Chicago-style pizza
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chicago-style pizza is a very specific variety of pizza. Pizza is traditionally considered to be a type of hearth cake such as focaccia. The Chicago-style pizza shares more in common with a casserole such as lasagna. True Chicago-style pizza, a unique deep dish variety, features a buttery crust-cheese-chunky tomato sauce construction. While stuffed, pan and thin-crust style pizzas are also served in Chicagoland, it is the deep-dish style that Chicago is most famous for.
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[edit] Deep-dish Pizza
The Chicago-style "deep-dish" pizza was invented at Pizzeria Uno in Chicago in 1943, reportedly by Uno's founder Ike Sewell, a former University of Texas football star. However, a 1956 article from the Chicago Daily News asserts that Uno's original pizza chef Rudy Malnati developed the recipe [1].
The pizza begins with a simple, thin layer of dough (made with olive oil and often cornmeal) that's laid into a deep round pan and pulled up the sides, then parbaked before the toppings are added to give it greater spring. The crust is lined with meats and/or vegetables such as Italian sausage (a Chicago staple), onions, and bell peppers, either under or mixed with mozzarella cheese. On the usual pizza, about a pound of cheese is used. Then a layer of seasoned crushed tomatoes goes on top and the pizza is baked to completion.
Deep-dish pizza is often eaten with a knife and fork, since its thick gooeyness makes it messy to eat with the fingers.
Besides Uno, famous deep-dish restaurants in Chicago include Gino's East, Edwardo's, Connie's, Giordano's, Pizano's, and Lou Malnati's
[edit] Stuffed Pizza
Rocco Palese, who founded Nancy's in 1974, generally gets the credit for stuffed pizza. He based his creation on his mother's recipe for scarciedda, an Italian Easter pie from his hometown of Potenza.
Stuffed pizzas are often even taller than deep-dish pizzas, but otherwise, it can be hard to see the difference until you cut into it. A stuffed pizza generally has much higher topping density than any other type of pizza. As with deep-dish pizza, a thin layer of dough forms a bowl in a high-sided pan and the toppings and cheese are added. Then, an additional layer of dough goes on top and is pressed to the sides of the bottom crust.
At this stage, the thin dough top has a rounded, domed appearance. (Pizza makers often tear a small hole in the top of the "lid" to allows air to escape while cooking, so that the pizza does not explode.) Pizza sauce is ladled over the top crust and the pizza is baked.
[edit] Pan Pizza
Pan pizza in Chicago is similar to the deep-dish style, and baked in a similar deep-sided pan, but its crust is quite thick -- a cross between the buttery crisp crust and foccacia. Toppings sometimes go on top, as with thin-crust pizza, rather than under the sauce.
[edit] Thin-crust Pizza
In addition to Chicago-style deep-dish pizza, there is also a thin-crust pizza unique to Chicago. Though it is more difficult to obtain outside Chicagoland and much less famous than the stuffed pizza, Chicago thin-crust pizza outsells its famous cousin by a high margin in the Chicagoland area.[citation needed] The crust is thin and firm enough to have a noticeable crunch, unlike a New York-style pizza, yet thick enough to be soft and doughy on the top.The crust is invariably topped with a liberal quantity of southern-Italian style tomato sauce, which is usually quite herbal or highly spiced, and typically contains no visible chunks of tomato. Next, a layer of toppings is added, and a layer of mozzarella cheese which frequently separates from the bottom crust due to the quantity of tomato sauce.
Traditionally, this pizza is cut into squares, also known as "party cut," as opposed to a "pie cut" into wedges. The consistency of the crust and the quality and quantity of the tomato sauce and cheese are what separate this style from East Coast-, Roman- and St. Louis-style pizzas, and it makes the pizza from neighborhood pizzerias immediately distinguishable from that offered by national chains such as Papa John's or Pizza Hut.
This style of pizza is now spreading due to the expansion of Aurelios Pizza a Chicago chain, into Florida, Colorado and a few other states. Additionally, Sweet Home Chicago Pizzeria now sells the authentic Chicago-style thin-crust pizza in the Salt Lake City, Utah, market.
[edit] Toppings
One of the most popular toppings which all styles of Chicago pizza have in common is sausage. Hearty, coarse Italian sausage is the number one pizza topping in Chicago. Some restaurants lay on the sausage so thickly that it covers the whole surface of the pizza, sometimes in the form of a giant sausage disk.
It is much less common to see any sort of "California style" toppings on a Chicago style pizza.
[edit] External links
[edit] See also
- Chicago Style Hot Dog
- California-style pizza
- New York-style pizza
- St. Louis-style pizza
- Apizza, or New Haven-style pizza
- Detroit-style pizza
