Homemade Deep Dish Pizza

As part of the Christmas gift-buying extravaganza, I bought some of my Chicago family a gift card for a pizzeria that serves deep dish pizza.  This made me crave deep dish pizza like none other.  Tonight, I tried to make something close to deep dish pizza.

I preheated the oven to 425° and set to work grating Trader Joe's mozzarella, cutting green peppers, and draining a can of black olives.  We have a Fiestaware deep dish pie baker that I greased with olive oil and floured with of all things flour.  I stretched a ball of defrosted Whole Foods pizza dough over the dish so that it was thickly lined, including edges, with dough.  

I spread pre-fab pizza sauce over the dough in a thick layer and topped that with a generous heaping of mozzarella, green peppers, and olives. 

Then I added another layer of sauce and mozzarella.

And another layer of olives and green peppers.

And to finish it off a layer of grated parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil.

I baked the pizza for about 40 - 45 minutes.  I recommend putting a baking sheet on the rack below, because my pizza overflowed onto the oven floor.  That might also be because I went a little sauce and cheese happy.

The finished product was a doughy, saucy, cheesy pie.

We ate half of the pizza and it was decadent.

Not necessarily authentic deep dish, but pretty good.