"The Lou"The Lou is a spinach, mushroom, and roma tomato pizza that is one of Malnati's signature pies. It was discussed a little bit in a
recent thread, where you can watch a video of its assembly in the restaurant by Marc Malnati himself. No hyperbole: this is the best deep dish I've ever made, and maybe the best I've ever eaten. The family went crazy over it.
I. DOUGH - 36 hrs aheadFor each 12" deep dish pie, you'll need a 580 g dough ball. If you want to sub in your own favorite dough recipe, feel free. I'm just going to post what I did, and you can decide what you take away from it.
Flour Mix* (100%): 330 g *(66g semolina + 264 AP)
Water (50%): 165 g
IDY (1%): 3 g
Salt (1%): 3 g
Sugar (1%): 3 g
Olive Oil (8.5%): 28 g
Corn Oil (8.5%): 28 g
Butter(6.25%): 20 g
Total (176.25%): 580 g
Stir together dry ingredients in mixing bowl. Pour in the oils, but don't mix yet. Add butter, which has been cut into little pieces. Now mix the oil, butter, and dry ingredients for just a few seconds, but do not incorporate all of it together: it should be a conglomerate of wet and dry together and this point. Add the cool water, not warm at all: this is a cold ferment we're going for. Mix the dough just long enough to bring together uniformly, 30-60 seconds.
Cover or bag it up and stash in fridge for a 36-hr cold ferment. Remove from fridge and let come to room temperature a few hours before baking.
II. PREP THE VEGGIES - 24 hrs aheadThis pizza takes some prep work beforehand, ideally the day before baking. I was concerned that I'd be adding a lot of moisture with fresh vegetables, and my home oven might not bake up such a seemingly wet pie the same way the commercial ovens at Malnati's would, so I thought I'd do a few things to reduce moisture.
- 4-5 oz of fresh, pre-washed spinach leaves, stems removed
- 5 oz sliced fresh mushrooms, left on a plate in the fridge overnight to dry a little bit
- 7 oz sliced roma tomatoes, seeded and left on a plate in the fridge overnight to dry a little bit
The spinach came pre-washed, so I hand selected the smaller leaves and ripped off any stems I saw. Then I took 5 oz of mushrooms and sliced them and put them on a paper plate in the fridge to lose some moisture. By the next morning, they were down to 4 oz. Same deal with the romas. I seeded them before slicing and then left them on a plate in the fridge, and they lost almost an oz of water weight, too.
III. ASSEMBLY - day of bakingIngredients needed:
- the room temperature dough
- the prepped fresh spinach leaves
- handful of shredded mozzarella
- 6 oz sliced provolone (not smoked)
- 8 oz sliced mozzarella
- the prepped mushrooms
- the prepped roma tomatoes
- 1/2 c - 1 c. crushed tomatoes, drained
- few handfuls of shredded cheddar
- romano/parmesan cheese
- dried basil
Press out the dough into your ungreased deep dish pan. Pinch up those sides high and tight. To be honest, 580g is a lot of dough, so this step should be really easy. At this point, I cut some of the provolone into strips and push them into the inside of the dough sidewall, to add structure, working my way all around the pan. This cheese skeleton will hold the sides up from falling as you assemble the pizza, and it makes the end crust more interesting to eat. Now, working up from the crust, you are ready to add seven (!!!) more layers. It's casserole time, baby!
First layer: spread out the spinach leaves mixed with a little handful of shredded mozz. (Lou's actually uses shredded provolone here, but I don't keep any of that on hand. Sub at will.)
Second layer: put down the sliced mozz, covering everything. Layer on the remaining provolone, too, ripping it up as needed to make it equitable over the whole surface.
Third layer: add the mushrooms. I actually put down maybe 3/4 or more of what I had, but I'll just add them all next time.
Fourth layer: go super, super light with the crushed tomatoes. If you watch any videos of Lou's assembly, they go light here. You should see lots of the previous layers peeking through. Dab here, dab there of sauce. This isn't painting it on like a thin crust or a regular DD.
Fifth layer: lay down the sliced romas. I had three slices left over from my original amount. Look at the pictures for the amount of coverage needed.
Sixth layer: sprinkle a couple of handfuls of shredded cheddar. Don't be afraid to be generous here (not like half lb or anything, but don't go too light, either; if I had to guess, I'd say 2-4 oz). Sprinkle it around, letting it fall into the spaces, the romas, etc.
Seventh layer: sprinkle with grated romano and some dried basil.
IV. BAKINGPreheat two baking stones at 450° for one hour, one stone low in the oven and one high.
Place the pizza pan onto the low stone and bake for 20 mins. Move it to the top stone for 10 more minutes. Check for doneness. Every oven is different, so YMMV. Know thine oven.
Remove from oven and let sit in pan for 5-10 mins before removing from pan and cutting to serve.
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