I listen to the Culinary Historians of Chicago podcasts for episodes I have missed. I listened to Slicing into Chicago’s Pizza History. I was fascinated and bought his book, thinking that there would be a variety of pizza recipes in it.
But it is review of pizza styles and restaurants without any recipes. I was disappointed but google rescued me as I was able to find what seems to be reliable recipe for the first style mentioned in the book, the Tavern-Style. So in August 2023 I started my pizza journey.
So one week prior I started the dough fermenting in mason jars.
But then I had to quickly find a pizza steel. I bought one from amazon, but it needed preparing first. I had to soak it in vinegar to 24 hours first.
It started bubbling.
After 24 hours the bottom was still black because the vinegar couldn’t really get to it. So I flipped the steel and soaked it another 24 hours. Then I had to scrub it with comet and steel wool to get it clean. Then I had to season it, wiping it with oil and baking it in the oven for over 2 hours. The day prior I had pulled the pizza dough out of the fridge to let it warm up
Then, on September 3, I shaped it into two 14″ round thin crust and put them in the fridge. I found a recipe to make the fennel garlic sausage. I had to find some ingredients for the sauce and toppings as well.
The first pizza did not come off of the metal peel onto the steel. So Tom and I had to finagle it, and it became misshapen.
After cooking, I tried to cut it into 4 inch squares.
Tom then put his favorite toppings on the second pizza. He cooked it on a pizza pan on top of the steel. His crust wasn’t as well cooked. Next time I think we will quickly try to assemble the pizza directly on the preheated steel.
But both Tom and I loved these very thin crusted tasty pizzas. We will definitely make them again.
The next weekend, I was focused on making the next style in the book. It is thin crust pizza. These pizzas’ crusts aren’t as thin as the tavern-style but still thin. I dug around google using the restaurants names mentioned in the book. And I found a recipe for Aurelios Pizza.
I started the dough the day before and let it ferment in the fridge. On September 10, I let it warm for 2 hours before baking. But I forgot to “dock the dough” on the first dough I rolled out. So the crust rose quite a bit with the initial baking. I did use the pizza steel again.
I rolled it out, and it came down. Tom put the pizza sauce I made, mozzarella, parmesan and pepperoni on it.
I put roasted tomatoes and peppers, garlic and the cheeses on mine.
I liked the pizza. Tom said he liked the tavern-style better, but it was because he liked the sausage on it. So far in this pizza experiment, the pizzas have been good, and this has been fun. Next is artisan pizza.
On September 24 I made an artisan pizza. In this chapter, the artisan refers to making an excellent pizza crust. It is not necessarily related to the ingredients. I chose to make Homemade Pizza Crust and Dennis Lee’s Pizza Sauce Delizioso. The crust recipe is based on suggestions by chef Jeff Lutzow of Pizzeria Bebu, listed in this book’s chapter. For the sauce, Dennis works at Paulie Gee’s, another of the restaurants listed in the chapter.
Here are my slices of the pizza. I used roasted tomatoes and peppers from our garden with Italian sausage from our pigs. Tom substituted pepperoni for the vegetables. This is my favorite pizza so far. Tom liked it as well, saying the previous sauce had been too sweet. The crust did seem a little soft. I maybe should have cooked it a little linger.
So next, on September 28, I took on the Neapolitan pizza. This took a lot of research and careful purchasing. I started out with Nakenna Special Pizza and How to create authentic Neapolitan pizza with Jonathan Goldsmith of Spaca Napoli. But then I went down the rabbit hole which is the AVPN International Regulation. The International Regulation is a set of codified rules, orally transmitted by neapolitan’s generation of pizzamaker.
Disciplinare_AVPN_2022_en
So then I set out to find the approved ingredients.
Tom bought the Fior Di Latte from Whole Foods in Bellingham.
I, miraculously, found the Tipo 00 Italian flour at Haggen’s in Burlington.
I ordered the D.O.P. peeled tomatoes from Amazon.
And the fresh basil came from our greenhouse.
I started a half recipe of the dough that morning. After a 1 hour fermentation, I divided the dough into 9 ounce balls. Three of them went in the refrigerator for later use, and three went on to ferment at room temperature for another 8 hours. Then I created a Neapolitan pizza. I wasn’t able to use my fingers to make the crust so resorted to using a rolling pen (against regulations).
But then I was unable to transfer the pizza to the peel to place on the stone. So we forced it, and it looks a little funny. We got our Green Egg to ~500 degrees with the stone in it, and I baked the pizza.
We cooked it a little too long as the crust didn’t look done, but the bottom was burnt. Here it is on the plate.
It was actually really good though, despite the burning. The crust was actually fine. The sauce, cheeses and basil were great. We just should have taken it off a little sooner. The crust not quite done due to malformation trying to get it off the peel.
Tom made a meat pizza, of course. He cooked it on the pan and for a little longer.
Here it is baked. This is his favorite pizza so far of my Chicago pizza experimentations. I thought it was too salty.
We had a third crust, leftover Fior Di Latte, and a warm Egg so I made a cheese pizza. Here it is going on the Green Egg.
And it cooked well. It was good pizza, quite cheesy.
So, all in all, a great pizza day. I would highly recommend trying to make an authentic Neapolitan pizza at least once.
So there was a break in the pizza project. Life got in the way. But on November 9, I got back on track and started prep for a New York Style Pizza which apparently is made in Chicago as well. I had to search a bit to find a recipe for this pizza. I ended up buying kindle book written by the founder of Dimo’s Pizza, Dimitri Syrkin-Nikolau. Now most of the recipes in this book, Revolutionary Pizza, are bizarre. But there is description for making the crust and marinara sauce so I went with that. I prepared this items on the 9th and then they were ready on 11/10 for baking. Now this is out dateiversary, 22 years since the day we met. But I am still sick and potentially contagious so we didn’t go out to eat at Pepper Sisters where we met. Tom made his pizza with mozzarella and pepperoni. Here it is coming out of the oven.
I was craving a vegetarian pizza so used roasted mushrooms, onion, red pepper, and olives with some artichoke bruschetta for mine with mozzarella. Here is mine coming out of the oven (there was a little mishap with one edge going into the oven).
Both pizzas were really good. Tom’s was better as mine was a little moist and overloaded. I thought his was the best pizza we have made so far in this experiment. The sauce and crust were excellent. I was a little surprised that the pizzas were only 12 inches as I think of New York style pizzas as being larger than this. I would definitely make this pizza again (but less ingredients in my case). It made for a nice dateiversary.
Next I worked on the deep dish pizza. On November 19, I started the dough using the Labriola Deep Dish Pizza recipe. The dough seemed weird; inconsistent and dry. It went in the fridge overnight and then came out on November 20 to be shaped into the crust. I had to purchase a deep dish pan as well as some of the ingredients.
I prepared the sauce and used the Italian Fennel Sausage recipe for our pork sausage. Here is the pizza ready for the oven.
It weighed almost 6#!
Here it is after baking. The sausage was overcooked, but I worried that the dough was undercooked.
But it actually came out of the dish OK.
It was tasty. Tom gave it a thumbs up. We both had seconds although that was probably too much as this pizza is very filling. I will probably make it again. I have a lot of leftover tomato sauce now.
Chapter 10 has 4 different types of pizza as it finishes the book. On December 3 we had the stuffed pizza. I couldn’t find any recipes from the restaurants listed so I went with Chicago Stuffed Pizza from Omnivorous Adam. I started the dough the day before. It is quite stiff. I made the sauce and the sausage the day of baking. I used the NYT Italian fennel sausage recipe again. This time I only put 1 teaspoon of crushed peppers per 1 pound because Tom complained the sausage was too spicy with the last pizza. Then I assembled the pizza. It takes 2# of mozzarella! Here it is assembled about to go in the oven.
And here it is after baking. I was really nervous that the pizza pie would not come out of the cast iron pan in one piece, but it did.
It was challenging to cut, but I managed to.
And here is my piece. It has way too much cheese. I felt like I was eating a block of cheese and not much else. One piece completely stuffed me (maybe that is where the name comes from?). I do not think I will make this again, and I believe Tom agrees. It was fun to do once though.
After a break for the holidays, I resumed the pizza adventure with a Sicilian pizza on January 12. I couldn’t find a recipe directly related to the restaurants mentioned in the book so used the Old School Sicilian Pizza recipe. But I also used the information in the book from D’Amato’s about placing the ingredients on the pizza before the last dough rising and the baking instructions from Alexandra’s Kitchen. Here it is before the last rise. I did put mozzarella on the crust, sliced tomatoes on half of it (Tom is not a fan), tomato sauce, Italian seasoning, pepperoni, Romano and then olive oil.
Here it is after that rise.
And here it is after baking.
And on my plate. The crust was supposed to be Focaccia like, which it wasn’t. But it was really good. I will definitely make this pizza again.
I am learning a lot about different styles of pizza from this adventure.
On January 20, I made Roman style pizza. I found a recipe for Bonci’s Roman Style Cold Ferment Pizza Dough. Bonci pizza is the first one mentioned in the chapter of the book, but it is apparently revered by many.
But first I had to gather the ingredients. I hadn’t realized that the recipe makes 3 large pizza and only bought one package of Ferndale Mozzarella cheese (my new go-to moz). But I was able to find this flour. Plus I have plenty of leftover frozen pizza sauce, thanks to my previous recipes.
This is the second of the pizza crusts I made. You have to ferment the dough for 24 hours and then carefully stretch it out with your fingers. The video linked in the recipe is worth watching. Then you spread the tomato sauce and some olive oil on it before cooking the dough, first on the bottom rack and then on the middle one.
I ran out of pans of the correct size so I made the third crust in a smaller pan. It ended up thick.
This is the second crust after baking and the first one after baking and with toppings being added. The first one was thin and overcooked so I baked the second and third crusts for less time.
Tom put the toppings on the second crust. Here it is after baking.
I put the toppings on the first crust, mostly roasted vegetables.
And I placed the toppings on the third crust. I forgot to get a photo before some disappeared.
These were really good pizzas. The crust were the favorite so far. The sauce baked first on the crust really intensified its flavor. It was a learning curve getting the crust thickness and bake right, but it was so worth it!
Our pizza journey was waylaid by Tom’s burns. He couldn’t eat pizza with his burnt lips. So finally on March 2, I resumed with a Detroit-style pizza. I used the recipes included in Pizza Making Forum. It is based on Jet’s pizza which was mentioned in the book. The dough is quite moist. This is after fermenting for 4 hours.
Then I added tomato sauce (made per the recipe), shredded mozzarella, pepperoni and cooked Italian fennel sausage.
It was interesting that the recipes from this forum used shredded mozzarella rather than cubed brick cheese. I cooked the pizza until the dough seemed baked.
But the dough never seemed to actually get done. Plus the pizza was incredibly salty. Neither of us liked it. I am wondering if I should have cooked the dough first before adding the toppings. But we ended our pizza journey on a sad note. But happy that we got to experience so many different styles of pizza. This was fun.
