Traditional Chicago Style Pizzas

A true Chicago style pizza has a very unique style. It is a very deep dish style pizza with tons of cheese and a chunky tomato sauce.

But, what's the point in having a huge, thick, deep dish pizza? I mean you can bare get your mouth around it. Well, what point is there in any pizza? To eat and enjoy. So, that's what you do with a Chicago style pizza. You eat and enjoy. But, this pizza needs fork... And definitely a napkin or two...

There are actually different styles of Chicago pizza, although, yes the traditional pizza is the deep- dish, they still have their pan pizza, thin crust pizza, and stuffed pizza, to choose from.

This Chicago pizza starts with a very thick layer of dough which is laid into a deep round pan. Parbaked before the toppings are added, the dough is given an interesting twist. But, anyway, you then add a layer of cheeses, meats (usually Italian sausage and peperoni), vegetables if you choose (usually onions and bell peppers are added), and then the sauce is added. The sauce for a Chicago pizza is made of crushed and pureed tomatoes. Before you through the pizza into the oven to cook, you will want to put more cheese on top of the sauce.

When the pizza is finally finished, you've used about a pound of cheese, of course varying on the size of your pizza. But, for the most part, a family sized deep- dish will call for nearly a pound of cheese.

This gooey pizza must be eating with a fork, because there's just no way that you'll manage to pick it up and eat it like a thin crust pizza.

Chicago, also, makes a nice thin crust pizza that is still unique from your everyday frozen thin- crust or your delivered Pizza Hut pizza. This pizza is often referred to as a flat pizza, and unlike the New York thin- crust pizza, the dough is both crunchy and doughy.

After flattening the curst, you would generally top it with a decent amount of Italian tomato sauce, which usually doesn't have any visible chunks of tomatoes and is heavily spiced with herbs. Then, you'd layer the toppings, whether they be meat or vegetable, and then the mozzarella cheese.

Stuffed pizzas are tall like the deep- dish pizza and really looks no different than the deep- dish. But, as soon as you cut open the stuffed pizza, you see the difference. This pizza tends to have much more toppings with a thin layer of dough, that surrounds the top, bottom, and sides, of the pizza. Most stuffed pizzas have a thin layer of sauce on top of the covering dough.

These stuffed pizzas sound similar to a calzone, except a calzone is on a much smaller level than this over- stuffed, extremely large pizza.