{HNTM} Lou Malnati's Chicago Classic Deep Dish Pizza

{How Not to Make} Lou Malnati's Chicago Classic Deep Dish Pizza, packed with sausage and cheese and flavorful tomato sauce.

Don't worry, like the trashy romance novels I adore, there is a happy ending [and a viable recipe] at the end of this post.  But when you find yourself saying 

"once I drained the pizza, it tasted pretty good"

you know there's a story worth sharing.

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Once upon a time [actually last month] a family traveled to Chicago for a short vacation. The dad planned out the route, the lodging, and the sights to see.  The mom prepared what to eat en route, arranged for the dogs to spend their first nights away from the family at a loving kennel, and scouted pizza places to try Chicago's famous deep dish style pizza.  [The kids grumbled about not spending a week lying on the couch staring at screens.]

Forgetting that pesky time zone thing, we arrived early enough to walk/roll around the downtown area, and especially to walk to the first pizza place on The List:  Lou Malnati's.  We ordered a Chicago Classic and a Lou. When they arrived, I took some mental notes:

• The crust is not puffy, not like a yeasted dough that's allowed to rise at the edges.  It's not like Zebra Room flaky pie crust either. It's crispy/crunchy . . . maybe cornmeal?
• The sausage was undisturbed until I cut through it with my fork--it was in a disc the size of the pizza pan, and without browned edges--I think it was placed raw on the pizza and cooked during the pizza baking time.
• The tomatoes don't look like tomato sauce--they look more like my canned crushed tomatoes.  The juice is clear, not cloudy like in a cooked sauce with tomato paste.

And the taste?  Delicious!  Must re-create at home.

With a basic idea in mind I set out to make a deep dish pizza.  My previous attempt at a deep dish pizza ended in a spectacularly inedible failure, shown on my FB page, when I attempted to cram way too much Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share spinach into the pizza.  But that merely tasted terrible.

My first attempt at a pizza similar to Lou Malnati's Chicago Classic involved grabbing a ball of previously fresh mozzarella out of the freezer.  Now, I know that using thawed balls of mozzarella results in a seedy pizza.  I've commented here about the phenomenon. However, I didn't heed my own advice.  First Big Mistake.

I also scooped out the crushed tomatoes using a slotted spoon, which meant that the tomatoes were already pretty juicy when they went onto the pizza. You know the heat of the oven is going to denature the proteins in the plant cell walls, causing them to burst and release more fluid--so that was my Second Big Mistake.

With those two mistakes synergizing in my skillet, it's no wonder why it happened. When I pulled the skillet out, the pizza looked great--if a little jiggly.  The cheese was browned, the sausage cooked and the crust was crisp--what you want in a pizza.

Then I tried to extricate the pizza, and a tsunami of fluid swarmed out--over the skillet, the counter, the cooling rack, and into the sink [everywhere but where the dogs could reach--they were disappointed]. Thus leading me to the comment.

"once I drained the pizza, it tasted pretty good"

I made a few refinements for my second attempt, and it again tasted terrific and amazingly survived the extrication intact:

I'd like to point out that using previously frozen previously fresh mozzarella is one of the worst possible ideas for a deep dish pizza.  To beat the heck out of that point:

For general hints, tips, and photo collages please check out my Pizza Primer post, a brain dump of all things related to making pizza in my home kitchen. For more pizza recipes, deep dish and otherwise, please check out my Visual Pizza Recipe Index. 

For more recipes using tomatoes, please check out my Red and Yellow Tomato Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.

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My Take on Lou Malnati's Chicago Classic Deep Dish Pizza

--The Non-Tsunami Version

Ingredients

• 1 Tablespoon corn oil
• ⅓ to ½ pound Italian sausage
• 1½ to 2 cups crushed tomatoes
• ½ teaspoon honey or sugar of your choice
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon pepper
• 1 teaspoon Pasta Sprinkle or other Italian blend seasoning
• 3 cloves roasted garlic, smashed, or fresh garlic, diced (here's how I roast and put up my crop)
• ½ pound pizza crust of your choice (options abound on my Visual Pizza Recipe Index)
• 1½ cups shredded mozzarella and fontina cheeses (a blend of both tastes best to me)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Pour corn oil in the bottom of a 10 inch cast iron skillet and set aside.  
2. Place sausage on a large sheet of plastic wrap or wax paper (I prefer plastic wrap), fold over to enclose the sausage, and flatten sausage until it is about 10 inches in diameter. Set aside.
3. Drain tomatoes with a strainer--I saved the juice because I'm like that, and used it in soup.
4. In a medium bowl mix drained tomatoes with honey and seasonings (including garlic), then set aside.
5. Press the pizza dough into the prepared skillet and up the sides.  It will be thin, and that's just fine.
6. Spread most of the cheese across the dough, saving about ¼ cup. 
7. Unwrap and flip the sausage disc onto the cheese as shown above. 
8. Spread the sausage with the prepared sauce. Top with reserved cheese. 
9. Bake for 30 minutes until crust is browned, cheese is bubbly, and sausage is fully cooked.
10. Using a couple of spatulas, lift the pizza out of the skillet onto a rack to cool (which prevents steam from making a soggy crust, but honestly a little steam would not make the soggy mess shown above).

**Please note that I am in no way suggesting that this is a copycat version of Lou Malnati's Chicago Classic. While I do think the technique is similar, the results are different.  I have not captured the crispy crunchy crust for one thing, and I know for a fact that the restaurant doesn't come into my back yard and take my tomatoes for their sauce.

Just in case you missed the take home message:  thawed slices of mozzarella are terrible in deep dish pizza.

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