Giordano’s Take Away for the UK

I’ve loved Deep Pan Pizza from when it was just a frozen microwave dinner – a treat dug out of the recesses of the chest freezer. It’s less about bread and more about cheese. That’s probably it. More recently, and since having had the privilege of international travel and living in the States, I’ve sampled a lot of what Chicago has to offer in this area…to find, of course, that Chicago pretty much owns this category, and its sub-category the “stuffed pizza”. Stuffed Pizza is essentially a Deep Dish Pizza with a thin top crust, and that delight is, in my opinion, dominated by the Chicago pizza pie chain known as Giordano’s.

American successes are soon franchised, and maybe not surprisingly we’re lucky to be living in a Chicagoland suburb with its own Giordano’s. Actually there are two in a three mile radius…such has been the expansion of this chain. We’re about a year away from returning to the UK, and I have to say, Giordano’s is one of the things we’ll miss !

Fortunately, I have found a more than acceptable alternative…

The “More Than Acceptable Alternative”

As I wrote previously in this post, I’ve had a couple of attempts at a Chicago deep dish pizza, and they’ve come out better than OK. So, not too difficult, but not quite there. While you can buy decent cheese, pepperoni and ingredients to make a generic Chicago Classic (basically onions, peppers and mushrooms) a Giordano’s is a bit about getting the two crusts right, a bit more about the sauce…and a bit about the method.

I came across this recipe by accident while Googling. This guy seems well known in the USA – I’ve not been here long enough or watched the right TV channels to have heard of him. His idea is interesting – to sample then accurately replicate recipes from well known restaurants in the USA. Here’s the downloaded recipe, with some notes from me on how I think I maybe improved it a tiny, little bit :-).

“Pi(e) r squared”

I have two cast iron Dutch Ovens, and the lids from both these make great deep dishes for pizza. The 12” is what was used for this, and some dusty old Maths “O Level” memories to uplift the ingredient amounts from a 10” circular pan. I’ve always maintained that some of those lessons would be useful ! (For those who need reminding, a radius increase of 1.2x means an area or volume increase of 1.2 x 1.2 = 1.44x ! …. “pi r squared” … you’re welcome 🙂 ! )

As directed, I made the crust the day before to let it sit in the fridge overnight. The key deviation in this part was the use of butter in place of margarine. I don’t really know if that makes a difference, but we’re not margarine people….and we had a lot of butter in. The crust was surprisingly straightforward to bring together, but I found myself needing to knead a little more than the recipe suggested – just to get it consistent. You can see from the picture, it could maybe have done with more. But it was clear about not over-kneading, so I resisted.

(A premature end to my pizza prep, and a need to wait a day for the crust, meant I could shift my attention that morning to another recipe and what became another breakthrough – Crumpets…that’s another story.)

The next day

Ok, so Day 2 and I was back on it. I needed to get on with the sauce. Back to the recipe and this time I was mostly true to the instructions. I obliged with the two different tinned tomato types, and the two basil formats but in the end (and on tasting) I felt I could be forgiven for augmenting with a sprinkle (and it was only a sprinkle) of red pepper flakes. It needed “zing” !

While that cooled, yesterday’s pastry came out of the fridge to warm up.

Assembly…

5-10 minutes of flour and rolling pin action had that pastry ball turned into a 4mm thick base. We were on the home stretch – the final furlong. I have to say that the transformed lump of pastry “ore” into a smooth, structured, uniform crust is a small thing that I found to appeal to my mild OCD tendencies. Check out that pan ! There was almost a justification to stop at that point and not ruin the look with the chaos of chopped onions and grated cheese. Almost.

So with the O Level Maths uplift, we needed 35oz of cheese in this thing. That’s two and a half pounds of fatty, creamy goodness. And not just any cheese. As with the Detroit Pizza, our proximity to the American Cheese State Of Wisconsin meant that only the best Wisconsin Low Moisture Mozzarella would do…and that’s what we got, taking care to not buy anything pre-grated (because, of course, pre-grated in a bag doesn’t mean it’s just grated – it’s also coated in some powder to keep the cheese gratings from sticking…so beware !). The whole 35 ounces had to be manually shredded. Giordano’s “Chicago Classic” (our favourite menu order there) then demands the best pepperoni and “normal” onions, peppers and mushrooms, so next steps were to prepare and assemble.

Home-made has the additional benefit of more flexible configurability in constructing not only a “half and half” but actually a “half and two quarters” for the fussy ones who don’t like mushrooms and onions (sigh).

Anyway, pastry lid, tomato sauce, and some “ingredient identifiers” for those specific quarters, and we’re in for 40 minutes. Shout out to the mega large “Baking Steel” which had been in the oven for about 30 minutes at 425F, which would serve as the heat conducting oven floor for this dish.

The timer was on. Given that the dish was the aforementioned 1.44x bigger than the recipe said, I was a little concerned that 30-40 minutes wouldn’t be long enough, so resolved to keep it in there for 45-50 minutes. That decision was debatable (we didn’t learn the correlation between pi and time at school – that sounds “astrophysical”), but to be fair made marginal difference either way in my view.

The end result was a resounding success, I am delighted to report. The crust was flaky and a little crumbly – great texture ! Maybe a smidge dry, but I’m letting that go. The pizza was, as you’ll see from the short clip, just FULL of cheese. Giordano’s makes a big deal of this “cheese pull” in the restaurants. The sauce I think benefited from that little off-piste sprinkle of chillis too.

All in all, this will not only keep us going in authentic deep dish pizzas back in the UK when we return, but I see us repeating this here in the USA in the coming year. Although I have to say, I won’t do this for any cost savings or convenience – it saved neither time nor money over a delivered Giordano’s :-)…but of course it was great fun.