I love pizza, but only the average amount. Which is to say, a lot, but not, like a devotee with strong preferences for a regional style or anything like that. I mentioned in my bio page how much I adore Round Table Pizza, and I don’t know if it’s “California” style in some way, or just the happy taste of my childhood. Getting to have it still transports me to those days, whether in Seattle before kicking off an Alaska cruise for our honeymoon, or for Christmas dinner in Dubai with my husband, mom, and aunt. It’s a chain with a very narrow footprint, but it remains my favorite and I try to have it whenever I’m in the vicinity of one. This next sentence will seem like a non sequitur, but stay with me. I’ve never been to Chicago, either, and my only real experience of deep dish pizza was, I’m a little ashamed to admit, at Pizzeria Uno. I tell you this, because I managed to recreate at home, what tastes like a magical hybrid between Round Table and Pizzeria Uno. It was indescribably yummy. Just look:
So let me direct you to the basics of how the magic happened. The crust was basically this one: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/223075/deep-dish-cast-iron-pizza/. I had to mix garlic powder and salt (I think the ratio is 1:3) to make garlic salt, but otherwise generally followed the first part of the recipe. After the first rise, I put the lightly oiled ball of dough in a big ziploc bag and let it hang out in the fridge overnight. My trawling of online forums told me it’s good to give yeast doughs a night before using them, and it seems to me to be better than working with them right away. I took it out of the fridge about half an hour before I wanted to use it, and patted it into a (very large diameter) greased cast iron pan.
For the sauce, I jumped off from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/17319/exquisite-pizza-sauce/. Instead of paste/water, I just went with canned whole tomatoes. I also hate honey (it’s a weird thing, I know), so I went with some brown sugar, and I eyeballed the rest of the stuff, tasted, and adjusted as needed. It was really very, very good.
Toppings included two kinds of salami, pepperoni, sliced mushrooms, black olives, red onions, and cooked chunks of Italian sausage (I used Johnsonville’s sweet out of the casing because it’s really tough to find any other decent Italian sausage here, and I can source that at our commissary). Cheese was a mix of shredded mozzarella and a bit of shredded cheddar.
It was incredibly tasty, but also, expectedly, heavy, enough that we maxed out on a slice each. Leftovers didn’t last long, though, and it made me think about experimenting with slightly simpler doughs for cast iron pizza.
So, I read several recipes and settled on trying a different dough. About a half small packet of the dried active yeast that comes in little envelopes in 3-packs, 3/4 cup of water, eyeballed 3/4 tsp of salt, eyeballed 3/4 tsp of sugar, 1 tsp of olive oil, and 1 1/2 cups of flour. Stirred together in a big glass bowl with a wooden spoon, covered with plastic wrap, and left it out on the counter overnight and until I was ready to use. Pulled off the plastic, sprinkled generously with flour and gently mixed dough with my hands (very sticky!) and mushed it into a greased big cast iron pan. I patted it out as much as I could, then covered with foil and left to proof for one hour in an oven that had been brought to 170F and then turned off.
For the sauce, I tried a similar one from the recipe above, but decided on a cooked one. I started with a little butter and olive oil and added in the spices. I used a generous glug of worcestershire since we didn’t have anchovies, and some maple syrup in lieu of the honey. I let it cook down for about 35 minutes so that it reduced and thickened, It was good, but I think I’ll stick with the uncooked in future. Cooking is an added step, and the results are not noticeably better enough to warrant it, in my view.
Toppings tonight were cooked lardons and banana peppers, and again a mix of mozz and cheddar. I loaded up the pizza, let it cook on med-low on the stovetop for 3 minutes, and then put it into my oven at 550F for 12 minutes. Took it out and shredded a little grana padano on top.
I should have peeked under it to check the bottom crust; it might have benefited from an extra couple of minutes on the stovetop. Nevertheless, it was quite tasty.
The crust wasn’t quite Pizza Hut-esque, but had more of that vibe. My husband preferred it to the deep dish. Once commercial pizza that tastes like what we think of as pizza (ie, no tuna/”sweet corn”/grotesque imitation cream cheese product “injected” into the crust) is readily available, I don’t know that I’ll make pizza at home super regularly. However, maybe if I perfect a crust recipe and combine it with my Round Table style sauce and toppings, I can still enjoy that west coast delight even in DC.
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