Chicago pizza

Chicago-style pizza is a thick pan pizza with plenty of toppings, often crushed tomatoes, Italian-style sausage, and mozzarella. The dough for this pizza is significantly different from regular pizza dough, often containing corn flour which together wheat flour gives to the pizza a nice color and a certain fragility. Also, this dough is not kneaded to elastic structure, and does not promote the formation of a network of gluten molecules. This type of pizza has been offered in Chicago pizzerias since the forties of the last century.

Preparation time: preparation 45 minutes, cooking time 30-35 minutes
Level: Medium
Quantity: Two large thick pizzas

Ingredients:
Dough:
450 g wheat flour
45 g of corn flour
10 g of sugar
12 g dry yeast
115 g of cold butter
A pinch of sea salt
275 g of room temperature water

Tomato filling:
1 large onion, coarsely grated
3 medium garlic cloves crushed
50 g of butter for browning of the onion
50 g of tomato paste
800 g of crushed tomatoes
1 tablespoon of sugar
Salt and black pepper to taste
1 teaspoon of oregano
A handful of finely chopped basil

Italian style sausage:
600 g fattier minced pork
Salt and black pepper
1.5 teaspoons of paprika powder
0.75 tsp chili flakes
0.5 teaspoon of garlic powder
0.5 teaspoons of sugar
0.5 teaspoon of fennel seeds
2 tablespoons of wine vinegar

The cheese part:
500 g of coarsely grated mozzarella
100 g of finely grated parmesan

Preparation:

1. Prepare the dough. To do this, mix wheat flour, sugar, yeast, salt and corn flour in a food processor, add cold butter cut into pieces and crush into uniform crumbs.
2. Pour the mixture into a bowl, add water and mix into a dough. Knead for about a minute, no more.
3. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a clean kitchen towel and let it rise in a warm place for about 1 hour.
4. Prepare the filling. For that, peel and coarsely grate the onion, finely chop the garlic, melt the butter and brown the onion and garlic mixture for a few minutes on medium heat. Add the tomato paste and fry for a few more minutes.
5. Add crushed tomatoes, sugar, oregano, pepper and salt and chopped basil and simmer the mixture on low heat for 20-30 minutes until it thickens.
6. Pour the mixture into a bowl and place in a cool place where it will thicken even more.
7. Prepare the Italian sausage mixture. Add seasoning, black pepper, salt, chili flakes, fennel seeds, paprika, garlic powder, sugar and wine vinegar to the minced meat. Mix everything well.
8. When the dough has risen for about 1 hour, pour a dough onto the work surface, slightly knead out the air, cut the dough in half, form into two balls of the same size, put each ball in a separate bowl, cover with a film or a plate and place the other one at +4 degrees C for about 45 minutes to rise up.
9. Until the dough rises, coarsely grate mozzarella and grate thinly the parmesan.
10. When the dough has risen, grease the cast iron pan or cake mold with oil, roll out two discs of the dough, which are a few cm larger than the cake mold or cast iron pan, and place the dough disc in the mold so that there forms 3-4 cm edge of dough.
11. Divide the mozzarella in half and divide between two pizza bases, cover the bottom of both molds with mozzarella.
12. Place about 1.5 teaspoon pieces of the Italian sausage mixture on top of the mozzarella layer and cover it with the tomato mixture.
13. Sprinkle Parmesan on top of the tomato mixture and place the pizzas in an oven heated to 220 degrees.
14. Bake the pizzas for 40-45 minutes until they are golden brown. Check during baking as different ovens can give very different results.
15. Take the baked pizzas out of the oven and let them rest for 25-30 minutes so that the filling is not too liquid when you cut it open.
16. Cut the pizza into pieces with a sharp knife and serve warm. Pizza is also very delicious when served cold.
    Ready!!

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