Ryan's Chicago deep dish (Malnati's style)

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Here's how to make a Malnati's style deep dish pizza. This post is a little incomplete right now because I have never taken pictures of some of the important steps. I took most of these pictures to document how a certain brand of tomatoes works for this kind of pizza. I will add more pictures as soon as I get a chance to make some more deep dish pizzas.

Specialized equipment you'll need to make this pizza: One deep dish pan or cake pan, 1-1/2" or 2" deep and seasoned. Ideally you'll want a tin-plated steel pan (with straight sides), but you can get by with an aluminum pan if that's all you can get. I've been using a seasoned aluminum pan (not a cake pan), but I just ordered some commercial-quality steel pans and a pan gripper last night: 6" steel deep dish pan, 9" steel deep dish pan, 12" steel deep dish pan, 14" steel deep dish pan, and a N9494 pan gripper.

Looks like Malnati's to me, except my pan is half an inch too deep.

Here's a formula for a good deep dish dough. This probably needs a little work, but it's still very good. (It's the formula I used for the dough in these pics.)

100% KAAP flour
48% Water
0.6% ADY
0.5% Salt
4% Pure olive oil
16% Corn oil

You may have noticed that I did not list cornmeal as an ingredient. That's because there is no cornmeal in real deep dish. Cornmeal in deep dish is probably the most widespread pizza myth there has ever been. The one thing everyone knows about deep dish is that it has cornmeal in it, but it's just not true. So don't put cornmeal in your deep dish dough unless you want to ruin it.

Here's a recipe that will make just about enough dough for two 12" pizzas, three 9" pizzas, or seven 6" pizzas (if my spreadsheet did the math right):

16.85 oz KAAP flour
8.09 oz Water
1.01 tsp ADY
0.49 tsp Salt
0.67 oz Pure olive oil
2.7 oz Corn oil

Here's how to make this dough:

1. Measure 1 tsp of active dry yeast and put it in mixer bowl.
2. Measure 8.09 oz of 110-degree water.
3. Add about 2 oz of the water to the mixer bowl.
4. Stir the water to dissolve the yeast.
5. Measure 16.85 oz of KAAP flour.
6. Measure 0.49 tsp of salt and add it to the flour. Stir to incorporate the salt into the flour.
7. Measure 0.67 oz of pure olive oil.
8. Measure 2.7 oz of corn oil.
9. If the yeast water is foamy, add the rest of the water to the mixer bowl and continue to the next step. If the yeast water is not foamy, wait five minutes, then add the rest of the water to the mixer bowl and continue to the next step. (Even if the water is not foamy by now, go ahead and add the water, then continue to the next step.)
10. Add the flour to the mixer bowl.
11. Put the bowl in place on the mixer and attach the dough hook.
12. Begin mixing on speed 2.
13. Immediately after the dough starts mixing, add the olive oil and corn oil to the mixer bowl.
14. Mix for about 1 minute. (As an alternative to using the mixer, you can mix this dough by hand, with a spoon, adding the ingredients to the bowl in the same order.)
15. Remove dough from the mixer bowl.
16. Divide the dough into appropriately weighed pieces of dough (see below) and place them in ziploc bags.
17. Put the dough balls in the refrigerator and leave them there for 24 hours. (48 hours is fine, too, and I suppose 72 hours is no different. After that I'm not so sure.)

Before you begin baking, you should know how much dough to use for common pan sizes:

For each 6" pizza, use 3.82 oz of dough.
For each 9" pizza, use 8.16 oz of dough.
For each 12" pizza, use 14.14 oz of dough.
For each 14" pizza, use 19.02 oz of dough.

How to make the pizza:

1. A couple hours before you intend to bake the pizza, remove the appropriate amount of dough balls from the refrigerator and let them warm up at room temperature.
2. If you will be baking on a stone, begin preheating your oven at 500 about an hour before you intend to bake the pizza.
3. Shortly before you intend to bake, remove your dough from its bag.
4. Decrease the oven temperature to 450 degrees.
5. Place your dough in a seasoned, unoiled deep dish pan of appropriate size. (Let's say you'll be making a 9" pizza. If so, you'll want to use about 8.16 oz of dough.) (How to season a pizza pan.)
6. DO NOT ROLL THE DOUGH! Instead, press the dough into the pan with your fingertips until it completely covers the bottom of the pan.
7. When the dough fills the bottom of the pan, crimp the outer edges of the dough against the sides of the pan. You'll want the lip of the dough to be very thin and reach about 1-1/4" up the side of the pan.
8. If you're making a 9" pizza, cover the dough with about 7.2 oz of sliced mozzarella.






Dough skin with appropriate amount of sliced cheese covering it.



9. If you want to make it how most people order it in Chicago, cover the cheese with coin-sized pieces of raw Italian sausage, with a few millimeters in between each piece. (I'll put a picture here as soon as I get a chance. Right now I don't have a picture showing this.)
10. Add other toppings (above the sausage if you used sausage).






Pepperoni on half.






Stanislaus Saporito Filetto di pomodoro tomato strips. This product works very well
for deep dish. This and the next three pics show you a few angles of what
kind of tomato product you want to use for this type of pizza.






One way of showing you the texture of these tomatoes.






Another way of showing you the texture of these tomatoes.






Yet another look at the texture.



11. Add about 9 oz of chunky tomato sauce (uncooked) above the toppings.






I weighed the tomatoes before adding to the top of the unbaked pizza.






Spread the tomatoes evenly around the pizza with your fingers.



12. Sprinkle or dash some romano or parmesan cheese over the tomatoes. (You may want to sprinkle a little oregano, too.)






Sprinkle some romano or parmesan cheese over the top just before baking



13. Set the pan on the bottom rack of your 450-degree oven. If you bake on the stone, it should probably be on the bottom, too. (I was experimenting with the pizza I baked in the following picture. I don't normally advise using a setup like this, but this pizza turned out great.)






Unusual oven setup, but it worked for me.



14. Bake at 450 for at least 22 minutes. If you've done everything how I instructed, it shouldn't take longer than 25 minutes for the pizza to finish baking.
15. If you don't know how the pizza should look when it's done, here are some visual clues that tell you the pizza is done: The crust will begin browning and pulling away from the side of the pan.

Bigger pizzas may take longer to bake than smaller pizzas. I'm not sure, though, because I've only ever made 10" pizzas.

For sauce just use a chunky tomato product, uncooked. If you can't get your hands on the Stanislaus tomato strips (or something like that), I suggest to buy whole tomatoes and chop them coarsely, then drain any excess liquid. A lot of serious home pizza-makers use diced tomatoes or Escalon 6 IN 1 tomatoes, but I don't really like either of those options. Diced tomatoes are too firm and 6 IN 1 is not chunky enough.

Here are some pics of fully baked deep dish pizzas:

Finished pizza, after baking at 450 for 22-25 minutes.

Removing the pizza from the pan. It might take a
little practice to do this without any trouble.

Baked pizza removed from the pan. Deep dish should be served in the pan, but I had to
remove it so I could take pictures of the outside of the crust.

Baked pizza on a screen with a couple slices gone.

Slice undercrust.

Even though I used finely chopped tomatoes on this one, instead of large chunks of tomato,
this one was the best deep dish pizza I've made, precisely because I processed the
tomato filets into smaller pieces than is typical on Malnati's style deep dish.

Lotsa cheese and wonderful gooeyness on this one. Mmmmm!

Here's a very good deep dish site, created by someone who is probably about as passionate about pizza as I am, but who focuses mostly on deep dish. Although I've made some damn good deep dish pizzas, realdeepdish.com is probably the best source of accurate deep dish information available. I will most certainly give Ed's dough formula a try before long. When I do, I'll share the results here.