Hi All,
It's been a while since I've posted, but that doesn't mean I stopped making pizza!
Recently, a coworker was reminiscing over Chicago thin crust and as a native New Yorker, I admit I never had it. So of course I came to the Pizza Forum to investigate and saw the popularity of Garvey’s work!! Thank you much to Garvey for the great recipes – for both the dough and the sauce.
I followed the first recipe (not knowing about the no-knead version until yesterday) and did a 72-hour ferment. The dough was a little tough to roll out and stay at 14”, so I performed several cycles of roll, relax 5 mins, lift, reflour underneath, repeat…that seemed to do the trick. I also trimmed the edges with a pizza cutter to get a fresh, square edge as recommended in Gemignani’s Bible. (I used a 14” mesh as a template and you may see the indentation in the dough skin picture.) The sauce seemed odd to me given the paste base and the abundance of herbs, but I put my trust in Garvey. I also appreciate the cheese portioning advice – that was the perfect amount!
Regarding toppings, I was going to do 1 pepperoni and 1 sausage, but opted instead for two pepperoni pizzas. I know, I know, sausage is sacred to Chicago so I’m not helping reduce any Chicago vs New York friction. Next time, I promise!
I baked directly on my fire bricks and it looked great. I did have a couple of large bubbles forming but just knocked them down with the pizza cutter. I let them cool on the mesh for about 10 minutes then tried a square cut a cutting pan.
Upon tasting, I agree that this recipe is a home run! The sauce is killer and the pizza texture is really cool – some crispy, some chewy, depending on what piece you take. Super fun pizza for sure! The only drawback I could find was that the small slice size and thinness sneak up on you and you find yourself always going back for “just one more piece!”
Love this recipe and will definitely make this again!! Thanks again Garvey!!
