Favorite Topp...er...middlings?

[yaddayaddayadda]

What are some good "middlings" ideas for chicago pizza?  The wife's not too fond of sausage....I tried one pepperoni/mushroom which was good, and thought of a couple others....but what are your favorites? What are traditional?

I thought of the following:

A lasagna Chi pizza: Cheese, Ground beef, ricotta, sauce
or
A "meatball" pizza: Make a batch of meatballs, but spread on a thin layer instead of balling and frying.

Any others?

[Za guy]

I've been wondering myself how well a deep dish "frutti di mare" style pizza would work.  Prawns, Scallops, Clams and/or Mussells buried under a nice red pizza sauce sounds interesting to me.  Could be waaay over the top for average taste buds though.  Most folks expect traditional pizza underneath the sauce. 

For something way more mainstream, I really like spinach.  I have added sausage to the top of a pie with the spinach/mushroom/onion filling from the DKM Stuffed Spinach pie in the recipe section, and I am getting pretty hooked on it by now.  I suppose pepperoni would not clash with spinach either.

I've also thought about substituting or augmenting red bell peppers for the more traditional green bells.  It's a very different flavor, but similar texture.  It's an idea, but I haven't tried it.

Whatever you do, good luck.  And if you try the frutti di mare idea, let us know how it went!

Za guy   

[Bryan S]

I've been wondering myself how well a deep dish "frutti di mare" style pizza would work.  Prawns, Scallops, Clams and/or Mussells buried under a nice red pizza sauce sounds interesting to me.  Could be waaay over the top for average taste buds though.  Most folks expect traditional pizza underneath the sauce.    

Good idea but for me I'd make a Basic Bechamel and add a little fresh grated Parm and a smidge of fresh grated Nutmeg in it. Somewhere in between a Alfredo sauce and your basic Bechamel so the shellfish don't get lost in it. JMO

[Mazz]

I did a Canadian Bacon and Pineapple CSP around the Holidays.  It was most excellent.  I've also done Spinach and Ricotta and it too was quite good.  Just make sure you use fresh spinach, not that Popeye in a can stuff.

[Z]

One of my coworkers was telling me about a pizza from one of the take and bakes she was going to try over the weekend.  It sounded good so I made my own.
Chicken, artichoke hearts, spinach, mozz (50 smoked, 50 part skim), and parmesan.  For the sauce-garlic white sauce.  She brought her leftovers for lunch on Monday and I brought her a piece of mine.  No contest-my homemade was much better.

Also made a Muffaletta pizza for Fat Tuesday-over the top!

Neither were traditional red sauce Chicago but very good.

[wildfire]

One of my coworkers was telling me about a pizza from one of the take and bakes she was going to try over the weekend.  It sounded good so I made my own.
Chicken, artichoke hearts, spinach, mozz (50 smoked, 50 part skim), and parmesan.  For the sauce-garlic white sauce.

I make something very similar (only I also put onions on it).  It tends to make for a very good deep dish.  Sometimes I'll do 1/2 garlic white sauce 1/2 red sauce (in layers) and it tends to work out well, adds a bit more flavor than just a white.

[yaddayaddayadda]

I took some of my own advice, and made a meatball pizza.  I mixed up a batch of my meatball mix, and placed a lb. raw over the cheese and under the sauce. The pizza came out great! Like a meatball parm sub.

[BTB]

Yadda, I really can't add anything here as my favorite pizza topping is Italian sausage, often with some pepperoni added.  I'm old school, I know.  But of the few people -- in my circle of friends at least -- who were not sausage lovers, I've learned that their dislike came from trying a type of low grade sausage (example, some "pellets" passed off as sausage) or something similar that most reasonable people wouldn't like.  Maybe, just maybe, your wife got her dislike from trying something that was not of a decent quality sausage.  Maybe that's not the case, but you never know.  In Chicago, sausage is the Number One requested ingredient for Chicago Style Deep Dish pizza, followed by pepperoni, green peppers and mushrooms. But as you've indicated, there are many others to try out.