Chicago thin-crust pizza
J. Kenji López-Alt · ♥ 21.6K likes · 860.3K views · 33 min video
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Ingredients
Method
Techniques
- 300 g bread flour
- 7½ g salt
- 7½ g sugar
- 1½ g instant yeast
- 30 g light olive oil
- 150 g water
Weigh the flour, then add the salt, sugar, instant yeast, oil and water.
Weighing flour, salt, sugar and yeast
Mix on speed two or three until it comes together into a shaggy ball with no dry flour remaining.
Cover with a bowl and rest 10 minutes so the flour hydrates and relaxes, which makes the kneading faster. This step can be skipped in a food processor.
Divide the dough in half, about 250 grams each, ball it up and coat it in a little oil.
- oil
Ferment in the fridge in covered containers three to five days, five being better. The dough may not rise at all, which is fine. Over-fermenting breaks the gluten down so the crust stays flat, which is wanted in this style. It can be made the same day by rising in oiled bowls until doubled, but comes out significantly better cold fermented.
- semolina
With semolina on the board, roll a dough ball out with a rolling pin, rotating between rolls, then working at 12 o'clock and at 45 degrees either way, until it is a 14 inch circle, a hair larger so it can shrink back during curing.
Rolling out to 14 inches
Cure the skin: lay it on parchment paper and leave it uncovered and undisturbed 12 to 18 hours, even 24, with nothing on top of it. It dries out until it is like leather with cracked edges, which guarantees it will not stick to the peel.
Preheat the oven to 500F with the baking steel in it for at least 45 minutes, the minimum for enough retained heat.
Oven, steel and the dry side down
Dust the peel with semolina and lay the skin drier side down, since the drier top side becomes the bottom of the pizza.
- ¾ cup pizza sauce
Spread about three quarters of a cup of sauce all the way to the edges; there is no rim on this pizza.
A cooked Chicago pizza sauce
- ½ lb mozzarella
- ½ lb sausage
- hot giardiniera
- Pecorino Romano
- dried Italian seasoning
Cover with the grated mozzarella, then the sausage, then the drained giardiniera, a sprinkle of Pecorino Romano and the dried Italian seasoning.
Slide the pizza onto the stone and bake at 500F around 10 to 12 minutes, rotating once or twice and poking down any bubble that rises, until the cheese edge is frizzled brown and the underside is evenly browned.
Optionally dock the dough with a docker or a fork before baking so air can escape and no large bubbles form.
The finished bake and docking
Finish with one more sprinkle of Pecorino Romano and cut into squares with a mezzaluna.