Deep-Dish Sausage and Tomato Pizza

I’ve been trying to make the perfect pizza at home for a really long time. I know I’ll never make pizza the same as what you’d find in a pizza shop, and that’s fine, but I guess I just want to make the best at-home-pizza that I possibly can. It’s not an easy task when you don’t have a pizza stone. It’s easy to come up with delicious toppings, but when you can’t get that coveted crispy-yet-tender crust, well, it’s just not a perfect pizza.

I recently found a recipe from Sara Moulton that calls for making the pizza in a cast iron skillet, which is something I haven’t tried before. The recipe calls for cooking the dough in the bottom of the oven at a really high temperature, and I was optimistic about what this could do for my crust. Plus, the recipe reminds me of the sausage-and-tomato deep-dish pizza that I always get at Pizzeria Uno and that I absolutely love. I was really excited to try this.

I didn’t follow the recipe exactly though. I stuck to the concept, but I had my own sausage that I wanted to use. A while ago I made a batch of Cooking Light’s Atsa Spicy Pizza Sausage. It was really good, but it makes a ton, and I still had 2/3 of it left over in the freezer. So for my toppings I used this sausage and a can of Del Monte Diced Tomatoes with Basil, Garlic & Oregano. For me, it has to be these tomatoes. I really like the flavor of them and, for reasons that I haven’t quite figured out, they’re the only tomatoes I’ve ever been able to get Adam to eat. These tomatoes, therefore, must have special powers, and I’m sticking with them. But use whatever you like.

The pizza came out really well. The dough came together easily and it baked up big and tender and crisp around the outer edges. I will warn, though, that you need to thoroughly drain off any extra liquid from the sausage and tomatoes, because not doing so could cause your crust to get a bit soggy on the bottom. Other than that, though, there’s nothing else you need to really watch out for with this recipe. Except for maybe eating the entire thing yourself.

Deep-Dish Sausage and Tomato Pizza
Adapted from Cheesy Deep-Dish Sausage and Tomato Pizza

1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 cup warm water (110 to 115 degrees F)
1 (1/4-ounce) package active dry yeast (about 2 1/2 teaspoons)
2 1/4 to 2 1/2 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for oiling bowl
1/3 recipe Atsa Spicy Pizza Sausage, recipe follows
1 (14 to 16-ounce) can diced tomatoes, well drained
1 cup grated whole milk mozzarella cheese (about 1/4 pound)
1 cup grated fontina cheese (about 1/4 pound)
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
1/4 cup shredded fresh basil leaves, for garnish

In a large bowl, dissolve sugar in water. Sprinkle yeast over water and let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. Stir in 2 1/4 cups flour, cornmeal, salt, and 2 tablespoons oil and blend until mixture forms a dough. Knead dough on a floured surface, incorporating as much of remaining 1/4 cup flour as necessary to prevent dough from sticking, until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes.

Put dough in a deep oiled bowl and turn to coat with oil. Let dough rise, covered with plastic wrap, in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

While the dough is rising, prepare sausage (see recipe below). Stir in tomatoes and transfer mixture to a strainer over a bowl to drain and cool.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F.

Punch down dough and knead 4 times. In an oiled 10 1/2-inch cast-iron skillet, press dough with oiled finger until it comes 2 inches up the side and is an even thickness on bottom. Let dough rise, covered loosely with plastic wrap, in a warm place for 15 minutes.

Sprinkle dough with half of mozzarella and fontina and top with sausage-tomato mixture and remaining cheeses. Sprinkle the top with the Parmesan and bake the pizza in the lower third of an electric oven or on floor of a gas oven for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 400 degrees and bake 5-10 minutes more, or until crust is golden brown.

Top with fresh basil, if desired, and serve immediately.

Atsa Spicy Pizza Sausage

1 pound ground turkey
1 pound ground pork
1/2 cup dry red wine
1/3 cup minced fresh parsley
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 garlic cloves, crushed

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Cook sausage in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until browned, stirring to crumble. Drain.

The sausage can be frozen for up to 3 months.

Andouille Sausage Pizza with Onion Confit and Oven-Dried Tomatoes

Yesterday was a day of firsts for me. It was the first time I made a Michael Chiarello recipe. I've always enjoyed his show, and I wish it was one of the more popular shows on FN. It seems that, with the exception of Bobby Flay, all the shows hosted by chefs are fading away, and, in turn, the more advanced recipes, at least in terms of technique, are being replaced by all things quick and simple. It's true that I'll more often make a Rachael Ray-type recipe than I will a Michael Chiarello-type recipe, but that's only because there are 2 days per week that I have hours to spend on a meal, and 5 that I don't. So while I, like most home cooks, may more often turn to a relatively simple recipe, I much more appreciate a complicated one, because it is in working through those that I find my cooking improves the most. Although I wouldn't exactly call Andouille Sausage Pizza with Onion Confit and Fontina Cheese complicated; it is, however, a bit time consuming. Most of that is down time, but you have to have a couple hours free to let things cook slowly in the oven.


The other first I experienced with this recipe was the making of a confit, which refers to a food item that has been immersed and slowly cooked in a flavoring liquid, traditionally for preservation. The confit here consisted of onions cooked in a mixture of oil, vinegar, wine, salt, and sugar. Though I've only done it once, I already feel like the making of an onion confit is a valuable method to become familiar with. The onions really absorb the flavor of whatever you cook them in, so much so that, by the end, they hardly taste like onions anymore. So if you're ever looking for a way to take a liquid and concentrate its flavor in a solid form, consider an onion confit.


Overall, this pizza was very good. I wish I had a pizza stone, so that my crust would have turned out more crispy, but that's another item on my wait-'til-we-have-a-house list. The crust was tender though (I used Emeril's recipe), and the toppings worked wonderfully together. The spicyness of the andouille and the sweetness of the confit balanced each other nicely, and the cheeses brought all the flavors together. The oven-dried tomatoes were a welcome alternative to the usual pizza sauce--they were sweet, delicious, and full of the flavors of the garlic-thyme oil in which they'd been cooked.


Andouille Pizza with Onion Confit and Oven-Dried Tomatoes
adapted from Andouille Sausage Pizza Pie, using Emeril's Basic Pizza Dough

Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
2 links fresh andouille
4 cloves garlic, divided
2 yellow onions, sliced
1/2 cup champagne or white wine vinegar
Pinch of sugar for confit, plus 1 teaspoon for dough
2 tablespoons white wine
2 roma tomatos
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 cup warm (110 degrees F) water
1 (1/4-ounce) envelope active dry yeast
3 cups bleached all-purpose flour
1 oz. fontina cheese, shredded
2 oz. mozzarella cheese, shredded
1/4 cup grated parmesan
2 tablespoons chopped parlsey

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

First, prepare the sausage. Remove the casings from two links of andouille, then tear the sausages into small pieces and drop into an oil-drizzled skillet over medium-high heat. Saute until cooked through. Reduce heat to medium, add two cloves of thinly sliced garlic, and cook 2 minutes more. With a slotted spoon, remove garlic and sausage from pan and set aside.

Next, prepare the onion confit. Add enough olive oil to andouille renderings to equal about 1/4 cup. Add onions, and cook for a few minutes, or until they begin to soften. Add 1/2 tablespoon salt, vinegar, pinch of sugar, and white wine. Cover skillet with a parchment-paper circle that's had a two-inch hole cut out of the center to allow steam to escape. Place skillet in the oven and allow to cook for 2 hours, or until pizza dough is ready. (You can plan to cook the vegetables for 3 hours if you have the time, but I'm impatient.)


Slice tomatoes into four slices each. Drizzle a baking pan or sheet with about 2 tablespoons olive oil, top with tomatoes, then drizzle an additional 2 tablespoons of olive oil over the tomatoes. Top with 2 thinly sliced garlic cloves, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, a couple grinds of pepper, and 1/2 teaspoon of dried thyme. Place in oven to cook with onions (tomatoes and onions will be done at the same time).


About an hour before tomatoes and onions are finished, prepare pizza dough. In a large bowl, combine the water, yeast, 1 tablespoon oil, and 1 teaspoon of sugar, and stir to combine. Let sit until the mixture is foamy, about 5 minutes. Add 1 1/2 cups of the flour and 1 teaspoon of salt, mixing by hand until it is all incorporated and the mixture is smooth. Continue adding the flour, 1/4 cup at a time, working the dough after each addition, until all the flour is incorporated but the dough is still slightly sticky. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth but still slightly tacky, 3 to 5 minutes.

Oil a large mixing bowl with 1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil. Place the dough in the bowl and turn to oil all sides. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set in a warm, draft-free place until nearly doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Remove the dough from the bowl and briefly knead. Place on a lightly floured work surface and let rest for 10 minutes. Transfer to a lightly oiled baking sheet (or a baker's peel, if you have one) and shape into a large round.

Remove vegetables from oven, and adjust oven temperature to 450 degrees. Scatter shaped dough with fontina, then top with onions and the tomatoes and reserved sausage, being sure to include the garlic that was cooked with both. With a pastry brush, lightly brush the edges of the dough with the oil that the tomatoes cooked in, using just enough to lightly coat the outside of the dough. Finally, top with mozzarella and parmesan cheese and bake in preheated oven for about 12 minutes, or until cheese is melted and crust begins to turn golden brown. Top with parsley and serve.

Deep-Dish Meatball Pizza

Today I took a 30-minute meal and turned it into a 2-hour meal. Sounds crazy, but I had good reason. Rachael’s Mega Meatball Pizza calls for already-made pizza dough. You can buy it, she says, or get it from your favorite pizza shop. Has anyone ever actually walked into a pizza shop and asked for some dough? Did they give it to you? I just don’t see it happening at the pizzeria across the street from me. As for store-bought dough, well, that’s just not an option. My store only carries refrigerated dough, not frozen, and you know what I’m talking about here—the stuff in a can that tastes like a poorly adapted biscuit. The last time I struggled with that stuff, cursing as it tore during my futile attempts to shape it into some semblance of a pizza, I swore I’d never use it again. And I haven’t.

So to make Rachael’s pizza, I made my own dough. I wanted something that would be no hassle whatsoever, and so I looked for one I could make in my bread machine. I used this one from recipezaar.com, and it worked really well. I flavored mine with (dried) rosemary, just like in Rachael’s recipe, and I got a perfect dough ball.

Because the toppings are a bit heavy in this recipe, I thought it would work well as a deep-dish pizza. I decided my 9x13-inch baking dish was my best bet for this, but I wasn’t sure how it would affect baking. I wanted to bake the crust a bit before adding the toppings, just to keep it from getting soggy, but I was afraid the center of the crust would puff up on me. I mentally scanned my pantry, thinking I could hold it down with some dried beans, the way you would a pie crust, but I knew I didn’t have any beans. Finally, I decided to just try it and see what happened. I greased my pan and then sprinkled it with cornmeal—the latter helped “grab” the dough as I tried to spread it into the corners of the pan. After working at it a while, I got the dough up the sides of the pan about half-way, then stuck it in a 375-degree oven for 11 minutes. Meanwhile, I made the filling for the pizza. I followed Rachael’s recipe exactly except I used 1 pound of ground beef and 1/2 pound of ground pork (instead of 1 1/2 pounds sirloin). This just felt more “meatball-like” to me.

After 11 minutes, I took the crust out of the oven. It puffed up even more that I had feared it would. I wish I’d taken a picture just so you could see how big it was, but at the time I was sure it was a disaster, and I’m not one to document my disasters. I added this to my ever-growing list of next-time-I’ll-know-better moments, and went ahead and piled the filling and cheese into the center. I put it back in the oven.

Eleven minutes later, it was done. I was terrified to cut into it. I pictured a chunk of bread with some meat sitting on top. But, bravely, I picked up my knife and forged ahead. I was completely surprised to see that the center had sunk back down during the second baking, and I ended up with a respectable deep-dish pizza, after all. A tasty one, too. The crust did taste more like bread than crust usually does, but that’s actually how this recipe is supposed to turn out. Rachael says she likes her pizza crusts to taste like focaccia, and this one definitely does.

This is very filling, and between two of us here, both with large appetites, we were only able to finish half the pizza. So feed a group or prepare for leftovers. Pair it with a coffee (or chocolate) float, and you’ve got a 2-hour 30-minute meal. Enjoy!

Potato Pizza

Every time I go to Pizzeria Uno, I get the same thing: Pizza Skins and a Caesar salad. I suppose “pizza skins” is a play on “potato skins,” but the name is a bit misleading. It’s really a pizza crust filled with mashed potatoes and topped with cheddar cheese, bacon, and sour cream. Delicious.

Recently, I was searching for a copycat recipe, not really expecting to find one, and was surprised to come across Emeril’s Loaded Potato Pizza. This recipe actually is from a viewer who won Emeril’s potato recipe contest, and so I guess isn’t technically Emeril’s, but whatever. I was just excited to find the recipe.

I modified it just a bit—left out the tomatoes, changed the cheese, added some chives—and it was awesome.

Loaded Potato Pizza
adapted from Emeril’s Loaded Potato Pizza

Pizza Dough
3 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 package active dry yeast
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup warm water*

*I found that the proportions for the dough were a bit off. If needed, add a bit more warm water, a tablespoon at a time, just until your mixture comes together and forms a nice ball of dough.

Filling/Toppings
13 medium red skin potatoes, peeled
7 cloves of garlic, crushed and peeled
4 tablespoons butter
¾ cup of heavy whipping cream
Kosher salt
black pepper

6 strips of bacon
1 yellow onion, thinly sliced
¼ cup of shredded mozzarella cheese
¼ cup of shredded cheddar cheese
½ teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon dried chives

Make the dough first. Combine flour, salt, and yeast in a large bowl. Mix in water and oil until dough ball forms. Cover bowl and set aside to rise, at least 30 minutes, while preparing the rest of the ingredients.

Preheat oven to 450°.

Put potatoes and garlic in a large pot and fill pot with just enough water to cover. Bring to a boil. When water is boiling, add a generous pinch of salt and lower heat just enough so that potatoes continue cooking at a gentle boil for 20 minutes.

While potatoes are cooking, fry the bacon until just crisp (it’ll crisp up a bit more in the oven). Remove bacon, place on paper towels to drain, and add onions to the same pan while the bacon grease is still hot. Cook on medium-low heat for about 10 minutes or until onions are lightly caramelized. Remove from pan and set on a paper towel to drain off grease.

After boiling for 20 minutes, drain potatoes and garlic, return to pot, and mash. Add butter, cream, a teaspoon of salt, and freshly cracked black pepper to taste. Whip with a hand-held mixer until potatoes are smooth and creamy.

Roll out pizza dough on a generously floured surface. Work into a 12-inch round and place on a pizza pan. Don’t be afraid to man-handle the dough a bit—it can take it. Once dough is nicely shaped on the pan, sprinkle with onions and spread potatoes on top to within 1-inch of the edge of the dough. Top with onion powder, cheeses, crumbled bacon, and chives. Sprinkle with extra salt and pepper if desired.

Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes. Serving with a side Caesar salad is optional but highly recommended.

Before making this recipe I thought I’d end up serving the pizza with sour cream dolloped on top or on the side, because, in my opinion, a loaded potato is not a loaded potato without sour cream, but this really didn’t need it. It was delicious as is. I had a hard time keeping myself from just eating the whipped potatoes straight out of the pot. This is the first time I’ve made mine with heavy cream, and I now see that I’ve been missing out.