Homemade Chicago Style Movie Night

I like a good deal. Especially when a good deal can be had at Williams-Sonoma, one of my favorite stores. When Holly & I visited Chicago, we had world famous deep dish pizza. In my book, you pretty much can not go wrong with pizza. I like thin crust style, New York style, traditional Italian style and deep dish. When I saw these custom mini deep dish pizza pans on sale, I knew I needed a set.



I started out actually with the Williams-Sonoma test kitchen basic deep dish pizza dough recipe. I adjusted it some, replacing the refined sugar with some honey, and adding some garlic salt to the dough to give it some additional flavor. This dough turned our perfectly, and it was light and chewy, yet with a crust after the necessary proofing in the oven and placement in the well oiled pans.



I like combination, so I picked up some good organic turkey italian style sausage. I also cooked down and caramelized a bunch of onion, more garlic, red peppers and mushrooms. Holly is a straight up cheese girl, so she got some homemade "Quatro Formaggio." A healthy dose of dried herbs when in both kinds of pizza.



Homemade deep dish meat lovers.



Homemade deep dish cheese lovers. This made a nice Friday night evening in, making these with Holly, having a nice salad with it, and watching movies in our PJ's. The slightly adjusted dough recipe follows.

Deep Dish Pizza Dough:

1 T active dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water (105° to 110°F)
2 T honey
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. garlic salt

Directions:

To prepare the dough, in the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the yeast, water and sugar and whisk by hand until dissolved. Let stand for 5 minutes, then add the vegetable oil, flour and salt. Place the bowl on the mixer, attach the dough hook and knead on low speed until smooth and pliable, about 5 minutes.

Turn the dough out onto a work surface and divide into 4 equal pieces. Knead each piece by hand for 30 seconds, shaping the dough into a ball and dusting with a little flour if needed. Dust a baking sheet with flour and place the dough on the sheet. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let the dough rise at room temperature for 2 hours.

Position a rack in the lower third of an oven and preheat to 450°F.

Divide the remaining olive oil among 4 mini deep-dish pizza pans (about 2 tsp. per pan), thoroughly greasing each pan. Place a dough ball in each pan and, using your fingers, press the dough in an even layer across the bottom and up the sides of the pans.

Place favorite cheese directly on each pressed dough round. Top with the mozzarella, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and favorite toppings, dividing evenly. Using the back of a spoon, spread 1/2 cup of the tomato pizza sauce on top of each pizza. If desired, place more toppings on the sauce.

Bake the pizzas until the crusts are golden, 30 to 35 minutes. Remove the pizzas from the oven and let stand for 5 minutes before serving. Makes 4 mini deep-dish pizzas.