Chicago Deep Dish Frozen Dough

Anyone doing a deep dish pizza with a frozen dough ball? What brand dough ball? What size are you using for a 14" pizza?

At one time I made a batch of dough that had some cornmeal in it and the flavor was pretty good, but I don’t sell that many deep dishes and I’m looking to keep operations simple by only having one type of dough that we make in house.

Anyone have some suggestions?

We use our 16" dough ball to make a 14" chicago style deep dish. The doughboall weighs 25 oz. The Rich’s frozen doughball will work nicely. They have a 26oz size that would be about right. You roll it out like a flat or hand tossed pie and lay it in the pan keeping the rim of the dough below the rim of the pan. We run it half way through the oven to parbake before we add anything and build the pie and bake. It takes two passes through the oven at the flat pie setting with a cover on it for the second full pass.

Scott;
Don’t forget to toss in some yellow food coloring too. I’m not quite sure as to how this would be best accomplished when using a frozen dough ball though. The addition of the coloring is a trade mark of the Chicago, deep-dish pizzas.
Also, use Blue Bonnet brand margarine in the pans.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

Anyone watch “Top Chef” the TV show? They are in Chicago, and filmed a lot of the “arrival” in the first episode in Pizzeria Uno. The very first quick challenge they had was to prepare and serve a signature Chicago deep dish pizza. Let’s just say that out of the 16 contestants, I would guess half had eaten a true deep dish, and maybe 3 had any clue how to make one.

I am just happy that they gigged those hoity toity cooking guys with a challenge of cookery that is probably taken fro granted. The dough was prepared and pre-proofed for them, and they had 90 minutes to put it all together and bake it off. I think many of us could have kicked some Bravo.TV buttocks with that challenge. I was appalled at the absolutely poor execution by so many of the classically trained guys. Don’t get me started on the next challenge which had two guys making classic chicken picatta who appear never to have eaten it before in their lives.

Nick;
I didn’t see it, as out antenna doesn’t capture those programs (no cable or dish).
Are you saying that the dough was completely prepared, and EVEN proofed, so all they had to do was to apply the sliced cheese, sauce and toppings, in 40-minutes, then bake it for roughly 45-minutes, leaving 5-minutes to serve it? And they were having problems? Good grief! Don’t nobody ever call me slow! How difficult was it for them? It sounds like it was a real challange. Ugh! I wish I could have seen it, it must have been quite a sight to see. I can only wonder how long it would have taken the worlds fastest pizza maker to do it, and I’m betting that any one of us wouldn’t have been too far behind him time wise either.
Doesn’t this really make you feel good, see, we truly are masters at our trade.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

I saw it too and most of them looked gross!!! they looked liked 3 inches of dough and barely a topping, although i know nothing about chicago pizza, I’ve seen it and I don’t think its suppose to look like that!!! I’m sure we all could have kicked some butt on that one even if some of us don’t do chicago!!!

I caught the end of it (I didn’t realize the dough had been made and proofed). Not one of those “chefs” could make a REAL pizza. Put some CLASSIC ingredients on, not peaches and garbage. Why do some people have to screw pizza up so badly?