Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza

My husband and I met in the Chicago suburbs. I had lived in the region for my entire life, and my husband is from a military family, so after years of moving around the world, they settled there when he was in high school. Needless to say, the local treats of the area were a regular part of our daily lives. So now that we have been away for about four years, we are experiencing withdrawal symptoms. It is basically impossible to find Chicago style deep dish pizza in the pan handle of Florida. Dominos is fine for a quick fix, but we needed the real deal. It was time to get to work.

The pan seemed like it was going to be the biggest hurdle. I believed incorrectly that I would need an overpriced specialty pan. Then as luck would have it, while searching through dough recipes, I found that spring form cake pans were perfect for the task. I was also pinched  for time, so while I made the dough from scratch, I let the bread machine do the hard part. The recipe I used is found here on Food.com. Once the bread machine had finished its work and the rising part had completed, we simply shaped it into the pan. I cheated and used a rolling pin to get the process started, but finished by gently pulling the dough to the correct shape as often recommended.

This done, we began layering in our ingredients. This included a pound of mozzarella, onions, green bell pepper, mushrooms, and mini pepperoni slices. Stop this we added our sauce. We like ours chunky and so added a can of red pepper spiced diced tomatoes to the store bought marinara. I finished this off with fresh basil from my window ledge garden. The final topping was a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.

After about 40 minutes we had ourselves a pretty good dinner. As this was an experiment, there are a few changes to be made next time. We may add ground beef. Also, I will perform the veggies a bit. I also really need to practice with dough. All in all though, this was good. Furthermore, it ended up not costing a lot since it easily made 6 individual meals. I'm definitely keeping this on our menu.

It got a little lopsided, but that's my lack of skill with dough showing.

Updates...

When I last posted I told you all of a number of free items that I sent away for. So far I have received 3 of them. The first to arrive were my wallpaper samples from Wallpapers Direct. The colors weren't exactly what I expected, but that's what I get for choosing colors from a computer monitor. The last item that arrived was the fabric samples. I should have noted the size as they are tiny, but I can still work with them. I wanted varying shapes and sizes, and that is what I have. Bemz shipped them from Lithuania, so the shipping time was pretty amazing and I can't wait to get the whole project together.

The second item to arrive was the lettuce seed from Groundswell International. I have been quite preoccupied with life lately, and so only got them planted today. I am looking forward to having fresh free lettuce in my home, and am already looking for the next plant to get started.

I also had a great surprise this week when the ginger I started from a store-bought root started to sprout. I've already begun looking for new Asian inspired recipes to use it in. One great dish that I have already tried is Crock Pot Mongolian Beef. I tweak this recipe by decreasing the amount of brown sugar and adding crushed red pepper. It's so easy and tasty that this will make appearance on our table regularly.

My ginger... isn't it cute?