Chicago-style pizza
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Chicago-style pizza is a very specific variety of pizza. Pizza is traditionally considered to be a type of hearth cake such as focaccia. The Chicago-style pizza varies from the traditional pizza in that it shares more in common with a casserole such as lasagna than with a hearth cake type dish. Chicago-style pizza encompasses several styles of pizza including deep-dish, stuffed-crust and thin-crust pizzas.
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Deep-dish Pizza
The Chicago-style "deep-dish" pizza was invented at Pizzeria Uno in Chicago by Ike Sewell and begins with a simple, often very thick, crust (made with olive oil and often cornmeal) in a deep round pan, parbaked before the toppings are added to give it greater spring. The bottom of the crust is lined with meats and/or vegetables while the sides rise to the top of the pan. Mozzarella cheese is added atop the meats, vegetables, or whatever other topping are used, and then a layer of crushed tomatoes is ladled over the top and the whole pizza is baked to completion. Deep-dish pizza is often eaten with a knife and fork, since its thickness and occasional messiness do not lend themselves to eating with the fingers as is often the case for thin-crust pizza.
For a true Deep-dish pizza, you don't put the toppings under the cheese but you mix it into it so there is cheese all the way through. On the usual pizza, about a pound of Mozzarella cheese is used.
Stuffed Pizza
A stuffed pizza generally has much higher topping density than any other type of pizza. For stuffed pizza, a thin layer of dough forms a bowl in a high-sided pan. The toppings are placed at the bottom of the bowl and covered in cheese. An additional layer of dough is added over the cheese. This second layer of dough is secured to the primary crust. At this stage in the preparation, the thin dough top should have a rounded, domed appearance, with the center rising almost as high as the primary crust, and the sides appreciably lower, to act as a reservoir for the sauce. Tearing a small hole in the top of the "lid" allows air to escape while cooking, so that the pizza does not explode. Once the dough cover is well fastened, pizza sauce is ladled onto the top of the pizza, forming a level top that covers the dough, but leaves a small amount of the primary crust visible along the circumference of the pizza. The pizza is then baked and eaten.
To accelerate baking, a heat sink can be used (for instance, aluminum pieces with spikes several inches long put into the pizza). The heat sink allows heat to get to the center of the pizza efficiently: a stuffed pizza can be thoroughly cooked in only 12 minutes.
Thin-crust Pizza
In addition to Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza, there is also a thin-crust pizza unique to Chicago (and more difficult to obtain outside Chicagoland), which is less famous than the stuffed pizza outside of the area but outsells it by a high margin. The crust is thin and solid enough to have a noticeable crunch (unlike a New York-style pizza), yet thick enough to be soft and doughy on the top. This is invariably topped with a liberal quantity of southern-Italian style tomato sauce (usually spicy and never sugar-sweet), a layer of toppings such as Italian sausage (a Chicago staple), onions, and green peppers, and a layer of mozzarella cheese which, due to the quantity of tomato sauce, frequently separates from the bottom crust. Traditionally, this pizza is cut into squares, not wedges. The consistency of the crust and the quality and quantity of the tomato sauce and cheese are what separate this style from East Coast, Roman, and St. Louis-style pizzas, and makes the pizza from neighborhood pizzerias immediately distinguishable from that offered by national chains such as Papa John's or Pizza Hut. Aurelio's is a local chain selling this style of pizza which is now spreading due to the chains expansion into Florida, Colorado and a few other states.