Deep Dish Pizza

If you think that I have moved to Chicago, think again.

I have never been a fan of deep dish pizza, until now.

Cleaning out the fridge Friday night, I found some leftover broccoli rabe, a few oven dried tomatoes and 3 frozen sausage links.

Ok, let's make a pizza!

I was inspired by Jen from Last Night's Dinner, who has made pizzas in a cast iron skillet with great success.

I am not sure if this is really Chicago style, but we liked the change from our usual Neapolitan pizza. It was more like a stuffed pie. You use much less dough for this, you can probably get 2 pies from 1 ball of dough.



Cast Iron Skillet Pizza:

Pizza dough (Alton Brown's recipe here)

3 sausage links, casings removed
1 red onion, sliced
about 1 cup of fresh or shredded mozzarella cheese
tomato sauce
olive oil

broccoli rabe, oven dried tomatoes and basil, optional

Crumble the sausage and cook w/ the red onion in a 12" cast iron skillet with a little oil.
I used very lean sausage so there was very little fat leftover, so I added some olive oil to the skillet.



When cooked, remove and set aside.
You are going to use the same skillet to cook the pizza in.

Spread your rolled out pizza dough and press into skillet (or have your pizza man do it, like I do!...that would be my husband). You will probably have to trim it off the sides. Spread a little olive oil over the dough.



Layer tomato sauce, then the cooked sausage and onion mixture, then top with either fresh mozzarella slices or shredded cheese.



I dabbed some pesto on top because there is no fresh basil in sight.

Place the cast iron skillet in a 425F preheated oven and bake for about 20-25 minutes until crust and toppings are golden.

When finished, you will be able to slide the pizza pie right out of the skillet.
Slice as you would a regular pizza.



This was a nice change. I could only eat one slice of this, it was very hearty, and it stayed hot for a good long time!