The Pan and Jerm Show

Sunday, February 24, 2008

A Very Delicious Thing & A Contest!

Happy 100 posts! To celebrate, we're having a blog contest! All you have to do to enter is leave a comment about your favorite kind of pizza. Deadline is February 29 (leap day!). I'll randomly pick a comment out of the hat and the winner will get something good! I can't tell you what the prize is, because it depends on who wins! But it will be good!

And now, for the Very Delicious Thing.
Homemade Deep Dish Pizza!
Inspired by YumSugar

It was quite tasty, if I do say so myself.

My "tutorial" follows, mostly so I can look back if I ever want to make this again!

Make dough from YumSugar recipe. This dough is enough for 2 pizzas, I think. I used a little more than half of it, but it was a touch too thick. Let rest covered for 4 hours.

While the dough rests, make a tomato sauce. You could use jar sauce, but I didn't want to drop the $4 for a jar of sauce, so I just whipped up a quick marinara.

When dough is almost done resting, pre-cook your Italian Sausage for 5ish minutes, mainly to flatten it out, and get some of the grease out.

Now that the dough has risen, punch it down and turn it out onto a clean surface. Knead just a bit.

Press dough into a well greased 10" springform pan.

Now you're ready to build the pizza. Layer in your cheese first. We used fresh mozzarella, that I sliced thin and squeezed between a couple paper towels to pull out any extra moisture.

Next, layer in the sausage. You'll want to take your slightly cooked, slightly cooled sausage and press between paper towels in small pieces. This does two things. First, it helps flatten out the sausage, so you can make a managably thin layer. Secondly, it helps get out quite a bit of the grease, to help prevent the crust from getting too soggy.

Cover with a generous layer of sauce, and pop in a 425 degree oven for 40 minutes.

I sprinkled it with some parmesan with about 5 minutes left in the cooking time.

After cooking, let sit for 10 minutes, so it won't explode when you cut it. Remove the ring from the springform pan. Don't freak out, the crust will hold in the ingredients, as long as you pushed it up the sides of the pan before cooking.