Springform Deep Dish Pizza

in Pizza, Tips

Deep Dish Pizza

Pizza is in heavy rotation on our weekly menu. We’re crust people – and I don’t leave a scrap of it behind. Nothing screws up a good pizza like a bad crust. We’ve gone through several pizza doughs looking for the perfect crust and we always come back to The Usual. We’ve been baking pizza with the Gourmet recipe for nearly 4 years now.

Occasionally, I’ll want to try something different and I stumbled across an old bookmark that provided the perfect opportunity: Deep Dish Pizza. Not just any deep dish – one that promised a far less messy outcome than some of my previous attempts.

Deep Dish Pizza

I swapped out The Usual for Baking Illustrated’s Basic Pizza Dough. The recipe has been on my radar for a while because I frequently see it baked into all kinds of tasty forms on one of my favorite food blogs, Annie’s Eats. The recipe also conveniently yields enough dough in a single batch to get a deep dish pie on the table for dinner.

I was pleasantly surprised. The bread flour for which the Baking Illustrated recipe calls produced a noticeable difference in texture. I’m not sure that I’m ready to completely give up The Usual but this crust is definitely at least the second best pizza crust recipe we’ve tried.

Deep Dish Pizza
For the dough:
1 3/4 cup warm water, divided
1 tsp sugar
1 envelope (2 1/4 tsp) instant yeast
2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for greasing bowl and springform pan
4 cups (22 oz) bread flour, plus more for dusting
1 1/2 tsp salt

For the pizza:
1 cup pizza sauce
2 cups shredded fresh mozzarella
Fillings of your choice (we used cooked italian sausage, pepperoni, and pineapple chunks)

Put 1/2 cup warm water into the bowl of your stand mixer and stir in sugar until dissolved. Sprinkle the yeast over the top and let stand until frothy, about 5 minutes. Add the remaining water and oil.

Add the flour and salt to the stand mixer bowl fitted with the dough hook. Mix on low until the flour is combined and then turn up the speed and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl (I remove the dough, oil the stand mixer bowl, and put the dough back in… one less dirty dish). Cover with plastic wrap until it doubles in volume, about 1 ½ to 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 400. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. Divide the dough into two pieces, about 2/3 and 1/3 in size. Gently form into two balls, cover with a damp cloth, and let the dough relax for ~10 minutes. Assemble a 10-in spring form pan and oil the bottom and inside ring.

Shape the larger piece of dough into a round and drape over the springform pan. The dough round needs to be large enough to cover the bottom and slightly hang over the edges of the pan. Use small pieces from the other dough ball to patch any trouble spots.

Sprinkle 1/3 cheese over the bottom of the pan. Top with the fillings of your choice and cover with half of the remaining cheese. Shape the remaining dough into a round and drape over the springform pan. The dough round should also slightly hang over the edge of the pan. Taking a rolling and roll over the top edge of the springform pan to seal the pizza. Tuck the crust edges around the top of the pizza. Using a pair of kitchen shears, cut a few steam holes in the top crust. Spoon pizza sauce over the top and sprinkle with remaining cheese.

Bake for 40-45 minutes until crust is golden and cheese is bubbly and beginning to brown. Remove the pizza from oven and immediately remove the ring from the pan. Cut into wedges and serve.

Yields: 8 wedges
Source: Crust adapted from Baking Illustrated; Springform method from Evil Mad Scientist

15 comments… add one
  • you did this perfectly.

  • Looks SO GOOD! And funnily enough, I have deep dish pizza scheduled to post tomorrow – but, with a different crust! It’s one designed for deep dish, also from Cook’s Illustrated. Now you’ll have to try that one too!

  • This would be a big hit at my house. I’ve been craving homemade pizza for a while and after reading all of the posts under your “pizza” tag I definitely have to get it on the menu soon.

  • I love deep dish pizza! We had some just last week. 🙂 I used a cake pan and it produced some lovely deep dish-styled pizza! Thanks for sharing your recipe. 🙂

  • I’m not a pizza person *gasp* – I know. But this looks great. How did you possibly get those pics of such a clean piece of pizza?!?

  • That looks gorgeous. We did a deep dish pizza in my cooking class a few weeks ago and this looks far superior.

  • We are also weekly pizza people. And love some crust. We have never made deep-dish style before – looks amazing!

  • It must be a sign when two of my favorite bloggers blog about deep dish pizza within days of one another…a sign that I need to be baking a deep dish of pizza as soon as possible.

  • I have been wanting to make a deep dish pizza lately. My favorite part of the pizza is definatley the crust, so this is my favorite kind of pizza. Unforutnately, I will be the only one loving it, because my boyfriend just believes in regular crust greasy pizza. Nothing fancy or manipulative. So it will be my pizza!

  • tiffany wynia

    i make a homemade pizza crust in my bread machine and love it.

    1 cup water/beer
    1 tbsp butter
    1 tbsp sugar
    1 tsp salt
    3 cups flour (can use bread flour)
    1 1/4 tsp yeast
    put in order in bread machine and put on dought setting. let the machine do the work. can take right after mixing or let rise in the machine. roll it out and put whatever topping you want on it.
    bake the pizza at 350 until done.

  • I made this and wrote about it here. Hot Damn was it ever good. I never thought of using my springform to make pizza. Thanks for sharing this recipe!

  • Stacey

    Looks amazing! Thanks for putting the weight of the flour ~ so much easier to weigh than measure!

  • Cheryl

    I was just wondering if I could make this dough ahead of time and froze until needed?

    • You can freeze the dough. Take it out of the freezer the night before and put it in the top of the fridge. You’ll need to let the dough sit on the counter ~1 hour at room temperature if it’s completely thawed (more if it’s not).

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