A Chicago Style Pizza is also referred to as a deep-dish pizza, which is a thick pizza cooked in a pan and stacked with cheese. It also includes ingredients like meat and veggies, and sauce. Because of the oil in the pan, the crust, which is typically two to three inches tall, becomes somewhat cooked.
The primary contrast between deep-dish pizza and New York-style or Neapolitan pizza is that the dough is quite thick. This results in a bulky pizza that resembles a pie more so than a flatbread. The crust of the pizza is thin to medium in thickness, despite the fact that the pizza as a whole is fairly thick.
Deep-Dish Pizza vs Stuffed Pizza
Although stuffed pizza and deep-dish pizza both originated in Chicago, the two should not be considered to be ‘Chicago-style pizza.’ In 1974, when Nancy’s and Giordano’s both started serving food, stuffed pizza was born. They claim that the scarciedda or Easter pies in their recipes are adaptations of historical family recipes from Italy.
Meat and/or cheese are filled between two layers of pastry in these savoury pies. The Chicago style filled pizza is often deeper than other varieties. This kind of pizza immediately became well-known and is still widely consumed today.
What ingredients go into Chicago-Style Pizza?
Let’s look at what makes the layers of this pizza so unique now that you have a basic understanding of what Chicago-style pizza is.
Crust
What makes Chicago style pizza so exceptional is the crispy-edged, flaky crust. To create such a crust, you must radically stray from the traditional pizza crust recipe and adopt a whole new technique employing cornmeal.
The Chicago style pizza crust is made of cornmeal, which is wonderful at making things crunchy. The substantial amount of butter in this crust is another distinctive quality. It has one of the creamiest pizza crusts you’ll ever encounter.
So, how do you get that taste that is really creamy? Laminating the pizza dough is the secret. The act of rolling and folding butter into pizza dough is known as lamination. We are aware that this may seem strange to novice bakers, but this procedure is what gives Chicago style pizzas their flaky crust.
And it is simple—just butter your dough before rolling it up. To seal the butter within, fold the dough again down its length. Despite all of this rolling and flaking, the final crust will be mouthwateringly soft.
Sauce
A Chicago Style Pizza uses pizza sauce that is exceptionally thick and acidic. The pizza sauce used in Chicago is cooked on a stovetop and contains garlic. While you wait for the dough to ferment, prepare it and set it to boil.
As a result, the sauce’s texture will be thickened, and the various tastes will be able to combine effectively. Red pepper flakes may be used if you enjoy a little bit of spice.
Cheese
The abundance of cheese used in Chicago style pizza is perhaps its most distinctive feature. Both sliced and shredded mozzarella is acceptable. Whichever option you use, be sure to acquire your slices or shreds from a fresh cheese chunk.
It’s okay if you don’t have a brick of mozzarella cheese. Although you may always use the pre-shredded kind, fresh mozzarella has a far more flavorful flavour than pre-sliced mozzarella.
How to make Deep-Dish Pizza?
Wheat flour and sometimes semolina flour is used to make the dough for a deep-dish pizza. This gives the crust a distinctly yellowish tint. The recipe also contains corn oil or butter, which gives the food its buttery, biscuit-like flavour.
A spherical steel pan that resembles a cake or pie pan is used to make deep-dish pizza. In order to create a basin for a layer of cheese and fillings that are thick, the dough is forced up the edges of the pan. The pan is greased to make removal simple and to give the crust’s edges a cooked appearance.
When it comes to the fillings, they are added in reverse order. It starts with the cheese on the bottom, followed by any meat or vegetable toppings, and finally, the tomato sauce. This is done to avoid cheese burning since deep-dish pizzas need a longer cooking time. Commonly prepared from crushed canned tomatoes, tomato sauce is lumpy and uncooked.
Although stuffed pizza may seem the same from the surface, as you cut into it, the differences become apparent. Similar to deep-dish pizza, the toppings and cheese are placed within a thick layer of dough that creates a basin in a high-sided pan.
In contrast, filled pizza has an extra layer of dough that is placed on top and pushed to the edges of the crust before tomato sauce is added. The dough is often produced with canola oil rather than maize oil, and it is also flakier.
Why is Chicago Pizza made a certain way?
Pizzas are typically put together in this order: dough, sauce, cheese, and toppings. However, as we just discussed, a Chicago style pizza has somewhat different layering, with dough, cheese, toppings, and sauce.
Crust
Although “pizza pie” is a frequent name for a complete pizza, it doesn’t truly adequately represent the majority of pizza varieties. Pizzas made in the Italian and New York styles are really flatbreads covered with a thin layer of toppings.
However, Chicago pizza is cooked in a circular pan resembling a pie plate. This is known as a “deep dish,” giving the pizza its other moniker. Before the toppings are added, the buttery, rich dough is spread on the bottom and worked up the sides of the greased pan. It ought to be rich, flaky, and crispy.
Assembly
Pizza is typically put together in the following order: dough, sauce, cheese, and toppings. On the other hand, the building sequence differs differently from a Chicago style pizza. If the lovely mozzarella cheese was on top and had indirect heat for the whole baking period, it would burn or get rubbery.
Deep-dish pizzas need longer baking times than thin-crust pizzas. Pizzas made in Chicago are thus constructed using the following ingredients: dough, cheese, toppings, and tomato sauce.
Toppings
A limited number of toppings may be placed on thin pizza slices before they break or get mushy. But since the dough of a deep-dish pizza is thicker, there is more space for toppings. A deep-dish slice may be topped with a variety of mouthwatering toppings since it is designed to be eaten with a knife and fork rather than with your hands.
Conclusion
For everyone who likes deep-dish pies, Chicago style pizza is definitely a must-try. If reading this article made your mouth swim, why not place an order now?
Or, even better, create your own using the advice we’ve provided here. All you need to do is correctly prepare the dough, gather the topping’s ingredients, and keep in mind how to stack the components.
