Deep dish pizza was probably the style of pizza I first started making. I had a new cast iron skillet and needed something cool to do with it. Those turned out well, and I tried to re-create that success with some new pizza knowledge. I found a new recipe that calls for par-baking (or blind baking) the dough. I don’t think that really worked out all that well, but here is what I did anyway.
To autolyse:
- 263 g flour
- 260 g water
Additional ingredients
- 222 g flour
- 3 T cornmeal
- 1.75 t salt
- 4 T melted butter
- 2 T olive oil
- 2 T oil
After the 30 minute autolysis (not sure how necessary this was), I added the next 3 dry ingredients, and then streamed in the last 3 liquid ingredients. After 2 hours of rising, the dough ended up pretty springy. I stretched it a bit, then let it rest, then stretched some more until it covered the bottom of a cast iron skillet.
After the par bake (blind bake) the dough was pretty puffy, so I think next time I would maybe add the cheese and maybe raw sausage before baking. That might weigh down the center a bit, and also cook the sausage.
I am a fan of sausage and peppers in Chicago deep dish, so I also sautéed up some pepper rings to add.
For the sauce, I used my raw sauce recipe with a can of tomatoes. The only problem was I didn’t make enough for the two pies I made. Otherwise the raw sauce works here pretty well.
The final product ended up looking and tasting really good, but didn’t have that over the top deep dish excess that I associate with the style. It just needed more stuff and more depth.
I think the par baking puffs the crust a bit too much, which makes it hard to fill with excessive amounts of toppings, so I would either skip that, or beak with cheese and a few other things to weigh it down. Then, top with sauce and finish the baking. Of course, more sauce would be better too (or better blended sauce?). Also, I need to figure out how to best handle the dough to get the shape in the skillet just right. Oh no, I guess I’ll have to make more pizza.
