Most of the big name Chicago pizzerias offer affordable delivery to anywhere in the US (contiguous US at least) --- ordered some Giordano's to TX and it was v v good.

This is indeed the correct order of things. Of the remaining pizzerias, I suppose I like Gino's the most, but Pequod's and Lou Malnati's are easily better than the rest IMO.

I hope you got some Papa Dels!

Great read ty

Just had to come in here and declare my love for pequod's as well. It's not your traditional chicago deep dish, but I actually like it significantly more than any of the deep dish places. If you live in the area, be sure to check out the lunch special. $5 ($1 extra for each topping) for a personal pizza (obviously plenty of food) and a drink (pop or beer). Absolutely outstanding deal.

My own trials and tribulations to make a good Chicago Style pizza eventually zeroed in on the methods found in OP. However, the store-bought sausage I use sucks compared to that found in Chicago. How does yours compare?

Can you share the recipe?

while i'd love a good recipe for good homemade sausage as well, chances are you live near a butcher and don't even know it! (meh, i might be overstepping since i have no idea where you live) i've been really pleasantly surprised at how many non big-box meat sellers are in my area, and have been trying to proselytize about them so they stop disappearing.

Some of the big boxes have decent sausage. Whole Foods is not bad. And depending on the neighborhood, Jewel can have decent stuff. But yeah, with all the Polish and Italian and even a few German butchers and sausage makers in the area, we're pretty lucky.

OP,

I'm trying to find a similar pan online, but am having some difficulty finding the exact combination of:
- straight sided
- steel + tin
- 2" deep

Any idea which model # it is off this page?

http://www.amnow.com/Pizza-Trays

EDIT: Just found them. For those interested, here are the model numbers:

T80062 - 6" diameter, 2" deep, tin on steel
T80142 - 14" diameter, 2" deep, tin on steel

The bold number can be replaced with anything from 6 to 16.

Wonderful write up, will def pass this along to my friends who enjoy cooking far more than myself.

I'd suggest the 7" T80072 vs the 6" pan.

Oh man. I've been to Chicago twice and eaten at Giordano's five times I think. Once she took me the first time, I wouldn't let my girlfriend take me anywhere else. Not to mention the leftovers last for several meals. If they had anything like that near me it might be all over for me. I always wondered what the secret to the crust was. They have pan pizza in Kansas City but the crust is always thick and greasy. Except one place, Antonio's made a stuffed pizza that was semi-comparable. But they're gone now. I don't think any place in LA even tries.

There's a place called Masa on Sunset in Echo Park that does. It's pretty good. Not quite as good as Zachary's in Berkeley, which is as good if not better than actual Chicago places, but definitely worth it.

Pequod's is excellent, for Chicagoans who haven't tried it.

someone plz to be explaining

use 100 ounces of flour, 61.1 ounces of water, 19.4 ounces of yllow cornmeal, whatever. to whatever proproations you want

or go my the grams lsited in teh table for any given size.

thanks for the writeup OP. i will have to try this sometime.

a few things:

Pequod's is actually v good. It's not better than Lou's IMO, but it's the closet to it. Giordano's is pretty good too, big drop off after that.

You can order Lous anywhere in the country at 1-800-lou-to-go. Be careful because that place is addicting as hell, there's seriously nothing I'd rather eat and it's absolutely horrible for you.

Funny anecdote - Growing up, I lived within walking distance to Lou's in Schaumburg. After graduating from college I moved to Wicker Park, which never had a Lou's. I swear not 4 months after moving in they opened up a Lou's less than 5 minutes from place. Two years later I moved to Lincoln Park and a couple days after settling in and exploring the neighborhood I realized I lived like 3 minutes away from the Lincoln Park Lou's. Everyday when I walk home from work I see that place and have to fight myself from ordering it.

In other words I need to get a scale.

I'm making my pizza dough today, so I thought I'd save you the trouble of researching this.

I dug around the web to find the proper gram -> cup conversion ratios. (It's obviously different for every ingredient - a cup of water is going to weight more than a cup of flour).

Also, I used a 10" pan, so to get the new amount of flour I took the ratio of the inner surface area of the pans.

If you're not familiar how a baker's percentage works ( I wasn't ), every ingredient is displayed as a percentage of the flour ( not the overall weight of the dough ). So, even if you don't get the exact amount of dough right, at least keep the proportions the same and everything should work out.

Here's my excel sheet if anyone else wants to know what the grams will turn out to be in cups.



I'll update this thread tomorrow once the pizza is made.

Some more questions I'm not sure about:

- the grams/tsp for yeast numbers on the web were very different for each source - I think I might have used too much?

- How long do I have to wait for the bread to rise? That is, if I make the dough in the morning could I cook it that same night? Can a dough "over rise"? ( I probably won't be able to cook the pizza until tomorrow night ). I used the rapidrise yeast, which I assume is the same as instant yeast.

- Any tips on preparing the sausage? I stopped by a local butcher and purchased some sweet italian sausage. My plan is to just remove the casings and hack the sausage up into tiny pieces.

OP,

Thanks for this thread. Here was what I created:



A few changes I'm going to make in the future:

- I estimated a little low on the dough. For a 10" I'd probably bump it up from 265g of flour to around 300g or so. The crust, however, was really really good and very authentic.

- The 6-in-1 tomato sauce was absolutely awesome. Any tips for making a sweet version of it?

- The 10" pan was really too big to pull the pizza out in one shot. I ended up cutting it in the pan (hence the scratch).

- The sausage I picked up from the local butcher was way too strong and overwhelming. I need to try to find a milder flavored sausage.

Wow, A+++++++++ OP.

I've never really seen this 'pizza pie' type thing here in the UK, and have never really felt like trying it...

...until I got to the picture where you put the sausage meat on top of the pepperoni.

Good effort here, but unfortunately, you are totally wrong.

This came up last Christmas, and my grandmother, who lives in the Chicago suburbs, convinced about eight family members that Chicago-style pizza was any pizza purchased in the Chicago area. Her sister apparently confirmed this over the phone. That the discussion ended after twenty minutes with the eventual silence of everyone except grandma is an indication that she won.

Though we didn't get into the specific issue, I'm guessing that any pizza purchased or made outside of the Chicago area is NOT Chicago-style pizza. I think you would get into ambiguous territory if you, say, made this pizza, took it on a plane and ate in in Chicago, but if you are merely eating at home in Virginia, this is clearly not Chicago-style and I do not understand why all of the replies seem to think it is.

-Michael

Mmmm... plane pizza... GAAARGGGRHHGDHHKLL

Michael,

First I thought your grandmother was nuts. But after looking at the wikipedia article, I think your grandmother is wrong but not nuts. Apparently, there are 3 different Chicago style pizzas. I always assumed the thin crust pizza served here, although better, was basically the same as every where else. But it's not, and is unique to the Chicago area.

Also when Chicago Style deep dish pizza is served elsewhere, the recipes and cook times are changed, even if the restaurant is a franchise of a Chicago pizzeria. I've experienced this myself during an unfortunate stay in Dallas.

OTOH, your grandmother can't claim that one of those pathetic California style pizzas, if served in Chicago, is a Chicago style pizza.

Awesome post. Visited Chicago last year. Wife and I are both addicted. Definitely gonna try this recipe