Deep Dish Pizza From Scratch

This Deep Dish Pizza recipe is great to make when you want to feed a group of people. It is filling, and for me in the past has fed 4-6 people with some left over. It is easily customizable, being able to put most whatever ingredients you want just like a normal pizza. Though if you add to many items with high moisture you might end up with a bit of liquid at the bottom of the pan. So be careful about that. In this instructable I will be going simple and just making a meat and cheese pizza.

Tools

1. Measuring Cups (1cup, 1/3 cup, 1/4 cup, 1 teaspoon, 1/2 teaspoon)
2. Cast Iron Pan or other Baking Dish
3. Pan
4. Mixing Bowl
5. Microwave Safe Mug

Materials

Dough

1. Water 1 1/3 Cups
2. Instant/Rapid-Rise Yeast 2 1/4 teaspoon (or one packet)
3. Melted Butter 1/4 cup
4. Olive Oil 1/4 cup
5. Flour 3 3/4 cup
6. White Sugar 2 teaspoons
7. Salt 1 1/2 teaspoons

Pizza

1. Pack of Sliced Provolone
2. 1 lb of Block Mozzarella
3. 1 lb of Hot Italian Sausage
4. Pizza Sauce 42 oz

You can make your own pizza sauce, but when I have done so in the past I didn't find enough of an improvement in taste for me do justify the time required. This is however just a personal preference. All store bought pizza sauces I have tried have worked just fine.

For our first step we are just going to add in our 1 1/3 cups of water and our 2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast. I like to buy these packets of yeast since they are the right amount, and at my house we don't use yeast for that much else. After adding the yeast we are just going to set it aside and let it rest for 10-15 minutes.

Now that we are done waiting we can come back and add the rest of the ingredients to our dough. We are going to add in 1/4 cup of olive oil, 3 3/4 cup flour, 1/4 cup of melted butter, 2 teaspoons of sugar, and 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt. It does not matter what order you add these ingredients in.

Now that we have all of our ingredients in our bowl it is time to mix them together to form our dough. To do this first we will wash our hands before diving in hands first. Just mix everything together with your hands. It will slowly start forming into different clumps. Just keep mixing it around and working it into one piece. We will keep doing this until it starts to look similar to the pictures above. A good sign that you are getting close is when it stops sticking to the sides of the bowl. If needed are you are able to add very small amounts of water or flour. Add very small amounts of water if it is completely covered in cracks, and add very small amounts of flour if it keeps sticking to the bowl.

After we are done kneading our dough we are going to cover it and set it aside for 1.5 - 2 hours, or until it doubles inside. It should end up looking similar to the second picture here.

At this step we are going to get everything ready to put on our pizza. To start we will set our oven to preheat to 425°F. While our oven preheats we have two things to do. First we will roll out our pizza dough until it is a bit bigger than whatever pan you are planning to bake it in. After that all we need to do is brown up our sausage. It doesn't have to be completely done cooking. Just cook it most of the way through and get some nice color on them. They will finish cooking when the pizza is baking. I like to keep my chunks pretty big so that they are more noticeable when eating.

Now that we have everything ready it is time to assemble our pizza. The first step in this process is putting our dough in whatever you will be using to bake the pizza. Once our dough is in place the next step is to add in our toppings. First I will be putting in a layer of my sliced provolone. Just making sure to cover the bottom evenly. After that I will be ripping off pieces from my block of mozzarella cheese. Trying to maintain a fairly even covering. Then we will add in the sausage the same as the mozzarella. Finally cover it all with sauce. I like to add enough sauce so that I have a hard time seeing my sausage and cheese poking out the top.

Finally we put our pizza in the oven at 425°F for ~35 minutes.

Once our pizza is done take it out of the oven and let it rest for ~10 minutes. Then you can cut some slices and enjoy!