If you’ve been following the Real Deep Dish page on Facebook, you’ve probably seen these. My first Chicago Cubs themed Deep Dish Pizza was made on October 15, 2016. This was Game 1 of the NLCS. I’m not saying that a deep dish Cubs pizza made Miguel Montero hit a grand slam home run followed by a Dexter Fowler homer but… YOU CAN’T PROVE THAT IT DIDN’T!!! I would like to apologize for not baking another deep dish Cubs pizza until October 30th (Game 5). Had I realized the power of these pies sooner, I would have baked one every night. This pizza was my first one ever made with BLUE PIZZA DOUGH. Game 6 involved the reheating and consumption of slices leftover from… Read More »Cubs Deep Dish Pizzas are Good Luck!
DD101 Extra: Freezing Your Pizza Dough: A visitor to the website asked about freezing deep dish pizza dough. I’m not a fan of freezing any kind of pizza dough, as it’s not very practical, tends to kill off some of the yeast, and modifies the texture a bit. I’d rather the dough hung out in a zip top bag in the fridge if you’re making it a day or 3 ahead of time, but freezing can be done. PREPARING YOUR DOUGH FOR THE FREEZER: If you know ahead of time that you are going to freeze your dough, you can give it a better chance to recover from the freezing by slightly increasing the yeast and sugar amounts in your dough recipe. After letting your… Read More »DD101 Extra: Freezing Your Pizza Dough
** 2020 UPDATE – This article has a lot of updates, including updated baking instructions and links to the older recipes if you liked one of those better **
There is a style of Chicago Pan Pizza that is distinct from the Original Deep Dish that you know from places like Lou Malnati’s, Pizano’s, Louisa’s, Gino’s East, and Pizzeria Uno.
The style I’m talking about is the pan pizza you find at Pequod’s in Chicago and Morton Grove, IL, and until recently*, Burt’s Place in Morton Grove.
*UPDATE – Burt’s was closed in 2015, but has been reopened under new management in 2017.*
I call this style “Modern Deep Dish” to distinguish it from “Original Deep Dish”.
Before you ask… Yes, a pizza style invented over 4 decades ago (1971) is considered relatively “modern” since Original Chicago Deep Dish was invented more than 70 years ago in 1943.
For brevity (and because it is fun to say), we can just call it…
This style of pizza is like a hybrid between Chicago Deep Dish, Detroit Style & NY Sicilian pan pizzas. Like a deep dish, the pizza has cheese on the bottom, sauce on the top, and is baked in a round pan. Like the Detroit style (and also Sicilian squares – like L&B Spumoni Gardens), it has a thicker, more pillowy dough, and a caramelized crust, which is created when the cheese runs down the gap between the pan and the outer edge of the pizza dough during baking.
