Chicago Tavern Style Pizza
- Date:
- Jan. 13, 2025, 4:48 p.m.
- Topics:
- pizza
See Italian Sausage recipe for toppings
Ingredients
- 450 g full-fat aged mozzarella cheese, shredded
- 1 lb italian sausage, preferably homemade
- Pizza sauce, recipe below
- Dried oregano
- Dried basil
- Salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 550F with a pizza steel or an upside-down sheet tray.
- Spread prepared pizza sauce evenly over the rolled dough.
- Distribute half of the Italian sausage in rough balls evenly on top of each pizza (½ lb per pizza)
- Sprinkle half the shredded mozzarella cheese generously over the sausage of each pizza, spreading edge to edge (½ lb per pizza).
- Sprinkle each pizza with a pinch of dried oregano, dried basil, and a pinch of salt.
- Slide assembled pizza onto the preheated pizza steel or sheet tray in the oven.
- Bake for about 10 minutes until the crust is deeply baked and the cheese is bubbly and golden brown.
Dough
Ingredients
- 360 g bread flour
- 40 g cold butter
- 180 g ice cold water, divided
- 5 g yeast
- 7 g salt
Instructions
Step 1
- In a food processor, combine the bread flour and cold butter
- Pulse until the butter is broken down into small, gravel-like bits.
- Dissolve the yeast in 90 g (¼ C + 2 Tb) of ice cold water and the salt in another 90 g (¼ C + 2 Tb) of ice cold water.
- Add the yeast water and salt water to the flour-butter mixture in the food processor
- Pulse for 20-30 seconds until the dough is evenly hydrated. Be careful not to overmix.
- Transfer the dough onto a work surface and knead for 2 minutes until it forms a homogeneous ball.
- Round the dough into a ball, place it in a bowl, cover, and ferment for 2 hours.
Step 2
- After 2 hours, divide the dough into two equal pieces
- Perform a preshape by folding in the sides and rounding off the dough into a ball
- Cover the dough balls and let them rest for 20 minutes to relax the gluten.
- Press the dough ball flat with a pizza pan or large pot then roll out each dough ball into a 12" (30 cm) round
- Use a pizza docking tool or a fork to pierce the dough to prevent large bubbles from forming during baking.
- Spray 2 pieces of parchment paper with olive oil pan spray and a generous amount of fine grind cornmeal and place rolled out pizza doughs on top.
- Place both doughs stacked on a sheet tray and refrigerate, uncovered, for 4-24 hours to cold ferment and develop a skin for a crispier crust, preferably 24 hours.
Sauce
Ingredients
- 28 oz crushed tomatoes, 1 can
- 100 g tomato paste
- 12 g salt
- 20 g granulated sugar
- 1 g chili flakes
- 2 g dried basil
- 2 g dried oregano
- 2 g onion powder
- 2 g garlic powder
Instructions
- Scoop out half a C of crushed tomatoes from the can.
- Add the tomato paste, salt, sugar, chili flakes, basil, oregano, onion powder, and garlic powder to the remaining crushed tomatoes.
- Blend the sauce with immersion blender until the dried herbs are broken down and everything is well combined.