Ed, I think this is just one of the dozens and dozens of the Uno's "copy-cat" recipes haunting the threads of so many cooking/recipe websites on the internet. Flour, water, non-instant yeast, oil and salt . . . well one is in the ball park and definitely on their way to getting close to one of the greatest pizza crusts in the history of Chicago Style pizza. But like in horseshoes, not close enough. What kind of flour would they have used in the late 40's? (Or flour combination?) What kind of oil?
You, I and others have been working on this for a while. What was the general kind of flour available in the 40s and 50's. Was AP flour a general staple then? One of our members thought maybe it was cake flour, but my experiments showed that to be a total no-no IMO. But the Uno's "franchise" frozen deep dish pizzas indicated cake flour as an ingredient on their packages. But then again, the Uno's franchise Chicago style deep dish pizzas tasted NOTHING like the original Uno's and Due's.
What kind of oil would they have used back in the 40s and 50s? Was vegetable oil with it's modern day component being primarily soy bean oil in existence back then? Olive oil seems to be the most natural for use on a pizza then. Or were there other varieties? All being a mystery that many would love to solve.
Regarding the alleged cook's recipe, I hadn't noticed anything clearly indicating that it was really from her. Seems like "third-party" hearsay. And she and some of the other cooks would never, never have indicated "cooked sausage" because all the classic Chicago Style deep dish (as well as thin crust) pizzerias never put on anything other than uncooked sausage (because the end product tasted much better that way). Deb Crane's link that you provided said: "Famous UNO'S restaurant in Chicago published Aldean Stoudamire's pizza recipe back in 1987." That is very puzzling and I very seriously doubt that the Uno's Restaurant organization would have ever published their crust recipe back then as it was a multi-million dollar business not to be jeopardized by giving out their formula to everyone!
I used to frequent Louisa De Genero's famous pizzeria (
http://www.louisaspizza.com/Home.html) in Crestwood, IL (a far south suburban deep dish pizzeria). Louisa passed away recently, but she, too, worked as a primary pizza cook at Uno's for several decades before she opened up her extremely successful and highly rated deep dish pizzeria on her own back in the 80's or 90's. One day long ago while I was sitting at her bar waiting on one of her great pizzas for pick-up, I mentioned to her that while her pizza was indeed great, it wasn't exactly like the Uno's crust I frequently had. She quickly said something like . . . well all the cooks and staff are under restrictions and agreements not to use the same recipe, but her variation was close enough. After thinking about it for a while, my guess would be that she and the other Uno's/Due's cooks (including Aldean Stoudamire) would have been under some sort of "confidentiality/non-disclosure agreement" restricting their ability to give out the real recipe. But they could give out misleading, general ingredient "copy-cat" formulations, I guess.
The Phil Vettel article could mislead people into thinking it was published on December 3, 1943 but the article obviously talks about events and occurrences many years thereafter. After thinking about it, I assumed that the date was originally part of the article's title, but my guess is that it was published some 40 to 50 years after that date.
And after my consuming pizzas at or from Uno's and Due's probably hundreds of times, I am absolutely in agreement with those who say that the Boston corporation substantially changed the recipe for the worse. The Due's staff that I knew indicated that the Boston group thought pizza crust wasn't anything special and that they could easily duplicate or make "something close" that would be adequate. But I was told by some in the old staff that the original crust formulation and recipe was NOT part of the purchase deal with the Boston group and that the Boston group could care less about it as they thought . . . crust is crust and was easy to make. But they couldn't have been more wrong.
Lastly, the picture of the pizza that Deb Crane made shows an atypical Chicago Style Uno's deep dish pizza in that they almost never made a pizza with a fat "lip" or rim. Their style was much like Lou Malnati's in that the edge of the crust was tightly pressed or crimped up against the edge of the pans, as is shown in the many TV programs about their pizza. That way the crust usually turns out crispier and tastier instead of bread-like. But I'm sure the alleged "copy-cat" recipe didn't stress that point so Deb Crane just put the dough in the pan without knowledge of further details. --BTB