Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza

It's a Monday night, and we decided pizza and a movie was the move. I decided that I wanted to try a proper deep dish pizza and craved it the entire day. Once he was off work, Allen went to the store for the few necessary ingredients then I started on the dough. 

I added the ingredients and "kneaded" the dough-- God bless the KitchenAid mixer-- then placed it into an oiled bowl for an hour, covering it with plastic wrap. In the meantime, I camped out on the couch and banged out a post for my Substack with Psycho playing in the background (Summerween ftw!). 

Finally the hour was up, and I punched the dough down and rolled it out into a very lazy rectangle. I don't think I should even call it a rectangle. Thankfully I thought ahead and set out my butter to soften before the first resting period, but for some reason decided to place it under a candle heating lamp and forget about it. Well, at least the butter was soft when I needed it.

I smeared the butter all over the "rectangle" and rolled it up like a cinnamon roll, then I cut it in half and formed 2 smaller dough balls. Then, back into the covered, oiled bowl for another hour (ish-- I have the timer set for 30 minutes. It's already 7pm).

**Disclaimer: I finished the pizza, but at the time I did not finish the blog. The following was written after the fact.**

And yes-- I only let them rise for 30 minutes, but the dough was puffy and ready to roll. So roll I did, into two small-to-medium-sized pizzas. Placing the first round (?) of dough into the buttered skillet, I loaded it with pepperoni then mozzarella cheese. I hummed along to Billy Joel (have y'all seen the new documentary?) as I placed the next layer of dough on top and ladled half a jar of pizza sauce over top. 

After sprinkling a bit of parmesan onto the sauce, I melted some butter and mixed in some jarlic and oregano to brush onto the crust. I guess I wouldn't recommend using actual garlic for this, as it was a little burned in the end, but it wasn't awful. Next time I'll use garlic powder.

After about 30 minutes in a 425 degree oven, I had this: 

And it was beautiful. 10/10 would make again. You will need a fork, but seriously, try it.