![]() ![]() Lou Malnati, Riccardo’s associate manager, was brought over to help run the new establishment. Pizzeria Uno was located a few blocks from the well-known Riccardo’s on Wabash Avenue at Ohio Street. Restaurateur and bon vivant Ric Riccardo became partners with Ike Sewell, a liquor salesman, and Sewell’s wife, Florence, who had high-society connections in Chicago, in the new venture. Many GIs had been introduced to pizza as they moved up the coast of Italy, and several Chicagoans anticipated that they would want more when they returned home. Early Italian families served pizza on Taylor Street and the Near South Side.Ĭhicago-style pizza first appeared in fall 1943 with the opening of Pizzeria Uno. Some late-nineteenth-century Chicago bakeries served pizza, in sheets or in small rolls. From there, pizza spread across the world. Modern pizza is reputed to have started in Naples in 1889 when Raffaele Esposito created the “Pizza Margherita,” with tomato, mozzarella, and basil replicating the colors of the Italian flag, for King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Italy. If you can see those layers and a nice string of mozzarella is pulling off like a scene from the Ninja Turtles, you know you're eating a slice of Chicago deep-dish pizza.It’s National Deep Dish Pizza Day! Where will you be ordering from tonight? You want that perfect L-shaped crust, a thin layer of mozzarella cheese, and then your layers that have set in throughout the pie. If you can get that crust to stay straight, you did it right.Įating It: It's all about the cross-sections. ![]() Pop it out of the pan and you should have this beautiful cross section: like a thick pie that will stand up and stay straight. The Final Result: You take the pizza out, and if you cooked it correctly, it should come off of the pan easily, because the pan is nice and seasoned. People are always bragging in New York about how quickly they can cook their pizzas, but the deep-dish takes forever. Essentially, you're frying the dough until it gets crispy, golden, and nice. Now it's all about getting the moisture in the pizza (the cheese, sauce, and the meat), to cook out and allowing all of that grease from the meat fall to the sides of the pan and make the crust super crispy on the bottom. Every deep-dish place is a little different and has their own style to this.Ĭooking: You give it a little tap to get the air out, fire it into the oven, give it a good 40 minutes-depending on the pizza, the temperature, and the size of the pizza. Basically, you repeat that process until you get three-quarters of the way up the pizza. You've got your dough, your mozzarella, your meat, and then another layer of cheese, oregano, etc. If it's sausage, it's raw, so you'll layer that on thinly so that you know it's gonna cook inside, and all that fat from the meat starts to seep down to the bottom of the pan. In Chicago, it's always pepperoni or sausage. Then there's always some sort of protective meat. The Layers: Once you have that base-layer crust, it's time to start layering: put the cheese down first, because it acts as a protective layer. The Process: It's all about taking that dough, pushing it around the inside of the pan, and then pressing it up against the side of the pan to make sure that it reaches the sides like an apple pie crust. Here in New York at Best Pizza, we want to keep all of the air in the dough so that it can rise and puff up, but in Chicago's deep-dish scene, they're pushing it down and pressing it up against the side of the pan so that it's crispy, but they don't mind that it's dense. Then, There's the Dough: They have dough that they pat down until it's nice and flat. All one has to do is wipe out the pan, which lends it this really nice seasoning, which is so awesome. The beauty of these things is that they don't get washed, but periodically seasoned with each deep-dish. Instead, people use tools to grab them out of the piping hot oven. It All Starts with the Pan: Chicago deep-dish begins with its legendary cast-iron pans-which don't have handles. Here's a quick crash-course on deep-dish anatomy: ĭuring my travels on The Pizza Show, I've sampled and tested some of Chicago's finest deep-dish pizzas. The first time I tried my hand at making it, I realized. And Midwesterners and Italians started intertwining and making their own variations of pizza, but they were always a little bit thicker. When the Italian populations immigrated to the Windy City, they brought some of their staples with them: pasta, bread, and pizza. ![]() Right there, you've got a bunch of hungry people that want their bellies filled up. Chicago is a very cold city for most of the year, and it's a blue-collar town. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |