Homemade Deep Dish Pizza

When it comes to the Great Pizza Wars, New York Style almost always comes out on top. Its competitor, the famous Chicago-style deep dish pizza, doesn’t receive enough respect in this game, which is a shame, really. It’s clearly the superior pizza – it’s thicker, more flavorful, and can hold more toppings than a measly slice of New York Pizza. Sadly, it’s difficult to find a place in any given city outside of Chicago that caters exclusively to deep dish pizza, but thankfully, it’s quite easy to make your own at home by following this deep dish pizza recipe.



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You will need the following ingredients (from the original recipe):

16 ounces water
1/8-ounce yeast
.5 ounces of salt
2 pounds bread flour
1/4 cup olive oil

The crust is what makes the deep dish pizza (literally!), so you have to make sure you have the proper ingredients. For those who have tried making other types of pizza crusts, the process is more or less the same; this quick recipe is adapted from one found here. You combine yeast and water until the water is dissolved, then combine it with salt, bread flour, and olive oil using a dough hook (though you can use your hands if you don’t happen to have a dough hook handy).

Once the dough has formed into a ball, coat it in olive oil and let sit in a warm place for about four hours. This will allow the dough to rise. Once it’s risen, lightly coat it in flower. Here’s the important part:

Spread the dough out in a pan with high, thick edges, ensuring the base of the crust is still good and thick. Make sure you put the cheese on first – a good deep dish goes cheese, sauce, then toppings, though you can add a little mozzarella cheese on top of the toppings for some extra flavor.

Once the pizza is prepared, put it in the oven preheated to 425 degrees for about 30 minutes, perhaps a little longer if you made your crust a bit thicker. Once it’s done, take it out and enjoy!

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