Chicago style deep dish pizza--with San Antonio influences

Yesterday afternoon, Isaac and I tried our hand at making a Chicago style deep-dish pizza! It was an adventure, to say the least, and one that I advise should not be taken lightly. To begin with, we made our own crust. We had a recipe so it wasn't like we dream it up from scratch--Oh my, can you imagine the hell that would be?

I started the dough at 4pm. It takes an hour to proof so just after 5, I punched it down and rolled it out. I used a springform pan for our creation so as to make it easier to remove from the tin. After laying out the dough and spreading it out across the pan and up the sides, I let it proof for another twenty minutes. During that time, we prepared all our toppings--well, not really toppings as they went inside the pizza. We sliced up the mushrooms, onion, red and green bell pepper. We cooked the Italian sausage and chopped up the Canadian bacon. Once the dough proofed for a second time, we were all set to lay "in" the pizza. We started with layering the mozzarella cheese--we used slices. The meats came second: pepperoni, sausage, and bacon. Finally, all the veggies: bell peppers, onion, and mushrooms--we didn't cook any of the vegetables. We let the oven do that.   finally, we topped it off with more mozzarella cheese--this time, shredded. Notice I haven't mentioned the sauce yet. I didn't forget. We didn't use any until the last stages of our creation! Once the toppings were layed down, we put another layer of dough on top! We punched a few holes to vent and then covered the entire thing up with sauce. We dabbed it with garlic (as we forgot to include that in our ingredients until the end!) We sprinkled it down with parmesan and mozzarella cheese. We baked it 400 degrees for forty minutes!

It came out a little charred on top but the inside was pure perfection! We enjoyed it thoroughly! As we sat there (Isaac, Ken, and I) scarfing down our pizza, we talked about what we would do differently. I thought the sauce was enough but the boys wanted more so next time I will probably coat the first layer of cheese with sauce and place the meats and add another coat before layering the veggies and then add the final layer of sauce once I place the dough top. Also, I probably will not place cheese on top until half the cooking time has expired. This will still give the cheese plenty of time to melt but not so much time as to char. One last note: the bread came out really thick. Thicker than I remember from Chicago. So next time around, I think will roll it out a bit thinner. I can't wait to try this again!