Chicago Thin Crust Pizza
One of the things I miss most about my city is THIS style pizza, not deep dish!
A hometown favorite of mine I get to finally bring to the 12 tomatoes crowd. Chicago is known for a lot of food, but pizza is king back home. Most people think of Chicago pizza and think of deep dish, but no no no–it’s actually very well-known for it’s thin crust pizza amongst natives. If you’re a fan of making homemade pizza and you’re either looking to change it your pizza abilities, or maybe just perfect the at-home pizza, this is your recipe. It’s an absolute gem of a recipe and technique I can’t wait for you to learn it too.
The dough is the most important piece of the puzzle when it comes to make a good homemade pizza. It’s all in how the dough feels when it’s done. This is a buttery rich pizza dough, so it should feel firm, but easy to poke. Roll this out into a thin even disc and place it onto a 14inch pizza tray. This will keep one side moist and help the bottom side dry out for baking.
Flip your pizza out of the pan, once it has dried out for at least 10 minutes, onto a cornmeal dusted pizza peel or if you’re not using a pizza stone, bake on pizza grate. Pizza grates are much better than pizza pans to cook homemade pizza because the holes in the pan help the crust get some much needed attention. Let gravity and humidity pull the crust from the pan. Don’t force the dough off. It peel back nice and clean if you give it a second to do that.
Assemble your pizza with four essential components: the sauce, the cheese, the toppings, and the pizza seasoning. The seasoning is my touch to the pizza to add extra flavor to both the inside on the outside. It’s necessary for my pies because I like to make a very basic pizza sauce with just salt and sugar. This keeps the pizza pure and the seasoning just adds that little extra kick. At the restaurant we always ended up with extra pizza sauce, so to avoid waste, I would transform the sauce into a pasta or marinara sauce for mozzarella sticks.
Whole milk, low-moisture mozzarella is the king of pizza cheese. Coat the pizza all over to your hearts content. The other benefit of drying out that bottom pizza crust is that you can top with a lot of cheese and ingredients, and it won’t make it harder to slide off the peel like other pizza styles.
After 10 minutes into a very hot oven your pizza is ready. The cheese will be golden the crust will have a slight golden brown around the edges and your sauce should bunch up at the ends. A perfect pizza is made and dinner is served!
Chicago Thin Crust Pizza
For dough:
- 3 cups bread flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
- 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 5 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, cubed
- 1 cup warm water
For sauce:
- 1 14 oz. whole peeled tomato, crushed
- A pinch of Kosher salt and sugar
For seasoning:
- 4 teaspoons dried oregano
- 2 teaspoons garlic powder
- 2 teaspoons black pepper
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
For assembly:
- 1 1/2 cups pizza sauce
- 8 oz. whole milk mozzarella cheese, grated
- 8 oz. good Italian sausage
- Cornmeal, for dusting
Preparation
- Combine the bread flour, yeast, and salt in a bowl and use your fingers to smash pieces of unsalted butter into the mixture like you're making pie dough.
- Once butter is thoroughly mixed, add the mixture to a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook and on low speed, slowly pour in warm water.
- Let the mixture form into a ball at low speed, then turn the speed to medium and mix for 5 - 6 minutes or until the dough pushes back when you poke it.
- Let the dough rest for 30 minutes covered, then divide it into two equal portions and form into balls.
- Let the dough rest again for 20 minutes.
- Roll the dough into an even circle with a rolling pin, and dust a 14-inch pizza tray with cornmeal. Lay dough over the tray and let the pizza sit on the tray for 30 minutes - 1 hour uncovered, to let the dough form a crust.
- Preheat a 550° F convection oven and prepare your oven pizza stone or steel on the middle rack, and a cast iron or iron grill pan at the top to help radiate heat.
- Prepare pizza on a pizza peel or parchment paper with sauce, seasoning, sausage, and cheese.
- Bake for 6 - 8 minutes, turning halfway.
- Bake in the oven for 3 minutes or until pale and slightly golden to par-bake the crust.
- Let cool, then hold for pizza making or wrap tightly in plastic wrap and freeze.