Pizza – Chicago Deep Dish (Malnati’s)

One of my favorite chicago deep dish spots is Lou Malnati’s. I like that the crust is buttery and the tomatoes on the top taste like, well, tomatoes. The other chains in Chi-town have overcooked sauce with too many spices. For this reason, my attempts to make Chicago deep dish is really an attempt to make this particular one. I found a Youtube video with this guy who said his came close. I was a little suspicious because he didn’t use butter in his dough – just corn oil and olive oil. I tried it anyway because the toppings seemed like they were accurate (drained crushed tomatoes and hand crushed peeled plum tomatoes)

I’ll say this – the toppings were actually very very close to what I remembered. Sliced mozzarella covered with the tomatoes and finished with a dusting of romano cheese. It was actually really good and had the fresh tomato taste I was looking for.

I think I’ll go back to this recipe in the future but I’ll replace the corn oil with melted butter to see if that gets me the flavor/texture I’m looking for in the dough.