Heavy Weight (aka stuffed deep dish pizza)

This isn't a diet food. It's not low fat, low carb or low cal. It's just a delicious spin on pizza that will have people asking for either the recipe or your hand in marriage. Maybe both. I've never been to Chicago but I hear that this is basically a Chicago deep dish stuffed pizza. I call it a Heavy Weight b/c that's what it was called on the menu at the restaurant where I first tried one. They shut down, so now I make my own.

Ingredients

Pizza Dough (Recipe below if you need one)
Tomato Sauce (Recipe below if you need one)
*15 oz can diced tomatoes, drained
*1/2 small yellow onion, diced
*1-2 cloves garlic, diced
*2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
*12 oz Canadian bacon, sliced to about dime size
*2.5 oz pepperoni, sliced to about dime size
*Basil/Oregano/Salt/Pepper

*These are either optional in amount or entirely. If you don't want to tomatoes, skip the diced tomatoes. If you like less cheese, only use a cup. I wouldn't use 3 cups though. Tried that once and it was redic. If you don't eat meat, GTFO. Just kidding. Just skip the meat and throw in some yummy veggies instead. I've been wanting to try spinach.


What to do

Preheat oven to 425. Aside from the dough and sauce, toss all of the above ingredients in a bowl and stir them up.

Divide the dough into two pieces. One should be about 2/3 of the dough; the other, 1/3. If you have a scale, one piece should weigh about 12 ounces; the other, about 6 ounces.

Grease the bottom and sides of a springform or cheesecake pan. I use a 9" springform.

Stretch, then roll the larger piece of dough into a round large enough (about 15" to 16") to line the bottom and sides of one pan, with some overhang. Do the same with one of the smaller pieces of dough, rolling it to about 9" to 10". It doesn't have to be perfect. Mine are never perfectly round. Just adds character when it's done.

Place the larger piece of dough in the pan, pressing it gently into the corners; you'll have some overhang. I don't even press it all the way into the corners b/c the filling will do that for me. I just make sure it's stretched enough so that it won't rip when I fill it.

Grab the bowl of stirred up ingredients and gently pour or scoop them into the dough lined pan. Make sure the filling is pretty level and then place the smaller piece of dough over the filling. Fold over the overhanging edges of dough, and squeeze/crimp to seal. Poke holes all over the top crust, to allow steam to escape, or make a couple slices with a knife.

Bake for about 15-20 min or until top looks golden brown. Remove from oven and top with tomato sauce and maybe some parm/reg. Return to oven for 10-15 min. Total cook time is 25-30 min. Sometimes I throw foil over the pizza for the last 10 min as the edges tend to get pretty dark.

As written here, the entire recipe has: cals - 2,261 protein - 160 fat - 65 carbs - 264 fiber - 18. Hungry people could probably eat 1/4 of the pie each, or if you were serving other NOMS with the pie, you could get 8 pieces out of it.

Some visuals (These aren't all the same pizza. I just grabbed the best pics I had, which isn't saying much as I was too lazy to pull out my nice camera and my phone blows)

















Pizza Dough

Ingredients
3/4 c warm water (temp should be whatever your yeast says)
1 T olive oil
1 T sugar
1.5 t salt
1T milk
2.25 c bread flour
1 t active dry yeast
basil, oregano parm/reg and rosemary to taste (I use about 1/2 t each and closer to 2 T of the parm/reg)

What to do

If you have a bread machine, add all of the ingredients to your pan and set it to pizza dough. When it's done, you're ready to go.

Otherwise combine the dry ingredients and the oils and milk, mixing till crumbs form. Then add the water, and mix and knead - by hand or stand mixer - to make an elastic, fairly stiff dough.

Place in a large, greased bowl; cover, and let rise at room temperature for 1 hour. Now you're ready to go.



Tomato Sauce

Ingredients
8 oz can tomato sauce
1/2 T sugar
salt/pepper/basil/oregano to taste

What to do

Pour in a bowl and stir it up. This isn't a fancy sauce. It really doesn't need much with all of the other yummy flavors. If you want something more, add more to it.