Chicago Deep Dish Pizza – Easy, and Delicious

Aug 5, 2024 by Chef David

By Chef David

Mouthwateringly delicious. The idea of making pizza is especially tempting during the 9 days when we cannot have meat. Yet, many cooks are afraid to try, unclear of how exactly to make the dough. Some more adventurous souls use premade purchased dough, while other creative cooks opt for dough alternatives like wraps or English muffins.

It may surprise you to discover how easy and fast it is to make pizza dough at home. This recipe for deep-dish pizza is flaky, light, and fast. Let your inner chef shine, and develop your own sensational combinations, meat-lovers fleshing pizza with marinara sauce (a great way to use left-over Shabbos meat), or a more traditional classic tomato-forward pie with cheese and herbs.

We tested a large number of recipes, before discovering this winner from ATK for making Chicago-style Deep-Dish pie.

Pizza Dough for Beginners

Pizza dough is a forgiving, delicious recipe that uses kitchen essentials, your digital scale, and a stand mixer. The steps are easy – weigh, mix, proof, bake and eat. Unlike baking bread which is more precise, and takes longer to rise, this pizza dough is ready to be baked in just over an hour, requiring only a handful of ingredients.

Chicago Deep Dish Pizza – Adapted from America’s Test Kitchen

Chicago Deep Dish Pizza is a meal in a pie. The pan gives the deep-dish pizza its high edge and ample space for holding large amounts of fillers. Since the dough is pareve, your pizza can be either meat, dairy, or vegetarian.

This recipe makes enough dough for two 9-inch pies. You can divide it into balls and save the second dough ball for the future. Pizza dough can stay in the refrigerator for 3 – 4 days, or in the freezer for up to three months.

Ingredients

- 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons water, room temperature
- 1 tablespoon instant or rapid-rise yeast
- 3 cups (15 ounces/425 grams) all-purpose flour
- 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for greasing pans
- 1 teaspoon table salt

Cook Time 1¾ hours, plus 1 hour 20 minutes rising

Instructions

Combine – water and yeast in a 1-cup measuring cup and let sit for 5 minutes.
Whisk – flour, oil, and salt in a bowl of a stand mixer until oil is evenly incorporated, about 30 seconds.
Mix – Fit stand mixer with dough hook (we use the Anakushum’s roller). Add water-yeast mixture to flour mixture and mix on low speed until no dry flour remains about 2 minutes. Increase speed to medium and knead until dough is smooth and elastic and clears the sides of the bowl, about 5 minutes.
Rise – Transfer dough to an unfloured counter and shape it into a ball. Place dough in a lightly greased bowl and turn to coat. Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let the dough rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour [we placed the bowl into our Brod and Taylor proofer at about 80-85 degrees].
Prepare – Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease the bottoms and sides of the Deep-Dish Pizza pan. Cover with plastic and let rest for 20 minutes.
- Using the palm of your hand, press 1 piece of dough flat into the pan bottom until the dough meets the edge of the pan. Rotating the pan as you work, press the dough until it reaches about 1 inch up the sides of the pan. [Adjust the height to accommodate the height of the pan]
- For a dairy pie: Add the mozzarella and toppings pressed into the cheese, cover with your sauce of choice, and sprinkle with spices. [If desired you can add more cheese on the top – the recipe recommends grated parmesan.]

Bake – until the top edges of the crusts are well browned, about 35 minutes. (if you use a darker color pan it may bake faster) Remove pizzas from the oven and let sit for 5 minutes. Using a bench scraper or sturdy metal spatula, cut each pizza into 4 wedges. Serve.

Tips and Tricks – Getting Down to Basics

Organization is important in the kitchen. Begin by gathering ingredients, and kitchen tools, and create a clean clear workspace.

For this recipe, we suggest using a digital scale, stand mixer, proofer, measuring cup, and a deep-dish pan (we used Emile Henry Deep-Dish Pizza Pan)

Emile Henry Pizza Pan

We recommend measuring the flour by weighing it. Weight is more accurate and consistent than using a measuring cup [June 22, 2022 Article Why to Weigh?]. Our go-to Stand-Mixer is Ankarsrum [October Our 2023 Article].

The dough needs to be at the correct temperature to rise properly. We found that using the Brod and Taylor proofer allowed us to measure, manage, and control the temperature, and as a result, we were able to guarantee consistency, time and time again, without taking time or effort.

Want Crispy Crust? Use a dark-colored pizza pan for this recipe to ensure a crisp bottom on the pizza. Using a light-colored pan will produce a pizza with a softer crust.

Emile Henry has you covered, with pans in burgundy, charcoal, midnight blue, and a cream color pizza stone.

Put it all together into a delicious meal, from start to finish, in just a little longer than it takes for take-out but so much better.

Brod and Taylor

The Brod and Taylor proofing box lets you control both temperature and humidity, and it folds flat for easy storage. It is big enough to fit a large mixing bowl, even the Ankarsrum mixing bowl directly inside, reducing the number of dishes and limiting the number of times we need to touch the dough. The proofing box provides temperature control. Simply place the bowl with dough on the rack, fill the tray with water, and watch through a window top as the dough rises.

This small box is a powerhouse, which can perform a lot of kitchen tasks unattended. For example; it can be used for proofing or fermenting yeast bread dough for sourdough, or cabbage into sauerkraut anything that requires a controlled temperature. In slow cooker mode, you can use it to make one-pot meals.

The box is designed to fold down, deconstructing for easy storage, into flat walls, metal trays, and a stable base for easy storage. [Although we use it so often it has become a fixture in our prep-area].

The folding proofer was started as a home-made gift from founder, Michael Taylor, to his elderly mother-in-law to make bread in her sometimes-cold South Dakota kitchen. In 2012 he began to market his folding proofers, followed by a line of kitchen appliances.

Brod and Taylor can be purchased online.

Don’t Leave it to Chance

Finding the right kitchen appliances can take time, but once you do, everything will click and your meals will consistently turn out as expected. We experimented with making dough and discovered the importance of controlling the temperature and humidity, thank you, Brod and Taylor, because guesswork and baking do not work well together.

We tested a lot of pizza recipes until we found this almost fool-proof pareve deep dish pizza dough. It provides an edible canvas for you to experiment on. This recipe is simple to make, and a satisfying crowd-pleaser. Enjoy!