Dana's deep dish pizza

Delectable deep dish pizza recipe from Dana - this was soooooo good!

Deep Dish Pizza

For the dough: 

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
2 teaspoons yeast
1 and 1/4 cups slightly warm water

2 Tablespoons olive oil

I mixed this in my bread machine on the dough cycle, but you could certainly mix by hand.  Let it rise for a couple of hours, then brush a cookie sheet with olive oil and put the dough on the sheet.  Roll it into a circle about 12” in diameter, then let it sit and rest for half an hour or so.  After it rests (I don’t know why this step is necessary, but it really does seem to help) roll it out some more so that it is a circle about 15 inches in diameter.  

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.  Brush a big (12”) cast iron skillet with olive oil, and press the dough into the skillet and up the sides.  The dough edges should just about reach the top of the skillet, though it will pull back down a bit after a minute or two...that’s fine, it will puff back up when you bake it.  

Add the following toppings in this order: 

16 ounces mozzarella, either sliced or shredded 

Pepperoni slices or browned italian sausage, if desired

14 oz pizza sauce (we used Dei Fratelli) 

½ cup shredded parmesan

Bake for 25-30 minutes in the preheated oven.  Let it cool for 5-10 minutes, and you should be able to easily remove the entire pizza from the skillet and put it on a cutting board to serve.  Cut it with a knife….it’s too thick for your pizza cutter.  :)  Enjoy!