This looks similar to a recipe I’ve been using from pizza making dot com for a few years. Some of the important points are not overworking the dough, trying to reduce moisture, not making the crust too thick especially on the edges where it should be as thin as possible. I use my 12†cast iron skillet in the oven. I put about 12 ounces of raw sausage on top of the cheese layer, then some sautéed mushrooms, onions, peppers, then top with drained San Marzanos.
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The whole thing, complete with all of the Excruciating Detail is cut and pasted into my OneNote "Pizza" tab. If this is the real thing, then I've never had a Chicago Style pizza. Going now to look for a deep dish pizza pan. Thanks!Comment
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The fact is there are a number of iconic deep dish Chicago style pizza joints, they all do something a bit different, and everyone has a favorite. Everyone is pretty sure Gino's East has cornmeal in the crust... I know they use some to keep the crust from sticking to the pan... old bakery trick. If I have a favorite, it's the modern style, known as the 'Quod. -
I'm almost 100% certain Gino's East does NOT use cornmeal. There's been a lot of discussion at pizzamaking.com on that point, and widely taken as false. Cornmeal on the bottom of a pan is one thing. In the dough is another entirely. Semolina works. I've never had a cornmeal crust that was anywhere near any of the "canonical" pizzas (if there is such a thing). -
I agree. I think people just take the cornmeal on the bottom as loose cornmeal that fell out of the dough. Gino's does nothing to dispel that notion, though, swearing their dough is a super secret recipe or sth.
They're all secret recipes, and they're all one flavor or another of the same thing.
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Regarding "cornmeal crust," Steve Dolinsky is my go to for anything about Chicago Pizza.
https://stevedolinsky.com/chicagos-deep-dish-stuffed-pizzas-z
I recall a cornmeal crust* and a thick pie, and on a recent lunch outing with a friend who adores deep dish, I went with my usual for this Quest: half sausage-half pepperoni. I know that deep dish takes awhile to make, so I called ahead, asking if I could place my order then dine-in. Nope. You can call ahead for a take-out order, but since they don’t take reservations, you have to just score a seat first, then place your order, then wait. And wait. And then you wait some more. On a Wednesday afternoon in a half-filled dining room, we waited 68 minutesfor our small deep dish (the person on the phone said it would be 40 minutes; our server said more like an hour plus). I now understand why everyone at Gino’s is a tourist: they have no appointments and no time commitments and aren’t bound by the laws of workplace lunch hours. Once it did arrive, our server cut out a piece from the blackened steel pan and served up a slice. The mozzarella is as thick as taffy, oozing from the pan beneath a top layer of chunky tomato sauce; beneath it all, the signature crust, containing just enough cornmeal* to make it taste like baked cornbread, and me being a corn freak, I actually ate the entire piece. Unfortunately, the sausage (made by an outside company) is a series of tiny pebbles, about the size of blueberries, and didn’t make an kind of an impression, sandwiched and buried as they were, beneath cheese and above a hefty crust.
*The cornmeal crust is apparently a fallacy. See this jaw-dropping, eye-opening rebuttal courtesy of RealDeepDish.com
Since you can buy a Gino's East pizza frozen at the grocery, it has an ingredients list. The only corn anything in the dough is corn oil. Which is where the corn flavor comes from. Dolinsky loves that corn flavor, so there you go. If you want to make Geno's East at home, a wee bit of yellow food dye to the dough, and corn oil.Comment
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Yup. Truth. I think the cornmeal fallacy started with Pat Bruno's "The Great Chicago Style Pizza" cookbook, which insists that cornmeal is the secret ingredient. Pat having been a food critic of the Chicago Sun Times had some creds, and...ruined everything. Before you knew it, every recipe on the planet insisted that a Chicago crust was cornmeal. I only had to make a few of those before I realized it was a lie. A big fat hairy lie. Corn oil works. But I'm liking butter...at lot. -
Butter is the Lou Malnati not-so-secret twist.
I prefer Malnati to Gino, but Giordano's to both, and Quod to all of those.
But honestly, I like thin crust better than the deep.
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Well I’m off to find a deep dish pizza pan, gonna have to try this soon. Do you have any connection to Pequod’s on clybourn?Comment
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