4 Levels of Deep Dish Pizza: Amateur to Food Scientist

[pizza sauce swishing]

[bright upbeat music]

I'm Joe, and I'm a Level 1 chef.

I'm Beth and I'm a Level 2 chef.

Hi, I'm Ann Ziata.

I'm a chef at the Institute of Culinary Education.

I've been a professional chef for 14 years.

[bright upbeat music]

Today I'm making a deep dish pizza.

I don't like it too thick.

I'm a shallow dish pizza kind of person.

I've been to Chicago.

I've eaten a lot of deep dish pizzas.

They're really good,

but they're not pizza.

Today I'm gonna be making my white

and green deep dish pizza.

My inspiration was a vegetarian lasagna made

with béchamel and greens.

[mysterious music]

So the most important part of any pizza is the dough.

But I've never made pizza dough.

You know why I don't?

It's because they make it in a bag.

I'm gonna do two layers of dough.

I'm gonna put one paste there.

I'm gonna put some sauce, cheese, some toppings,

and then a second layer of dough.

Same thing, sauce, cheese, couple different toppings.

It's like a pizza on a pizza.

There's cornmeal in this and there's butter.

And that's what kind of makes it pie-y.

First thing I'm gonna do is proof my yeast,

the lavender in this recipe.

And in order to wake it up,

I'm gonna add a little warm water because it's thirsty,

and a little sugar for it to snack on.

If we skip this step and go and make our dough

and the yeast is alive, everything's gonna be great.

But if the yeast is dead, pizza's gonna be awful.

So the yeast here is alive.

You can see it's foaming.

That's a sign of a nice, healthy yeast.

So I'll start by adding all-purpose flour.

Flour, the cornmeal, lots of sugar,

and a good amount of salt and the yeast, three teaspoons.

I'm also gonna add a little semolina flour

that's higher in protein.

It's also gonna add a little bit of this nutty flavor

and some corn oil.

I want to mix this up first.

Let's start kneading.

Cold butter, just like a pie crust.

You want the butter to be incorporated into the flour

where it looks a little bit heavily.

So I'm gonna let this rest for about six hours.

My pie crust, I mean pizza dough,

is covered and ready for its rest for 90 minutes

over in a nice warm place in the kitchen.

I'm gonna make some sauce now.

So what do I got?

I got some tomatoes in a can.

I got some tomato paste.

I could use sauce out of the jar,

but then I'm not doing anything.

So this makes me feel like I cooked a pizza.

Now we're gonna add a little bit of oregano in there.

Put some salt in there,

pinch some sugar.

There's no method to this.

I'm just pinching

because that's what I feel like you're supposed to do.

If you have measuring spoons,

you're not really making Italian food.

Somebody comes to your house

and they say, Oh, you did it wrong.

It's like, Well, get out though.

Go get your own pizza.

Traditionally deep dish pizza has tomato sauce

on top of mozzarella cheese.

This is Chicago deep dish pizza sauce.

So you're gonna see butter, red onions.

I use Redpack tomatoes.

It's the only tomatoes I ever used.

[can tapping]

And I always pass the tomatoes through a food mill

because I don't want any seeds and any skin.

Let me get the onions and the garlic in there.

I wanna put in some tomato paste

and get the tomatoes in there.

Always salt, pepper, oregano,

I guess about a half a teaspoon.

I always use fresh basil.

Now we're gonna cook this sauce low and slow.

I want it really thick, really, really thick.

If you need a thick sauce,

all you have to do is keep cooking.

And this is perfect.

I'm gonna make a white sauce pizza.

I love white sauce.

I also really love greens and cheese.

To me, that is a match made in heaven.

So to make the béchamel, I have milk here.

So we're gonna add some aroma to the milk here.

Fennel seeds are gonna add a little sweetness,

a little green character, a little mintiness,

and it's gonna really compliment the cheese.

Peppercorn, so I'm gonna add a hint of spice.

One single clove.

It's strong enough to fix the whole pizza.

And then one bay leaf.

So I'm just gonna strain it, so that's nice, even texture.

So I'm gonna make a blonde roux.

A roux is a mixture of fat and flour,

used to thicken a sauce.

Now I'm ready to add my fennel seed milk.

I'm looking for it to become much thicker.

Nutmeg is a rare spice that loses its flavor

with longer cooking, so we always wanna add it at the end.

This is my favorite part of pizza.

It's the cheese.

I care about this more than anything.

I would eat a pizza with no sauce or dough or toppings

'cause I love cheese that much.

Don't skimp on the cheese.

No matter what kind of sauce you use.

You absolutely need cheese on a pizza.

I've chosen provolone and mozzarella.

Why did I choose two kinds of cheese?

Why not?

The cheeses I'm going to use are whole milk mutz

and Parmesan.

Chicago, they use Parmesan.

Today we're using Parmesan.

I have two cheeses I'm gonna use here.

The first is a caciocavallo.

This is kind of my mozzarella substitute.

It is made from cow's milk.

It's nutty, it's rich, it's toasty.

It's double wrap for security.

Hold on one second.

[playful music]

Yeah, this is [chuckles]

This is tightly.

Nobody's getting into this cheese.

Okay, thank you for your patience.

Here's the mozzarella.

I'm just gonna cut 'em out real thin,

just so the middle section will be provolone,

and then these slices of mozzarella

will be just kind of scattered about,

giving it a little extra gooeyness, extra cheesiness.

The fresh mutz is delicious, but it has a lot of moisture.

The black cheese is a low-moisture cheese,

so it's gonna be drier without really compensating anything

as far as taste is concerned.

So the caciocavallo is gonna go on the bottom

of the pizza,

but we need some cheese on the top too.

So I have a Grana Padano here.

It's like Parmesan.

It's a little kind of nuttier and crumblier.

I'm just gonna grate a bit and now my cheese is ready.

[Joe] That's probably enough.

Mutz, parm,

I'm ready to make a pizza.

All right, here are my toppings.

I'm doing the spinach and the onions in the middle,

pepperoni and olives on top.

The idea is that my girlfriend can pull off the olives

and pepperoni because she doesn't like them.

And then in the middle,

you got all this stuff that we both can eat.

Deep dish Chicago pizza has sausage on top,

so I'm using sweet Italian sausage.

I'm just gonna take the sausage out of the casings.

I'm just gonna dollop this sausage raw right on top

of the cheese.

Not gonna cook it beforehand.

The pizza cooks long enough that the sausage will cook.

Deep dish pizza is unique

because we're really giving it a filling

rather than just a topping.

The first thing I'm gonna need

for all of this to happen is to make my garlic oil.

I'm gonna add some olive oil

and a head of garlic cut in half.

I'm gonna add some marjoram, some rosemary,

and I'm gonna take some Meyer lemon, just the peel.

This oil I'm gonna use for the entire dish.

I'm gonna use it to saute the greens and the mushrooms.

And I'm also gonna use it to coat the bottom of the pan.

It's going to be this kind of secret layer of flavor.

For my mushrooms, I have a hen of the woods mushroom,

nice and rustic.

Nothing fancy.

So for the creminis, same idea.

I'm just gonna slice through it.

So I wanna make sure there is some space

for the mushrooms to breathe.

They're gonna release a lot of moisture,

and if they're all on top of each other,

they're gonna steam and get soggy.

We want them to kind of dry out.

And you can see all the steam,

all that water leaving, which is great.

So I'm gonna use a little white wine to deglaze.

It's gonna add just a little acidity and brightness.

It's gonna help me clean off all of that on the bottom

of the pan and infuse those flavors back into the mushrooms.

[spatula thudding]

So I turn the heat off

and I'm gonna add just a little splash of Shio koji.

It smells like miso.

It's gonna add a little natural umami,

little natural glutamates, which is a flavor enhancer.

Mushrooms look great.

Now I'm gonna do my greens.

I already blanched and shocked Swiss chard and kale here

for them to look more cooked and less raw,

and then shock them in an ice bath.

I'm cutting these up into smaller pieces.

They'll be a little bit smaller than bite size.

So when I cut the slices, it's not gonna be kind of pulling

and destroying the shape.

I'm gonna add the kale and chard.

So cooking it is going to get rid of even more moisture,

and it's gonna also give it a little toasty, deeper flavor.

So I know you're thinking,

Oh, I can do this at home with spinach,

but I promise you can't

because spinach is gonna shrink down to this much.

And this is a deep dish pizza,

so I need a lot of filling.

So add a little pinch of red pepper flakes

because it is a pizza

and a little Meyer lemon zest.

Okay, I got provolone.

I got mozzarella.

I got pepperoni.

I got my sauce that I made,

and it's all going together into a pie dish.

We're gonna assemble this deep dish casserole pizza.

Did I say casserole?

Pizza, pizza.

Not casserole.

I got my flour right here.

You want to flour the board.

Right a little bit down.

Make sure that this is very sticky.

I wanna roll this dough out

until it's bigger than the pan.

This dough is as you see, wants to go back

to its original form.

It's not being very cooperative.

This is why they spin it around like that, I assume.

I don't know how they do that.

Physically, it doesn't make any sense to me.

All right, I'm going to oil up my pan

so that the dough doesn't stick to it.

It's gonna add another layer of aroma

and it's gonna make the crust a little crispy,

a little crispier.

I have about three tablespoons of olive oil in this pan.

This pizza is gonna fry in here.

Get the dough out.

[bright upbeat music]

Here we go.

I don't wanna stretch it.

Just want to ease it in.

Easy, easy.

I'm not gonna roll it out.

I think it's just an extra step

that kind of flattens it out.

Alright, looks like a pie.

We're gonna hit it with a layer of sauce.

Now, I don't like a lot of sauce.

I like a lot of cheese.

I'm putting the cheese down first

because it's going to create a barrier,

not letting the moisture of the greens

and the mushrooms seep into the dough.

The mutz on the bottom is gonna protect the crust

so that it doesn't get mushy from the sauce.

Provolone.

Sometimes you might see shredded cheese on a pizza.

I got slices here,

I'm slapping them on there.

That's satisfying.

And now, some onion.

And we got spinach.

That's a good looking pizza right there.

You could be done in some worlds,

but this is not that.

I'm gonna put another pizza right on top.

Next comes the sausage.

You wanna make a thin sheet of sausage

across the top of the cheese.

You don't want big clumps because that may not cook.

Now I'm gonna add the mushrooms,

spreading it all the way around

and getting it right up to the crust.

I don't know who came up with deep dish,

but I know they were hungry

and they had a lot of time on their hands.

We got a little bit of a structural issue

with my top piece.

I'm gonna kind of just mush it, you know?

You just give it a mush.

If you're having problems, give it a mush.

The sauce got really, really thick,

which is exactly what I want.

If you cut it without it being this thick,

it might make the crust soggy

and it definitely wouldn't hold together at the end.

This is everything I want in a meal.

I want greens.

I want mushrooms.

I want bread and cheese.

Slap 'em good, you know what I mean?

And don't be afraid.

You can go up over the edge.

This is your pizza.

This is your world.

I feel like I'm making a pie.

Not a pizza pie,

but a pie.

I'm in love.

I'm obsessed.

What could make it better?

I don't know, maybe a fennel seed béchamel.

Just like frosting a cake.

I've always loved black olives on pizza.

I feel like they just go,

it's really the only place I like black olives.

I can't think of anything

that has black olives on it besides pizza.

And then add my pepperoni.

I'm going to rip it up

to give it kind of a rustic feel like you went

to some kind of fancy pizzeria.

Does that look rustic or does it look messy?

I don't know.

You know, I mean, nobody complains about how a pizza looks.

They just eat it.

And now nice layer of parm.

I don't think you can have too much cheese.

And to top it off, our Gran Mugello,

just a little bit nice salty, cheesy crust.

I'm just gonna trim off the excess crust.

Just for good luck,

I'm gonna brush the with a little more of the garlic oil

before I send it off into ovenland.

Alright, my pizza is assembled.

It looks, dare I say, perfect.

I'm gonna put it in the oven for a half hour at 425,

and then we'll see how I did.

And here you have it.

I'm gonna put it in a 425 degree oven for 40 minutes,

and then we'll eat.

I have my oven set for 425

and I'm gonna cook it for 40 minutes.

Let's go.

Oh-ho-ho, mamamia!

Look at this.

Look at that beautiful pie I just made.

Look at that.

Not a pizza,

but it looks great.

Nice layers.

Stringy mutz.

Look at that!

Alright, there you go.

This is my deep dish pizza.

[camera clicks]

This is my Chicago deep dish pizza.

[camera clicks]

And this is my white and green deep dish pizza.

[camera clicks]

[bright music]

I'm happy with this.

It looks good.

We got,

I see all my layers.

I got a lot of toppings, a lot of filling in there.

Crust, mutz,

sausage, sauce, and Parmesan.

You could smell the fennel.

You could smell the citrus in the olive oil.

You can smell the garlic.

The cheese looks so good.

I wanna stop talking because I need to eat this.

Mmm, my gosh.

There's a fork and knife here,

but that's exactly how I like it.

Like there's just the right amount of sauce, not too much.

There's a ton of cheese, probably too much.

This is wonderful.

On a cold day, fills you up, warms your belly.

It's got that umami from the mushrooms

that has that fresh from the green.

Like, I don't know why I feel surprised.

I knew it was gonna be good the whole time,

but this is just so delicious.

I really am gonna eat this whole thing.

[tense music]

Let's see how each of our three chefs

made their deep dish pizza.

[tense music]

Joe used commercial pre-made dough.

It's made from high gluten flour

that's combined with special enzymes

and emulsifiers like monoglycerides,

so it stretches without ripping or tearing.

Beth added yeast directly to her dry ingredients

without a proofing step.

You can do this with fast-acting, instant yeast.

It's made from cultured, dried,

and ground saccharomyces cerevisiae,

a common strain used for baking and beer making.

Ann combined her flour and other dry ingredients

and proofed her active dry yeast.

A required step that tells you your yeast is alive

and producing carbon dioxide.

That's a sign of a nice, healthy yeast.

[tense music]

Beth used a food mill,

which both grinds and strains the whole tomato.

Ann made béchamel, a classic European white sauce,

made by cooking a white roux and adding milk that's hot.

The roux, which is equal parts fat and flour,

increases viscosity of the milk by gelatinization.

[tense music]

Joe used a classic combination of pepperoni, spinach,

black olives and onions.

Black olives turn dark through oxidation.

An iron compound, ferrous gluconate, is added

to help stabilize the dark color.

I can't think of anything that has black olives on it

besides pizza.

Ann blanched and boiled kale and Swiss chard.

These leafy greens with vibrant pink red stems

that become less bitter and rounder in flavor once cooked,

as some of the bitter alkaloid compounds are leached

into the cooking water.

[tense music]

Joe made a layered stuffed crust.

This may require longer cooking time,

since there's quite a lot of moisture in this stuffed crust.

It's like a pizza on a pizza.

Beth added cheese directly to the bottom crust

and then layered her sausage and sauce on top.

Since fat and water don't mix,

the fatty cheese acts as a barrier

for any potential moisture migration

from other ingredients in her crust.

Ann added caciocavallo,

an expensive, semi-hard Italian cheese

that's aged in the characteristic shape of a teardrop.

It adds a rich and salty quality to her deep dish pizza.

She layered her mushrooms and cooked greens

and then topped it with a thick and creamy béchamel.

The béchamel will brown

and become slightly crispy on top during baking

due to the maillard browning reaction between proteins

and broken down lactose in the milk.

Who doesn't love pizza?

Next time you are going deep with yours,

we hope you'll take some of these tips

from our three extraordinary chefs.

[bright music]