Binging with Babish: Chicago-Style Pizza from The Daily Show

deep-dish pizza is not only not better than New York Pizza it's not pizza it's a casserole I'm surprised you haven't thought to complete your deep-dish pizza by putting some canned onion rings on top of it it's a cornbread biscuit which you've melted cheese on and then in defiance of God and man and all things holy you poured uncooked marinara sauce atop the cheese atop the cheese on top on display like some sort of sauce who were hey what's up guys welcome back to binging with babish where this week I'm using Jon Stewart's notorious rants as an excuse to take a look at maybe the most controversial style of pizza Chicago deep-dish now I'm a New Yorker so I had to retrieve this pizza and fold the skies and under cover of darkness but to be completely honest I like Chicago style pizza it's got a nice deep thick crust that ends up chewy and crunchy rather than ready and soft and it has a notoriously large amount of cheese sauce and meats what is not to like I wouldn't do something so insane as to compare it to New York style pizza but as something all its own I'm into it so let's get started with the foundation of our pizza the crust we're starting with 8 and 1/4 ounces of room-temperature water to which we're going to add one packet or two and 1/4 teaspoons of active dry yeast along with a teaspoon of sugar which is gonna act as a nice little snack for our yeast while we let it bloom for 10 minutes this is both a way to jumpstart your yeasts efficacy and make sure that it's alive and well after 10 minutes if you got some nice foamy junk like this you're ready to start adding the other ingredients first we're gonna whisk together the dry stuff 12 and a half ounces of all-purpose flour two and a half ounces of medium grind cornmeal one and a half teaspoons of kosher salts and an eighth of a teaspoon of cream of tartar go ahead and tiny whisk to combine make sure that everything is all good and amah Janice and then it's time to get it wet or rather add it to the wet ingredients so into the bowl with the yeast the water and sugar it goes along with 1/3 of a cup plus 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil a fix dough hooks and get to stir and we're just gonna let this go on low speed for one or two minutes until clears the side of the bowl and then we're gonna crank up the speed to medium and let it need for seven to eight minutes during this time the dough may appear soft and sticky but just let it go and it should become smooth and elastic and supple but even if you measure everything exactly it might end up a little bit too hydrated like - not to worry because we're just gonna turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead for an additional one to two minutes until a nice soft tacky but not sticky consistency is achieved as you can see after my noodle experience last week I'm something of a meeting master and very quickly you'll see that the dough becomes light and bouncy and handle a bolt go ahead and stretch it into a tall little ball that we're going to let rise in a lightly oiled Bowl and like most pizza dough's it will become even more handle Bowl after hanging out in the bowl for sixty to ninety minutes or until doubled in size just give it a little toss around to make sure that it's coated and oil cover with plastic wrap and let it hang out at room temperature for about an hour until it looks like this it's very rare that I have a before and after at the ready like that I'm kind of proud of myself but the truth is that I'm making two pizzas next up comes the choice of baking vessel and while Chicago pizzerias generally use aluminum pans at home our best bet is cast-iron which along with a liberal lubrication of vegetable oil is gonna help our pizza Brown more robustly go ahead and grease up your hands as well and gently coax the dough out of the bowl and into the awaiting cast iron pan where we're going to begin coaxing it into the shape of a pizza or at least with Chicago hell's pizza just gently press and stretch the dough out and try to push it up against the sides of the pan it's gonna resist a little at first but that's okay we're gonna let this rest under cover of plastic wrap for 20 to 30 minutes until the gluten relaxes and we can more properly form the crust just enough time to talk about tomato sauce Chicago style tomato sauce is generally very thick and sweet and has big old chunks of tomato in it so we're starting with one 28-ounce can of whole San Marzano tomatoes boop open and square you there we're putting them in a bowl and crushing them by hand until they're down to bite-sized pieces John specifies that Chicago style pizza uses uncooked marinara sauce but I just don't think that's possible and that tomatoes don't really become sauce until you cook them so we're just gonna make a rudimentary marinara sauce by finely chopping half a white onion nice and fine we don't want big old chunks onion and smashing and peeling a few cloves of garlic in preparation for crushing we've made tomato sauce several times on the show so I'm just gonna kind of breeze threw it into a high-walled saute pan because a few tablespoons of olive oil that we're gonna heat over medium until shimmering adding our chopped onion and sweating for two to three minutes or until translucent around the edges adding our crushed garlic and sauteing for an additional minute until fragrant adding a pinch of crushed red pepper flake a little shake of oregano and a little shake of basil big shake of basil along with two to three tablespoons of tomato paste it deep in the flavor we're gonna saute that together for an additional minute mental everything smells nice and really good and then we're going to add the crushed tomatoes along with a tablespoon of sugar to achieve that nice sweet Chicago style sauce simmering for 20 to 30 minutes stirring regularly to prevent scorching over medium heat until the raw tomato flavor has cooked off and the sauce is nice and thick and when you drag a spoon through it it parts like the Red Sea big-headed I thought it was funny and by this time our dough should be nice and relaxed and we should be able to press it up against the sides of the pan and it should hold its shape with ease also I forgot to mention this is a recipe for a 12-inch cast-iron skillet or enough to feed roughly 30 to 35 people now every Chicago pizza I've ever seen uses sliced deli style cheese so we're gonna start with a thin layer of provolone followed by a nice thick layer of sliced low-moisture mozzarella I think they use the deli style cheese because it inherently has less moisture which you don't want in a pizza this thick and badass and feel free to go a little bit overboard with the cheese especially if you want an epic cheese stretch and as John so devastatingly pointed out the sauce goes confounding Leah topped the cheese so go ahead and generously smear it on top and make sure you make a double batch of sauce if you're making two pizzas once the cheese is all hidden we're gonna hit the pizza with two finishing moves first a generous sprinkling of pre grated Parmesan and then a generous drizzling of olive oil both on the sauce and around the edge of the crust because it's not like we're trying to be healthy here I mean this pizza weighs like five six pounds and it's finally time for it to go into a preheated 425 degree fahrenheit oven for 25 to 35 minutes rotating once during baking until this happens run a thin spatula around the outside edge to make sure that there's no sticking and then it's time for the heroic act of getting the pizza out the pan you just have to trust the pizzas structural integrity and out it will go and then you want to wait at least 10 minutes before cutting in and serving I did not wait 10 minutes I was hungry and I had hungry friends in the other room and this is what happened a really really good-looking cheese stretch for the thumb and then kind of an over sloppy under sauce Pizza flood not the you're gonna hear me complaining because despite the stringiness of this affair it was completely delicious the cheese of course was cheesy the sauce of course was saucy but the crust is what separates a good Chicago style from bad Chicago style and I'm just gonna take a quick prophylactic measure here BA like I was saying the crust is light and crunchy and has a nice chew to it without being ready or stodgy I know I didn't use butter in the crust but it is somehow buttery and flaky making it an obvious and immediate member of the clean plate Club at the expense of my mouth which was severely burned and once the beats of cools off we can more closely examine its structure in composition as you can see the crust is thick without being too dense the cheese and toppings are ubiquitous and I would put a toe to toe with the restaurant pizza any day it looks like they sauce a little bit more heavily than me but everything else is pretty spot-on but this just wouldn't be stuffed pizza without some stuffing so I have some mild Italian sausage here that I'm removing from its casings and patting into a patty and then it's the same procedures before padded out the dough into an oiled pan let it rest for 20 to 30 minutes while you make the sauce then finish patting it out into its final shape and then before we lay down the cheese we're gonna start by laying down the sausage and yeah this is raw sausage which is weird I know but this pizza spends plenty of time in the oven so it will cook completely once the sausage is spread out into a nice even layer it's topped with the cheese sauce and more cheese same cook time and temperature 425 Fahrenheit for 25 to 35 minutes and voila the same thing but with sausage and let me tell you right now I'm a huge fan of both Jon Stewart and New York style pizza but I do think Chicago pizza is still pizza in its own right it's a product of its environment New York style pizza would turn into a cheesy icicle of exposed to the air in Chicago for even one minute that being said I'd never say that it's better than New York style because that'd be insane but just like every pizza on this crazy blue marble floating through space it has a right to exist and to find its own happiness and with that said there's only one thing left to try John suggested preparation with some canned onions on top and I gotta say it's not that I mean it's better than California Pizza hey folks I'm very excited to announce that to announce that I have received my first advanced copy of my book and even more than before I am super excited and proud to share it with you this is the bingeing with babish companion cookbook and it features the first hundred recipes from the show to tell lots of fun facts beautiful burger models gorgeous photography peeks behind the scenes and an extremely touching foreword by Jon Favreau you can pre-order your copy in the video description below for access to exclusive content before the book comes out October 22nd as well as score tickets to my nationwide book tour check it out and I will see you guys on the road in two weeks [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Babish Culinary Universe

Views: 8,764,561

Rating: 4.9374623 out of 5

Keywords: deep, dish, deep dish pizza, how to make deep dish pizza, how to make chicago style pizza, chicago-style, chicago style pizza, chicago style pizza recipe, deep dish pizza recipe, cheese, sauce, tomato sauce, daily show, jon stewart, jon stewart chicago pizza, comedy central, crust, cornmeal, pizza crust recipe, how to make pizza, pizza recipe, binging with babish, cooking with babish, babbish, pear qwerty horse

Id: hyUnGjykNwg

Length: 9min 27sec (567 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 08 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/TheKevinShow]

You really can’t compare deep dish and New York style. They’re two completely different kinds of pizza and they’re both amazing. I’ll enjoy a slice of deep dish that I need a fork and knife to eat as much as I’ll enjoy a slice of New York style that needs to be folded in half to eat. Pizza is pizza and it’s all good.

Except for St. Louis style. Take that processed Provel bullshit and shove it.

[u/josh61980]

I thought you had to preheat Cast iron when you made Chicago pizza.

[u/mechnohan]

Such wonderful words for deep dish pizza. I agree wholeheartedly.

[u/Qwerty17]

What even is California pizza?

[u/John_Walshsend]

Italians watching this video

[u/[deleted]]

Deep Dish will always be my number one.

Born in the Midwest but lived everywhere, including the East Coast. Never lived in NYC but have been there enough times and sampled its pizza to say, IMO, deep dish is better.

I’ll never understand why people get hype on NYC pizza. Slices literally cost two dollars and the taste matches the price. Nothing spectacular, the pizza I’ve gotten there can be found literally anywhere in the country (on average, of course there are great pizza joints in NYC).

Deep Dish however, that’s a meal you share. A meal of note, something you have to look for and be glad you found it.

It looks better, tastes better, is more filling, and has just as many customization options (if not more considering the thickness).

But at the end of the day, pizza is pizza, and pizza is good.

[u/Trodamus]

Cream of tartar? Never heard of that being added to the dough before, though five seconds of research shows it's mainly used by Gino's East.

Apparently as an acid component it acts as a "dough relaxer" which helps it not rise as much. You can sub other acidic things like vinegar or lemon juice.

Or just not use it.

[u/zoidbergsintoyou]

Having the opinion that New York style pizza is objectively better than deep dish is akin to the classic New Yorkers worldview; ignorance. They have no idea that the world exists outside of their city. And not just exists, but exists in MOST of it's entirety. Ignorance is bliss.

[u/johnazoidberg-]

If you want to be more bewildered by sauce going atop the cheese, I recommend trying Detroit style pizza - the pizza with corner pieces