Deep Dish Pizza

As a former resident of Chicago and partner of someone raised on Lou Malnati's, I must say this pizza is to Chicago-style as Arlington Heights is to Chicago: close, but pretty much an hour away. It's pretty much my best compromise between taste and hassle.

So I started with a sourdough crust. I used the usual amount of starter (about half a cup, or a heavy half cup) as I would for a loaf of bread. To this I added 2 cups of white flour, a good teaspoon or two of salt, about two tablespoons of melted butter, a few tablespoons of white sugar, and maybe half a cup of water (just enough for the dough to come together, no more). Like regular bread, I put this in the mixer to knead for 15 minutes, adding white flour as necessary. I put the dough ball in a sprayed, floured springform pan, and pressed the dough out to the edges. I sprayed the dough with cooking spray, covered the top in plastic wrap, and put the pan in the un-airconditioned laundry room to rise for about 14 hours (I made it at 7am, dinner is 9ish pm).

While the oven was preheating to 350 degrees, I cooked my ugly tomatoes (maybe about three cups, diced) in a saute pan with a tablespoon or two of oil. This is important because too much moisture from the tomatoes can make the dough soggy. I cooked them for about 8-10 minutes, until they released a lot of water but before they broke down into mush. Lou Malnati's tomato sauce has some texture to it, so I wanted to preserve this in my sauce. At the last minute (literally, for the last minute of cooking) I added a handfull of chopped fresh basil and oregano (but a tablespoon of dried would be fine), salt and pepper, and one chopped clove of garlic.

I set a strainer over a bowl, and poured the tomato mixture through this to get rid of excess water. I still wanted some structure to my tomatoes, so I couldn't cook all the water away. I had probably 1/3 c tomato liquid in the bowl; I'll use this in a soup or in a bloody mary, maybe. 

You can--and it's probably preferable to--use canned diced tomatoes here. I definitely will in the winter, when I don't have bowls of tomatoes on my kitchen counter. For canned tomatoes, I would still cook them with some herbs, and maybe some garlic.

At this point I drizzled a teensy bit of olive oil on top of the dough, and sprinkled a few good handfulls of shredded mozzerella cheese (just the kind from the bag at the grocery store) on top, enough to cover well. I put the tomato sauce on top of the cheese (this is how Chicago style works, people). 

I put this in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes; I then turned the oven up to 400 and cooked another 10 minutes.

The photos are noticeably better in this post because Christian took them.