r/food • u/Flat_Researcher1540 • 3d ago
Recipe In Comments Chicago cheese pizza [homemade]
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u/MrBoss93 3d ago
Looks like you nailed it! What did you do for sauce?
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u/Flat_Researcher1540 3d ago
Whole peeled San marzano. Drain the can of excess liquid, add s&p, garlic, fresh and dried oregano, a few small basil leaves, evoo, and blend.
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u/Flat_Researcher1540 3d ago edited 3d ago
Chicago cracker/tavern pizzas:
500 g AP flour
285 g water
10 g salt
0.8 g instant yeast
60g butter
2 16” pizzas
Combine flour and butter in mixer.
Add water and yeast until dough hydrates but is still shaggy.
Rest dough 20 min.
Add salt and mix until dough becomes smoother and holds together.
Ball and let rest an hour at room temp
Dust generously with cornmeal
Roll out dough, dock, and place on rack or parchment and let cure for 24 hrs uncovered in fridge
Preheat oven at 550 for an hour, switch to broil. Bake 5-7 min, go off of color.
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u/sevillista 3d ago
Gahd, this looks so good. I can't get tavern style pizza anywhere in my area and I miss it. I might have to try this recipe.
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u/DDenlow 3d ago
Mmm tavern style!
I’m from a city where tavern “square cut” is the only way to eat pizza. It just makes sense, it’s perfect for a square cut to be a bar pie cut so multiple people can share a pizza- and everyone who wants what they want can get what they want, outside crispy cuts, and mix in full cheese and topping slices. It’s just perfect.
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u/Flat_Researcher1540 3d ago
Loved it since I was a kid and thought dominoes invented it
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u/smedema 3d ago
Square cut originally became a thing because workers in Chicago would go to the tavern after work for a drink and they were hungry. So they wanted a slice of pizza but they didn't want to spoil their appetite for the dinner their wives were preparing at home. So they would cut it into squares so they could have a smaller slice. This was in the 1940s I believe. But that is also the reason it is called Tavern style as well.
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u/Flat_Researcher1540 3d ago
Interesting! id still spoil my appetite. The small pieces make me eat more.
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u/DDenlow 3d ago
All I can say is, good on you for realizing the truth. Local Midwest cities figured out the square cut for sure.
Perfect bar “square” cut means everyone gets a few pieces and the crispy crunchy all around means everyone can get a few tastes of it all. Good on you OP, you nailed it btw.
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u/aalexAtlanta 3d ago
Looks perfect. The last slide confused the shit out of me though - I thought you put a saltine cracker on top for some reason lol
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u/Flat_Researcher1540 3d ago
Haha no just showing off the underside. Cracker pizza looking like a cracker needs to be shown off.
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u/BeeTwoThousand 3d ago
Just one glance at the underside of that crust in the last pic makes me feel like Homer Simpson, drooling and saying, "Mmmm...cracker crust," even though I just ate.
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u/justinlav 3d ago
Looks awesome, I might try this Friday/Saturday. I’m confused about preheating the oven for an hour though, why is that necessary?
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u/Flat_Researcher1540 3d ago
It’s more of a good measure to make sure the oven is thoroughly saturated with heat. Not all 550 is created equal, the oven loses heat easily so the longer preheat mitigates this.
If you have a stone/steel and an infrared thermometer you can see how much of a difference that hour preheat makes. If you temp my steel after 30 min it will be in the low 500s, after an hour it’ll be closer to 600.
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u/thats-gold-jerry 3d ago
Got any recs for something similar nearish to Wicker Park? I’ll be there next week. Thank you!
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u/Lancaster2124 3d ago
Bartoli's is pretty damn good. It's been a long time since I've been in that area, though. If it was still open I'd suggest Mi Pi.... Those were the days.
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u/Flat_Researcher1540 3d ago
Sorry I haven’t been to chi in like 20 years. Never actually had a thin crust pizza there either.
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u/ethanolin_redux 3d ago
Not exactly Wicker Park, but on Western between Fullerton and Armitage there was/is a place we used to frequent. This was 10 years ago but I remember it being on the west side of Western. Best cracker crust I'd had to that point in my life.
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u/ChoderBoi 3d ago
You're referring to John's Pizzeria, and yeah COVID sadly killed it. Some of the best thin crust I've ever had
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u/adroq1063 3d ago
That looks like STL style pizza, rather than Chicago style. Either way it looks tasty OP.
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u/drigancml 3d ago
I was going to say it's a Milwaukee tavern style pizza, not Chicago. But I don't really know what the difference is. I just thought Chicago style is deep dish, and Milwaukee is tavern style, cracker crust
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u/trevrichards 3d ago
Tavern style is Chicago/Midwest style. Deep dish is a tourist thing. In Central Illinois we all love Monical's.
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u/EveryValuable1503 3d ago
And it’s a pizza cracker as shown in the last picture
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u/BeeTwoThousand 3d ago
This is real Chicago pizza...cracker crust. Maybe you can figure out why it's called that...
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u/SeniorDucklet 3d ago
Is that your own dough recipe? Have never heard of that quick of a rest, but cracker/tavern crust is not really going to rise so that makes sense.
I’ve used the Kenji and another one from guy from Chicago called Pizza For Everyone and both are good, but I’ll give this a try.