Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza

Photo Ganked from A Million Revolutions...

Just in case it isn't obvious enough yet, I love pizza. I eat pizza weekly, and sometimes more than once a week. Husband and I are even in the process of putting together our zine, PIZZA FACE, which will hopefully be an annual cook zine with different dominant foods (this year pizza, next year burgers, etc). We've already selected our favourite recipes for the zine and any pizza we make from here on in (because we'll probably still have pizza every single friday night) is going to be less serious in the ways of recipe saving, and maybe even more experimental (or even boring!). We'll have to see.

This pizza is the second pizza I've made post-zine recipe collecting, and it was on a whim. I grew up with this whole foods cookbook and was lucky enough to snag a mint condition, vintage copy at the annual book sale put on by the local arts centre (for a dollar!). This recipe is a modification of one I found buried deep inside my new-to-me cookbook. I've jazzed it up a bit, and made it a little smaller. It was so delicious I was surprised I'd never made a deep dish pizza before!

Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza
adapted from the recipe by the same name from Whole Foods for the Whole Family

Ingredients
1 batch pizza dough (one that was about 2 cups of flour)
1 lb ground pork
1-2 tbsp oil (veg, olive, peanut)

1/2 tsp chili flakes
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp salt
pepper to taste
1/3 cup tomato sauce
2-3 cups shredded mozza
1 medium tomato, sliced

Directions
Preheat oven to 425F. Grease 9" cake pan and press dough into pan, letting it rise for 15 additional minutes (press a "crust" if you like). Meanwhile, brown pork in oil in a frying pan over medium heat, adding chili, onion, salt and pepper about half way through cooking.

After the 15 minute rise time, spoon tomato sauce on the pizza dough and spread around leaving your crust exposed, if you like. Top with 3/4 of the cheese, tomato slices, and then the pork. Top with your remaining 1/4 mozza and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Once cooked remove from pan and let sit for about 5 minutes before cutting.