deep dish pizza

If you've been to Chicagoland, you've undoubtedly tried some form of deep dish pizza. It is incredibly good tasting, but you'll gain two pounds just looking at a slice of it. I'm going to show you how to cut a ton of calories out of this dish, add in the heat, and end up with a great re-creation of the dish.

Let me preface this recipe with the following warning: this recipe will make a lot of food. Plan on freezing a bunch of it. It will make at least four deep dish pizzas.

You'll need four pie tins before starting. Spray them with cooking spray.

Here's the recipe for the dough. It is a recipe my wife's family has used for years. The dough is really easy to make and work with.

2 packages of yeast
1/2 cup butter, melted
3 cups flour
1 cup lukewarm water

Combine the yeast and water in a medium mixing bowl. Add the butter and the flour. Mix the dough until it comes off the sides of the bowl. Knead the dough for 2 minutes. Let it sit covered for at least 30 minutes.

While the dough sits, make the sauce. I have been working on perfecting this sauce for about three years. It is unbelievably good. It has a bite from the lemons.

1 sweet onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, diced
1 tbs Turkish oregano
salt
pepper
28 oz tomato sauce can
4 high quality tomatoes chopped
2 bay leaves
juice of 2 lemons
1 tbs olive oil

Sweat the onions for 5 min in the olive oil on medium heat. Add the garlic and cook two minutes. Add the salt, pepper, and oregano and cook another minute. Deglaze the pan with the tomato sauce. Add in the tomatoes and the bay leaves. Squeeze the lemons into the sauce. Cook on medium heat, covered for 30 minutes. Before blending, scoop up two ladles of the thick sauce and set aside. Discard the bay leaves. Blend to desired thickness with an immersion blender.

In yet another pan, you'll need to make the filling for the pizza. In case you haven't noticed, I like onions and peppers. A lot. Here's my favorite filling:

In this recipe, I replace butter or olive oil with tomato sauce and I braise/saute the veggies.

1 bell pepper, sliced
2 jalapeno peppers, cut into round slices with seeds left in
1 onion, sliced
1 can artichoke hearts chopped
2 Jenny-O hot italian turkey sausages, casing removed and crumbled
the tomato sauce we set aside prior to blending
cooking spray

Spray a pan with cooking spray. add the onions, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, and tomato sauce and cook over medium heat until the onions are translucent. Add in the sausage and artichoke hearts. Cook until the sausage is done. Here's what it should look like:

Preheat your oven to 375. Divide the dough into four parts. Stretch the dough so it covers the pans. Bake the dough for 5 minutes. Add the filling. Cover it with a ladle of sauce. Cover the sauce with a handful of mozzarella cheese and some parmesan cheese. Cover that with more sauce. Bake for 10-15 minutes, checking every 5 minutes to make sure the crust doesn't burn. You can cover the crust edge with tin foil if you're worried about it burning.

Cut each pie into 6 slices. A serving is 2 slices.

Posted in: deep dish pizza,diet,healthy,jalapeno