Is it me or does using butter in the dough seem wrong?
Doesn't seem wrong to me at all. I like to add around 4 to 6% butter, but have come to prefer to add very softened butter -- as opposed to melted butter -- and add it as the last ingredient and just barely incorporate it into the dough mix. Thus it in effect comes a little close to the lamination effect that way.
I stumbled on the Uno Chicago Grill website's recipe at http://www.unos.com/about/press/2009/0109_1.html. The first thing that struck me was the lack of any corn meal in the recipe which was a real red flag -- The first time at the original Uno back in 1990, I was impressed by the corn meal taste and texture -- how could their "master recipe" NOT have corn meal in it?
For a good number of years now, these threads are full of information that NONE of the classic Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizzerias include corn meal in their recipe formulations (Uno's/Due's/Malnati's/Gino's East/Giordano's/etc). That doesn't mean, of course, that if you tried it and like it included in the recipe that it isn't OK. What you and yours like the best is what's all important. But again, corn meal is NOT included in the crusts of the classic Chicago Deep Dish Pizzas, including the original Pizzeria Uno that you visited. The internet is full of false information on this.
Upon first perking my interest when I earlier saw this ATK recipe, I experimented once with it, having roughly converted it to a baker's weight/percentage for a 9" pizza. The result was unsatisfactory -- to me at least -- as it didn't seem to resemble any of the great classic Chicago Deep Dish Pizzerias that I knew and enjoyed in the Chicago area for so many years. This includes Lou Malnati's where Cris Kimball started out his TV show with and where he visited with Mark Malnati and viewed the making of their sausage pizza in Malnati's kitchen. The resulting ATK recipe doesn't get remotely close to Malnati's Deep Dish pizza crust IMO, nor any of Chicago's greats. Like I said before, I admire ATK in general but found their pizza recipes to be "off the mark."
While I don't recall all the things that I thought wrong with this recipe (at least for one wanting to somewhat replicate real Chicago Style Deep Dish pizza), one of the glaring problems with it is the total lack of oil, either corn oil, olive oil, or other, in the crust's formulation itself. Chicago Style Deep Dish has ALOT of oil in the crust . . . ATK's has NONE. The butter doesn't make up for it. And while I like some butter in the crust formulation, believe it or not, the classic Chicago Deep Dish pizzerias use little to none in their crusts. Malnati's generally "brushes" melted butter onto the prepared dough in the pan before "dressing" the pizza (actually only if requested). But for home Chicago Style Deep Dish pizzamaking, I and my family and friends have come to prefer a little butter directly incorporated into the crust recipe itself. And, of course, with a lot of oil, too.
I think this is similar to the ATK recipe discussed at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9767.0.html . While they have olive oil listed in the ingredients on their website, it is NOT included in the crust's recipe itself for some (peculiar to me) reason.
--BTB
