gets too long (and despite my best efforts, I have failed to find the kind I like in the Triangle). My research led me to the pizzamaking.com forums, but on each previous attempt I was discouraged by all the different formulations, and couldn't decide which recipe to pick. This time around though, I found this document that neatly described all the steps, along with pictures of other people's results, which looked great. I finally had a starting place, and I decided to make a 9" pie.

Follow the link for detailed instructions; I'll just describe briefly here what I did. I was very pleased with results, and am so happy that I can now make my favorite pizza whenever I want!

After mixing up all the ingredients, we briefly knead the dough just until it forms a ball. It was almost too small for my mixer!

I put the dough ball in the middle of the bowl,

and let it rise for two hours in the warm attic.

I pressed out the dough from the center,

added sliced mozzarella,

spread on drained crushed tomatoes and parmesan cheese,

and baked on a pizza stone at 450 for 23 minutes. This was not long enough; it could have used a few more minutes for the crust to get a little more golden. It was still delicious though, and I loved the crust texture.