Pizza Crust

So I may not be from the northeast, but one thing that I think they get absolutely right up here is thin-crust pizza. I also love deep-dish Chicago-style pizza. It’s what I think of as Midwestern pizza that really gets to me (though it’s pretty common in Florida and is what you’ll find as the default from any of the national chains): medium-crust pizza. For me, a pizza is all about its toppings, and if most of what you can taste in any bite is a pillowy mound of crust, then I’m not feeling it.

Chicago-style pizza strikes me as more of a casserole than a pizza pie, and I think of it as its own food group altogether.

It’s possible to get excellent, superlative pizza where I live – it’s one of the things my city is noted for – but that kind of pizza is pretty unhealthy and not an item to indulge in on a day-to-day basis. Making pizza at home gives me more control over the ingredients and allows me to indulge my most fanciful topping whims.

This crust recipe is the product of trial and error. I used this Smitten Kitchen recipe as a starting point, but even this gave me a thicker crust than I wanted. Note that this is not inherent to the recipe itself – one can always roll crust out as thinly as one wants – but I’m using an inverted 12” cast-iron skillet as a pizza stone, so 12” is the diameter limit unless I want cheese and toppings dripping all over my oven floor. Which might have happened the first time I attempted homemade pizza. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, etc. etc., right?