How to Make Chicago's Lesser Known (Equally Delicious) Thin-Crust Pizza

[Music] the most important and distinguishing part of this pizza isn't the topping it's the crust isn't it brine that's right and who knew chicago pizza was supposed to be according to some at thin crust pizza i went to vito nyx in the south side of chicago i spent the morning with owner rose george and she walked me through the entire pizza making process and it was pretty incredible and i have to admit i'm a convert after spending the morning with her so we have two and a half cups of all-purpose flour here and for our dough we're going to add two teaspoons of granulated sugar it helps to feed the yeast that's going in right now but it won't make the crust sweet will it no no it's just fuel for the yeast one and a half teaspoons of instant yeast and one teaspoon of table salt we're just going to give that a quick three seconds in the food processor to combine to this we're gonna feed in three quarters of a cup plus two tablespoons of cold water along with two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil so i'll combine these two first so we can just do it all in one quick and easy pour we want the water to be ice cold because the mixer tends to warm the dough up pretty quickly and if it gets too hot it can kill the yeast and we'll let this go until this dough starts to come together and takes about 60 seconds all right we're looking for all the dry flour to be moistened that's good right there but we have a perfect hydration here with this dough right now we don't want to incorporate any more flour so we're just going to lightly grease the counter just rub it with a little olive oil you don't have to use very much at all because remember there's a little bit of olive oil in the dough already so it's not really prone to sticking too badly now we're just going to give the dough a few turns on the oiled counter just to combine it so i'm just kneading this by giving it a press with the palm of my hand and giving it a quarter turn each time folding it over in between exactly you don't have to do much here just enough to combine the dough then i'll just roll it on the counter like this into a ball shape and then we're going to throw it into a lightly greased bowl cover with plastic wrap we're going to let this dough rise at room temperature until it's doubled in size and that takes about two and a half hours [Music] okay julia while our dough is rising we could turn our attention to the sauce and i think you'll be happy to know this is a quick easy stir together sauce no cooking involved i like no cooked pizza sauces yeah i do too because the oven does a lot of the work for you and there's no need to spend hours cooking a sauce down so we have one eight ounce can of tomato sauce that's great because it comes with sugar salt spices already in it so we're already starting off with a little bit of flavor to that we're going to add one tablespoon of tomato paste just kick up the tomato flavor a little bit and then we're going to add two teaspoons of sugar there's sugar in the dough sugar in the sauce and you swear this won't be a sweet pizza no it's not sweet it's just a little sugar helps balance things out one half teaspoon of italian seasoning now italian seasoning is great because it has sage thyme oregano basil instead of using each one of those individual herbs in small amounts kind of a shortcut to use the italian seasoning and then one half teaspoon of fennel seeds and then we'll just whisk this together to dissolve the tomato paste that's it that was easy when i have the pizza at vito nyx they have a very distinctive type of sausage that they use and they go through about a thousand pounds of it per week wow i mean it's a really good sausage has a nice fermented flavor and i just felt like i couldn't get that exact flavor out of store-bought italian sausage so we have one and a half pounds of coarsely ground pork and coarsely ground pork will give you that distinctive sausage chew sometimes you can find in the case but other times you can ask the butcher for it and they're more than happy to do it for you gotcha okay and to that we're going to add one tablespoon of fennel seeds and we've gone ahead and pre-toasted these fennel seeds and we want to just give them a quick crack by putting them in a zipper lock bag and seal the bag and then i just want to kind of run over them with a rolling pin this is just going to really release their flavor we're not looking to pulverize them here just break them up into smaller pieces i can smell it all the way over here yeah that was immediate yeah it's the toasting the toasting does a lot for you to help release the oils in the fennel seeds so we're going to add the fennel seeds the crushed fennel seeds right it's pretty fragrant huh that is really fragrant and i can already tell this is not gonna taste like your average supermarket sausage this is gonna have a lot more flavor yes then we're gonna add one and a half teaspoons of sugar you know there's a salty sweet balance that has to happen in life so one and a half teaspoons of salt there you go one garlic clove that's a large garlic clove that we've minced to a paste you could either do this in a garlic press or you could do it on a microplane and just grate it finely three quarters of a teaspoon of black pepper one quarter teaspoon of dried oregano and one quarter of a teaspoon of red pepper flakes so this isn't really going to be that spicy just a little red pepper flakes right okay so we're going to mix this on low speed for 60 to 90 seconds until it just all comes together the stand mixer does a great job of emulsifying the fat and distributing the fat evenly throughout the meat and also helps stretch and link those proteins so you get that sausage chew all right julie you can see that the sausage has taken on this real tacky texture that's exactly what we're looking for you know it really smells pretty good with the garlic and the fennel seeds in there and we're going to let this sausage marinate for a bit because that way the flavors will distribute and kind of really soak into the meat so we'll let it go for at least an hour in the fridge cover it with plastic wrap and we'll transfer it over [Music] okay it's been pretty easy up until this point and now comes the real challenging part we're gonna roll out the dough so this will make two pizzas working on a lightly floured counter here i'm going to split the dough in half 10 ounces each is what we're going to need so oh on the nose huh well done sir i don't see that every day we're going to start off on a floured counter all right i would recommend that we start with the cut side down okay i start by just using my fingertips to kind of poke it into a round we're going to try and stretch it to about eight inches and i've given you a ruler on your side yeah i got eight inches basically all right i'm gonna flour my rolling pin okay now what's the final dimensions we're going for here we're gonna go for 12 inches across okay and that'll give us about a one quarter inch thick dough all right well i like how you're spinning it because that's how i do my pie dough to keep it nice and round sort of spin it between every roll i think that's pretty good that's about a 12 inch round okay so now we're going to bring this sheet of dough on to our pizza peels before we put them on the peel we want to dust the peel liberally with cornmeal so we don't want to peel the pizza off the peel we want it to slide off the peel all right so i'm just going to pick mine up and just transfer it right over there and slide it back this way and work on it so now we're saucing so we want to take our sauce this is the full amount of sauce that we made i just divided it in half so we have enough for each pizza and then with the bowl of the spoon just go around you want to push the sauce right to the edge all right okay that looks great we have about six ounces of sausage each and now we're going to put dime-sized pieces of sausage all over this pizza well also the sausage is going on raw we're going to cook this pizza at a very high temperature 500 degrees and it's going to cook for long enough to cook the sausage through and the sausage will still be moist it won't be dry and crumbly and all the flavors of the sausage will still be on the pizza won't be left behind on some skillet it ain't going anywhere wow this is not a skimpy amount of sausage i want to point out that's why this pizza is so great well if we were competing i'd say i won but you know this isn't a competition brian we'll just see we'll see how they come out okay sausage is on and now we're going to put the cheese on cheese goes on much the same way as the sauce all the way to the edge so we have one and a half cups or six ounces of mozzarella per pizza this is whole milk mozzarella this is not a place to be using part skim or non-fat mozzarella because it doesn't melt the same way all right now the final touch the quarter teaspoon of oregano it seems like such a small amount but you really really taste it at the end all right so before we go into the oven just give your pizza a little wiggle and make sure it's still shimmies on the peel because if it's sticking anywhere you could just lift the edge and throw a little bit of cornmeal i got a little sticky this is not where you want to play around all right i'm good so we have two ovens heated to 500 degrees there's a pizza stone on the lowest rack that's been pre-heating for a full hour so it's nice and hot and when you put it on the stone you want to start at the back and just kind of shimmy and let the pizza slide right off all right so there's a little arc to it and we're going to take these pizzas a little bit darker than you would typically expect that's the thing at vito nyx they cook the pizza so dark that people actually send them back oh really they look burned yes the old owner nick used to stand by the oven and if the cheese had only gone from this nice white to that yellow golden brown that we all always pulled the pizza out at he'd yell that's canary put it back in the oven i like the accent that's my chicago accent because the pizza is supposed to be according to nick nice and brown on top okay in order to get to that dark brown cheese those pizzas are going to have to cook anywhere between 10 and 14 minutes we're baking these pizzas at the same time because we have two different ovens if you only had one oven you'd bake them one at a time exactly [Music] all right julia should i grab yours yeah let's see how it's doing oh that is not canary so we're gonna let these pizzas cool for five minutes before we cut them yeah they are pretty lava hot yes okay it's been a painful five minutes but we're ready to cut the pizza so at vito nix they don't cut the pizza into triangles they cut it into squares bar pizza style so i'm just gonna go three swipes this way turn around three swipes the other way i'm going to give you a piece from the center and also an edge piece oh this smells delicious all right before you dig in you have a center piece i do all right the way to measure a good and perfectly cooked piece of pizza is that the centerpiece should be able to stand up straight and support the full weight of the ingredients without flopping over oh look at that should be that crispy that's a tasty pizza that's not just stacy right i actually think this might be the best piece of pizza i've ever had i've eaten a lot of pizza you know i'm serious you know why because the crust on the bottom has texture it's crisp but the sausage has actual flavor the sausage stays very fresh and moist and doesn't dry out you were right about the balance of a little bit of spicy and a little bit of that sugar and just enough salt to throw it all into the right spot ryan i gotta hand it to you best pizza yet well done it's my pleasure thank you so if you want to make an authentic chicago thin crust pizza start by making pizza dough in the food processor using all-purpose flour yeast and olive oil while the dough rises whisk together a no-cook sauce using canned tomatoes then use a stand mixer to make sausage with ground pork and fennel seeds to make the pizzas roll the dough out into a 12-inch round transfer to a pizza peel top with sauce sausage and cheese and bake in a hot oven until it's no longer canary from cook's country the ultimate recipe for chicago thin crust pizza well done man this is amazing lesson learned don't eat canaries right thanks for watching cook's country from america's test kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say hi now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later alligator

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 361,638

Keywords: italian food, cooking, cooks country, americas test kitchen, chicago pizza, thin crust pizza, pizza, sausage, cooks illustrated

Id: B-NZ0kIexkc

Length: 11min 36sec (696 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 19 2020