Bobby Flay Deep Dish Throwdown with Marc Malnati

[steve in FL]

Yeah, booby flay's recipe might be on there, from the Throwdown episode, but there is also a Marc Malnati recipe posted, too, from a few years back, this is the one I was referring to:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/follow-that-food/chicago-style-pizza-recipe/index.html
Chicago Style Pizza - from foodnetwork.com
Recipe courtesy Marc Malnati, Lou Malnati's Pizzeria, Chicago, Illinois
Show: Follow That FoodEpisode: Follow That Pizza

It doesn't even resemble the luscious sounding/looking doughs you guys have posted here..

[Pizza_Not_War]

Steve in FL, you are confusing things.  The Food Network site posted Bobby Flay's pathetic recipe for pizza crust that he used on that episode, NOT Lou Malnati's pizza crust dough recipe.  Bobby Flay's staff found an old "copy-cat" recipe on the internet (for which there are hundreds) and all of them mistakenly put corn meal in the recipe.  (Just Google it yourself and you'll find that to be the case.)  My wild guess is that Bruno Pasquale himself, one of the judges on this episode itself, started that mistaken notion back 35 or 40 years ago when he first published a "Chicag Style deep dish pizza" recipe, albeit a "guesstimate" of the ingredients of the deep dish pizzas that he fell in love with as a younger man. For those non-believers, I encourage you to try making a deep dish pizza with corn meal.  I think most will find a not so good sandy and gritty feel or sensation to the dough.  But you never know until you try it.  I'm told, however, that a fine ground corn flour would be very different and interesting as a small additive, but haven't tried that to date.        --BTB                             

I have made some deep dish pizza's in the past with corn meal and have experience the "sandy and gritty feel". It is not very appetizing for me. However in San Francisco back in my time there, Viccolo's and then Olives, etc. made a cornmeal crusted pizza that was fabulous. Viccolo's still exists in frozen supermarket products and it pales in comparison to what the restaurant used to churn out, not worthy of buying IMO. I don't think they were trying to make Chicago style pizza, I believe they were after there own unique product.

PNW

[bill1971]

I used DKM's recipe here on this site to make my first Chicago Deep Dish, (inspired by the Bobby Flay/Marc Malnati Throwdown). I found using the cornmeal made the dough rather gritty feeling, but didn't really taste it in the final product. Using Deven's dough recipe, I refrigerated the dough for about 48 hours, since that has been suggested by quite a few of the pizza masters around here.

Other than that, I followed the Chicago Deep Dish layering of ingredients. The finished product was very acceptable, and my son, who loves tomatoes, and is the ultimate critic, gave me thumbs up on my first try. So I guess it's onward and upward, trying to learn and improve, with the help of the great resources on this site. many thanks to all for their support.

- Bill