Pizza is my favorite food.  The last couple months I’ve been working on perfecting a homemade deepdish pepperoni pizza.  I started with a recipe I found in one of my Mother Earth News magazines.  It seemed simple enough, so I gave it a try!

Sorry the picture is a little blurry!  The recipe makes a good regular crust pizza.  But I decided to make it into a great deepdish pizza if I could.

The magazine recipe is for a simple crust dough: yeast, water, flour, salt and sugar.  Here is a link to the magazine recipe: Crusty Frying-Pan Pizza.  I doubled the ingredients for the crust, and instead of regular salt I used garlic salt, and added a bit of onion powder as well.  The brand of garlic salt makes a difference too, I ran out and tried a generic one time and it was no where near as good.  On my latest grocery store trip I got a LARGE jar of the name brand garlic salt so I am stocked up!

After the yeast has proofed in the water for about five minutes, add it to the dry ingredients and mix until all the flour is incorporated.

Cover with plastic wrap and let it rise for two hours.

After two hours, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface.  Now is a good time to preheat the oven to 425.

Knead 40 to 50 times and roll or stretch (like they do on tv, with your knuckles) to a disk that is large enough to cover the bottom of a large cast iron frying pan.

Get the dough to your pan and press it with your fingers to get all the way to the edges.  I spray the pan with cooking spray, and wipe with a paper towel beforehand, to keep the dough from sticking.  Once it’s in the pan, I coat the dough with olive oil, and put it in my preheated oven for about five minutes.  Just long enough for me to wipe down the kitchen counter, and get the toppings out and ready.  Make sure you get the olive oil all the way to the edge of the crust, or you will have a dry flour dusted crust edge that isn’t as good as a crispy shiny oil flavored edge. 

Once your ingredients are assembled, and your crust has pre-baked for a few minutes, take the pan out of the oven and pour on some pizza sauce.

I like to get the sauce really close to the edges, as again, it makes that crust very yummy.  You won’t be able to get the sauce spread evenly, so don’t worry, just spread it with the back of a spoon and move on to the cheese.

Cheese and pepperoni!  I like it right to the very edges, leaving bare naked crust on the edge is just a waste of good crust!  Pop it into the oven and set the timer for 15 minutes.

Now, you can pour yourself a glass of wine and watch Seinfeld while you wait.

Aaaaaahhhh.  Yummy!  You don’t want to cut it while it’s inside the pan because it might damage your perfectly seasoned cast iron beauty.  Use a spatula to skim around the edges of the crust (the cheese likes to stick a little) and gently slide the pizza out onto a surface for cutting.

If you don’t have a cast iron pan, get one!

I’m still perfecting this deep dish dough.  I like the flavor I’ve achieved, but I’d like to make it healthier by adding some whole grain wheat flour.  I did make a wheat dough, but it covered the flavor of the garlic too much.  Next time I’ll try using half wheat and half white bread flour and see how that is.  Then I can start experimenting with toppings, although, I do think the pepperoni and cheese is about as perfect as it can get.