Last week I got a craving for some deep dish pizza, which is understandable because all I ever make is Trenton style thin crust pizza. I didn't have a recipe but I knew I wanted Chicago style deep dish and I wanted to cook it in our trusty cast iron skillet. I looked around a little bit to see if I could find a secret recipe from Lou Malnati's somewhere, but of course there was none to be found. So I found my way over to the greatest cooking site on the planet, cooksillustrated.com. They had just updated their Chicago style deep dish pizza recipe last year, so I knew I could count on them, as per usual. Their recipe makes two 9 inch pizzas, but I wanted to use my 12 inch skillet, no big deal, I'll just make one large dough ball and one small dough ball. They also list their own tomato sauce recipe, but that's silly since I make my own tomato sauce and always have it on hand. Although, their recipe looks good and I wouldn't mind if you used it. Now let's talk about the crust on this pizza. Chicago style deep dish pizza has a buttery, biscuit-like crust, and that was the most important thing i wanted to get right with this pie. The key to this is laminating the dough. What is laminated dough you say? Well you get it when you press together alternating layers of butter and dough. Mmmm...butter. As you can see, it makes for a flaky, pastry like crust that holds up well to all the cheese and sauce. Go ahead and try this recipe tonight, you won't be disappointed.
