The Deep Dish Disaster

I think pizza is one of the most amazing food creations. Part of me feels like I could never get sick of pizza. There's so many different styles and types that fuel debates across the United States and so many varieties of toppings that you can pile on top. Well I've been having a hankering for deep dish pizza, something I have been dying to try. With no trip to Chicago in the near future for me, I decided that tackling the deep dish pizza in my very own kitchen couldn't be that difficult.
Oh, how wrong was I. It isn't that this was completely horrible in the end; it just wasn't right. I truly believe that the dough recipe I used was not meant to be turned into a deep dish pizza, especially because when I used the same dough recipe for another pizza (post on it coming soon) it turned out just fine. I believe for the deep dish dough to be successful I might have needed to use one that had cornmeal in it, which were some of the suggestions I saw and chose to ignore.
To make this pizza I doubled the original dough recipe (the recipe said I could do this) that I got from Smitten Kitchen, I then fought with it to get it into the pan properly and then to actually stay put. It was a battle that I only halfway won. I then placed sliced mozzarella cheese directly onto the pizza dough. I don't think I used enough cheese because this really wasn't as cheesy as it should have been, you know like the real thing. Then I only ended up putting on one topping, originally I thought I would put much more on it, but wasn't in the mood for it. Finally, I put the sauce on top of the cheese and toppings so that they didn't burn because the pizza has to cook so long for the crust to be done. Below you'll see the less than stellar thing I took out from the oven. I have to say that the leftovers, were much better than the first night. And don't get me wrong it isn't like it actually tasted bad it just didn't meet my expectations, which maybe I set too high these days.
So, I will try again on the Chicago deep dish pizza and I'll try a proper deep dish dough recipe and I'll use more cheese or maybe I'll just consider going to Pi here in St. Louis instead (hey it was good enough for the president) and get real Chicago deep dish pizza that's only 5 hours away from being authentic in the Windy City.