Tavern style Chicago thin crust pizza
Brian Lagerstrom · ♥ 23.3K likes · 760K views · 11 min video
Timestamp
Ingredients
Method
Techniques
- 360 g bread flour
- 40 g cold butter
Pulse the bread flour and cold butter in a food processor about 10 to 12 spins, until the dough looks like damp sand with little gravelly flecks of butter.
Cutting cold butter into the flour
- 90 g ice water
- 5 g yeast
- 90 g ice cold water
- 7 g salt
Add the ice water with the yeast dissolved in it and the ice cold water with the salt dissolved in it, and spin 20 to 30 seconds only, so the butter flecks are not smeared into the flour.
Turn the clod of dough out and knead two minutes to a homogenous ball that holds an assertive tug.
Round it, cover in a medium bowl and ferment two hours; it will only grow about 50 percent because the water and butter were cold.
Cut into two equal pieces, fold in the two sides, flip onto the folds and round each into a ball.
Flour the dough, press it flat with a 12 inch pizza pan into a six inch disc, then roll with a rolling pin, turning 90 degrees between rolls, out to 12 inches, putting extra pressure on the outer edge to keep the thickness even.
Rolling out a 12-inch round
Dock the dough with a pizza docker, rolling seven to eight times in two directions.
Docking the dough
- olive oil pan spray
- fine grind cornmeal
Spray parchment paper with olive oil pan spray, sprinkle generously with fine grind cornmeal and lay the docked dough on it.
Stack both doughs on a sheet tray and cold ferment and cure uncovered in the fridge four to 24 hours, preferably 24, so they dry out and develop a skin.
- ½ cup crushed tomatoes
- 100 g tomato paste
- 12 g salt
- 20 g sugar
- 1 g chili flakes
- 2 g dried basil
- 2 g dried oregano
- 2 g onion powder
- 2 g garlic powder
Sauce: combine the crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, salt, sugar, chili flakes, dried basil, dried oregano, onion powder and garlic powder and blend with an immersion blender until the dried herbs are broken down.
The thick dried-herb pizza sauce
- 450 g ground pork
- 7 g salt
- 2 g black pepper
- 2 g chili flake
- 5 g red wine vinegar
- 2 g ground fennel seed
- 5 g fresh garlic
- 450 g full fat aged mozzarella
Sausage: squish the salt, black pepper, chili flake, red wine vinegar, ground fennel seed and fresh garlic into the ground pork, then refrigerate.
Homemade Italian sausage
Rip the mozzarella against the largest holes of a box grater.
Spread about a half cup of sauce from the middle all the way to the edge of the crust.
Lay half the sausage in quarter-sized chunks around the perimeter and through the middle, then spread half the grated mozzarella right out to the outer edge.
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1 tsp dried basil
- salt
Season the top with about a teaspoon of dried oregano, the same of dried basil, and a strong pinch of salt.
Slide the parchment onto a peel and bake on a pizza steel in a 550F oven about 10 minutes, until very deeply baked.