Deep dish pizza in a cast iron skillet!

Tonight was my first attempt at making a Chicago style stuffed crust pizza ala Giordano's. It didn't turn out too bad for a first try, but it needs some tweaking.

First, I need to find a crust recipe that's a little flakier and more pastry-like. What I used was good but a bit too bready and yeasty for Chicago style. It would make the perfect classic American hand-tossed pizza though.

When putting on the top layer of crust, I need to do a better job of sealing it to the bottom layer. The top separated a bit while cooking.

Probably could have used about 10 more minutes of cooking. I baked the pizza for about 30 minutes. It was fully cooked, but I think 40 minutes would have made it better. Of course, this may change as I change my dough recipe.

The sauce I made from scratch and was fabulous, but I think I'll scale back just a bit on the oregano next time.

BTW, I cooked this pie in my 12" cast iron skilled. What an amazing deep dish pan it makes! The outside of the crust came out so nice and crispy, and the pie itself just slid right out of the skillet.

Oh my!

You had me at "Chicago style stuffed crust pizza ala Giordano's."

When you get that crust to taste as good as it looks, I'll be ready to take notes.

Roger

For the "Thick Crust Pizza" the pizza places up here usually bake the crust in advance with a little bit of pizza sauce on top of the dough. They do this to firm up the crust and get rid of the bread texture while baking in some tomato flavor into the crust. After a couple, or few hours of cooling, they then add the ingredients on the cooled crust and re-bake the pie. The amount of time varies with the amount of toppings. They call the thick crust pizza "Sicilian" or square since it is thick....like the Sicilians are a thick, square peoples. Or so I've been told.... I'm sure this would work with your round, cast iron skillit pizza.

Cheers

Wow, that looks awesome. I love deep dish pizza, the sauce is so good. I need to try this, thanks for the idea!

Trench, that is obscenely delicious looking.

What temperature did you use? Those deep dish pies need at least a half hour of cooking, so you can't blast it at 600. I use a Le Creuset enameled skillet- works fine.

That's a very pretty bamboo cutting board, but be careful- it's a knife killer.

Looks awesome! Try Peter Rinehart's, "American Pie" cookbook. He has a recipe for deep dish crust. I've not tried it, but everything else I've tried out of his books have come out pretty nicely.

Gino's East Baker's Formula:

100% flour
50% water
15% oil (I like corn, but some prefer canola
)3% olive oil
2% sugar
1% cream of tartar
1% salt
0.75% IDY
Yellow food coloring - about 1% but be careful. 1/2 t per pound flour gets the right color.

Method,
1) Dissolve salt and yellow food coloring in water.
2) Add half of the flour and the yeast.
3) Stir until mixed.
4) Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let sit for 20 minutes.
5) Add the rest of the ingredients and stir until combined.
6) Hand kneed for 2 minutes.
7) Place dough ball in a gallon ziplock bag and let proof in the fridge for 24 hours.

That looked good!

Kouros said:

Gino's East Baker's Formula:

100% flour
50% water
15% oil (I like corn, but some prefer canola
)3% olive oil
2% sugar
1% cream of tartar
1% salt
0.75% IDY
Yellow food coloring - about 1% but be careful. 1/2 t per pound flour gets the right color.

Method,
1) Dissolve salt and yellow food coloring in water.
2) Add half of the flour and the yeast.
3) Stir until mixed.
4) Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let sit for 20 minutes.
5) Add the rest of the ingredients and stir until combined.
6) Hand kneed for 2 minutes.
7) Place dough ball in a gallon ziplock bag and let proof in the fridge for 24 hours.

Click to expand...

Cool. Thanks!

WOW!! Is it weird that I'm instantly starving??

ouch said:

Cool. Thanks!

Click to expand...

Traitor!

Rughi said:

Oh my!

You had me at "Chicago style stuffed crust pizza ala Giordano's."

When you get that crust to taste as good as it looks, I'll be ready to take notes.

Roger

Click to expand...

Believe me, the crust DID taste as good as it looked. It just wasn't quite the style I was looking for for this particular pie.

shamus said:

For the "Thick Crust Pizza" the pizza places up here usually bake the crust in advance with a little bit of pizza sauce on top of the dough. They do this to firm up the crust and get rid of the bread texture while baking in some tomato flavor into the crust. After a couple, or few hours of cooling, they then add the ingredients on the cooled crust and re-bake the pie. The amount of time varies with the amount of toppings. They call the thick crust pizza "Sicilian" or square since it is thick....like the Sicilians are a thick, square peoples. Or so I've been told.... I'm sure this would work with your round, cast iron skillit pizza.

Cheers

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions, but Sicilian is definitely not what I'm going for. Probably my least favorite style of pizza.

13ALPHA said:

Wow, that looks awesome. I love deep dish pizza, the sauce is so good. I need to try this, thanks for the idea!

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The sauce was great. My girlfriend said she could sit down with a spoon and eat a bowl of it by itself.

If you're interested, the recipes I used for both the sauce and crust are here. I followed the crust recipe exactly, but used 2/3 of the dough for the bottom and 1/3 for the top layer since the recipe is not for a stuffed crust.

The sauce recipe I doubled since I didn't have any other use for a half can of tomatoes. I also used an entire can of tomato paste rather than the 4 tablespoons that would have gone into my doubled recipe, effectively quintupling the amount called for. Again, I didn't have any use for the leftover tomato paste and I hate waste. Plus I just like a nice thick sauce. Also, the next time I make the sauce I will probably cut the amount of oregano by a 1/3 or even a 1/2. There was just a bit too much for my tastes, even though it was still pretty good.

ouch said:

What temperature did you use? Those deep dish pies need at least a half hour of cooking, so you can't blast it at 600. I use a Le Creuset enameled skillet- works fine.

That's a very pretty bamboo cutting board, but be careful- it's a knife killer.

Click to expand...

I baked at 400 for 30 minutes. Probably could have gone to 35 or 40, just to let the crust brown up a little more.

Don't worry about the bamboo killing the knives. I'm just using cheap Wal-Mart junk right now.

Jim said:

Traitor!

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If I can get my hands on a wood or coal fired brick oven, I'd love to try my hand at one of those as well.

Trench said:

...If I can get my hands on a wood or coal fired brick oven, I'd love to try my hand at one of those as well.

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Three words:
Big
Green
Egg.

Except for the drier environment and an incredible thermal mass that pulls you through opening and closing, I don't think my father in law's backyard pizza oven (it's about the size of the 2001 obelisk and takes a wheelbarrow full of cord wood to heat through) has any cooking advantages over my egg.

Roger

Jim said:

Traitor!

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What can I say? My kid loves when I make her a deep dish pie.

As far as I'm concerned there's NY and there's the rest of the world.

ouch said:

What can I say? My kid loves when I make her a deep dish pie.

As far as I'm concerned there's NY and there's the rest of the world.

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I so need to make a pizza soon, I cracked my primo pizza stone a few weeks ago though Time to order another oneael to fit my grill.

Mich

Trench said:

Thanks for the suggestions, but Sicilian is definitely not what I'm going for. Probably my least favorite style of pizza.

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You would feel differently after trying this $5 Sicilian slice from Difara's in Brooklyn:

Ahhh..... but would I? Sicilian style Pizza is a NY favorite and while it has a thicker crust, no one could call it a Chicago style deep dish.

I'm not fussy, I'd eat any of these!

warlandsboy said:

I'm not fussy, I'd eat any of these!

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I agree. Pizza is my favouite vegetable. When I was a kid in TMR Montreal my did would pick up a deep dish pizza at Piazza Tommaso. It was 40 years later when a buddy of mine, Howard, had an accident in his kitchen . .. a visitor to his kitchen knocked some ground cloves off the shelf into the tomato sauce he was making. Now and then I like to add a little clove to my tomato sauce for taste or perhaps nostalgia. (just thinking about it now . . . to my mind there is something in common between basil and clove)