Deep Dish Pizza

Or rather: Slighly East Of Chicago-style Quadruple-Tomato Quadruple-Cheese Dragged Through The Garden pizza.

I sifted through a lot of conflicting recipes and instructions on line, and came up with something edible. But I think it's going to need more excuses to make more-er, trial runs.

I'll state right now that I am not going to use solid shortening in a pizza dough. NOT gonna do it. Oil, yes. Fat seems to be essential for getting that tender consistency somewhere between bread, pastry crust and a biscuit that seems to be common to those deep dish pizzas.

And I'm also not going to install the solid flooring of Italian sausage in the bottom like they do in Chicago pizzerias. As crazy decadent-delicious as it is, I just can't bring myself to do it. As I was walking past the Cardiac Cath Lab last night at work, I was thinking I hope I never see the inside of that place.

My parbaking the crust went a bit too far. When you have that vast quantity of toppings, this is done to spring the bottom crust up, and prevent it from being squashed flat. With the oven as hot as a lot of these instructions called for, the whole crust ballooned up (in spite of docking with a fork), browned and solidified. I just kind of piled all the veggies, drained tomatoes, tomato paste and cheeses on top, hoping for the best. I either need to lower the oven temperature, or pull the pan out a lot sooner.