Chicago Deep Dish Pizza

First of all, in the effort of full disclosure, we got the idea for this from this site ( http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/StuffedPizza ) and I probably won't say anything that they didn't. None the less, David and I made a stuffed pizza last night! It was so, so delicious. I took a lot of pictures, so it will be more a step-by-step guide, more than an actual recipe. We used our 9 inch spring form pan, which worked perfectly. Nice chance to get it out of storage. Huzzah!

How good does that look? You know if you've been reading this blog that Dave and I love to cook, but are by no means professionals. That looks pretty awesome to me. In other words, if we can do it, so can you. First, use your favorite pizza dough recipe. Chances are, you could even do this with the pre-made dough, but you are going to have to roll it out. Pull off about 2/3 of your dough ball, and roll it out to about a 1/4 inch thickness. In other words, the dough needs to be fairly bigger than your pan. Then line your (very well greased!) pan with the dough.

It's supposed to spill over. That will come in handy. Then you fill it! Start with a nice layer of cheese- we chose cheddar, because that's what we had. It's a pizza, so the sky is the limit, really. We also added some crumbled bacon. We used 4 slices, if you're curious

Add the rest of your toppings, we cut up 1 large onion, and sauteed it for a bit, and also about 8 cloves of garlic. We really like garlic. Now is also a good time to add some spices. We stuck with the classics, oregano, cayenne, chili flakes, salt and pepper. We topped it off with a giant handful or two of spinach.








Remember again, that this is a pizza, so you can use absolutely anything you want in the filling. This is what we had and sounded good to us, so this is what we used.
Then take the other 1/3 of your dough and roll it out. Place it on top of everything and crease together it and the dough that has spilled over the lip. It doesn't have to look perfect, ours certainly did not.

Poke a lot of holes in the top dough. If you don't, I imagine it could explode and put quite a mess on your hands which would be, well, bad. Very bad. Then top with some pizza sauce and extra cheese!

Throw it in a 400 degree oven for about 30 minutes. Everything gets plenty cooked, believe me. You should remove the outer part of your pan immediately, but let the pie sit for a good ten minutes. Our final results was the first picture, and here, cut open:

It may not be the prettiest thing you've ever seen, but I'll be darned if it wasn't delicious. Dave and I liked it especially because we're not huge sauce fans. We love the cheese, and that was there in spades. The extra dough sponges up the extra juices that making it this way creates. It was SO yummy. I hope everyone will give it a try! It's only slightly more labor intensive than a regular pizza, but certainly looks more impressive. Yum. And again, fairly cheap and healthy(ish). We made our whole wheat dough from scratch, and filled it with yummy, cheap veggies. Hope you enjoy!