It's A Deepa Disha Pizza Pie

Mostly, Fridays are pizza and movie night.  I've been wanting to kick up our standard homemade pizza recipe, so I tried my little hands at making a Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza. I can’t justify living within 50 miles of Chicago and not trying to make one of these delightfully tasty pies. 

Nothing better than the taste of success. So good!! Delicious, filling, satisfying. Another go-to dinner idea. Lou Malnati should taste this one!

Mind you, it’s not all scratch. I’ll get around to that experiment one of these days.

To Make A 9- or 12-inch pie (this was a 9-inch pie):

I used a 9-inch cake pan with 2-inch straight sides (I LOVE Chicago Metallic bakeware).

You can buy a pan specifically for deep dish pizza but this makes just the right size for two to four people.





Ingredients:

1 Tiseo's frozen pizza dough
1/2 pound bulk Italian sausage (same stuff we get at Hungry Hill)
1/2 medium onion sweet onion, cut in strips
8 to 12 ounces mozzarella cheese (slices are preferred but shredded is fine)
About 15 to 20 slices of pepperoni
1-1/4 cups of your favorite pizza sauce. I used Pastorelli Italian Chef Pizza Sauce (8 ounce can mixed with 3 tablespoons tomato sauce).
Canola oil

Thaw dough according to package directions.

Preheat oven to 425º.

Cook sausage with onion until sausage is almost done and onion is soft. Drain. Set side.

Roll out dough in a circle 2 inches larger than pan you will be using. Oil pan very well with canola oil. I prefer canola as it doesn’t leave the aftertaste that olive oil will leave. Place dough in pan, stretching dough up the sides. You may have to work it a bit, but the dough will stay.

Place dough in oven to parbake 4 to 5 minutes. Remove from oven.

Layer about 3/4 of the cheese on the bottom of the crust. Layer sausage/onion mixture, then pepperoni. Pour sauce over and spread out evenly over pie. Top with remaining cheese.

Bake about 25 to 30 minutes until cheese is golden and sauce is bubbly. Remove from oven. Cool about 10 minutes before cutting.

(Pictures lately are looking like crap...I really hate to take any until I get this lighting thing figured out. Flash, no flash. Lights on or off.  Backround. Natural light. So many factors. Not everything is yellow!)