Chicago deep-dish style pizza
Chicago-style pizza refers to a deep-dish pizza.
It is baked in a Chicago pizza pan: layered with cheese, fillings (meat and vegetables) and sauce, in this order.
The crust is usually two to three inches tall, slightly fried.
Chicago Style pizza, the looking
Chicago style pizza is the King of the deep-dish pizza, in terms of sizes, weight and popularity. The pizza cooks in an oiled pan, quite profound. This kind of bulky pizza is more similar to a pie than a flatbread. Anyway, even if it is thick, the crust itself is thin to medium. The majority of the volume of the pizza is due to the enormous amount of cheese, sauce and other toppings.
The main dough ingredients
The dough is made from wheat flour, but I’ve read some recipes that use semolina flour; this is kind of interesting to me, and it’s something that makes me think about the south of Italy. I’m pretty sure that Chicago style pizza has something to do with Puglia or Sicilian cooking culture.
Corn oil and butter are usually part of the recipe, giving it that buttery taste and biscuit texture. Chicago style pizza is baked in a round steel pan (see the photos in the next paragraph) that resembles a cake pan.
The stretching technique is similar to how you spread a crostata dough in a trail. You have to press up the dough onto the sides of the pan so that the final crust comes out two to three inches tall. It will slightly fry during the 45 minutes baking time due to the oil in the pan.
The Chicago style pizza pan
Chicago DEEP DISH vs Chicago THIN CRUST
This controversy is the same as what happens in Rome (Teglia Romana vs Pizza Romana).
Even in Chicago, two opposite pizza styles coexist.
It looks like that the Chicago thin crust has been around much longer than the deep dish.
I am talking about a cracker-thin crust.
The dough is round shape. It is rolled, and not tossed, cooked for a long time enough to ensure a nice crunchy bite. Due to its preparation, the final product cannot be folded (it would crumble apart).
The way to cut the Chicago thin-crust pizza is called “tavern-cut” (or “party-cut”): into various sized squares, for sharing while drinking beer.
Many Chicagoans believe that this is the real city’s pizza signature.
