There are different styles of Chicago-style pizza, but one thing that is pretty common is that it is going to be cooked in a deep dish with the cheese, sauce, and toppings piled up inside and contained by the thick, buttery crust.
You will walk away asking yourself what’s so great about this pizza, and the answer is simple: everything. This is no Italian pizza; this is a Chicago pizza pie, my friends.
Can you eat this thing with a fork and knife? Heck yes, you can!
This is always pretty easy to make if you have already prepared my super simple Chicago-style pizza dough and have the other toppings around.
Let’s Make it
INGREDIENTS:
- PIZZA –
- Half of my Chicago Style Pizza Dough Recipe
- 2 packages of sliced mozzarella cheese
- 1 lb. Italian sausage
- 8 oz. ish of 6 in 1 tomatoes or another quality crushed tomato (or even pizza sauce)
- shake oregano (optional)
- shake basil (optional)
- shake thyme (optional)
- shake crushed rosemary (optional)
- FIXINS –
- pepperoni
- onions
- black olives
- green peppers
- any other pizza fixing you like
DIRECTIONS:
- Spread the dough in a 12-inch seasoned cast iron pan and pat it pretty flat on the bottom, about 1/8 inch thick or something close to that. Chicago pizza is pretty thin on the bottom, not super bready. Once it is spread out on the bottom, bring it up the sides to about the same thickness and remove any extra dough that might be hanging around.
- Place two layers of mozzarella cheese on the bottom, or more if you like it with lots of cheese; after that, take little balls of sausage about the size of a quarter and smash them down on top of the cheese slices, pretty much covering the entire bottom of the pizza, but leaving some gaps so that the cheese can bubble up once it starts melting.
- Add any additional toppings you want, such as onions, pepperoni, mushrooms, or black olives, and then take the tomato sauce and put it in the middle or spread it out a little, and then using your hands, get in there and spread out the sauce pretty evenly across the pizza (if you move the toppings around, just move them back).
- Once the sauce is spread out, sprinkle some of the seasonings on it: oregano, basil, thyme, and rosemary (or Italian seasoning if you have it handy).
- After that’s done, take some sprinkle cheese (grated parmesan) and put it across the top of the pizza. I like a lot of cheese, being from Wisconsin.
- Bake it in a 450 degree oven for 30 minutes; once it’s done, take it out of the oven and remove it from the pan (key here: you don’t want it to keep cooking and burn the bottom; ask me how I know!) and let it cool a little bit, then slice and ENJOY!!
This recipe is a keeper give it a try and let me know, I would love to hear from you.
