20 April, 2022
Cast Iron Deep-Dish Pizza
I love making pizza at home. It’s cheap, easy, relatively quick, and the quality of the ingredients is so much better than anything you can get with delivery (in other words, no greasy pizzas). Usually, I make pizzas on my pizza stone, and it takes longer for the oven to preheat than it does for me to actually make the pizza itself. For some reason, though, I never considered that I could make deep-dish pizza in my cast iron skillet. It’s at least as easy as making pizza on the stone, and the end result is SO filling. You can easily get four hungry servings out of a single 12″ skillet.
Don’t be afraid to pack this pizza like a loaded lasagna. I’ll include some ingredient suggestions, but the only real essentials are cheese and sauce. Well, and dough, but that’s kind of a given. Dough, cheese, sauce, cheese. If you can do that, you’ve already got the hardest part down.
Ingredients
~1 lb Pizza dough (check your grocery store’s deli/bakery; otherwise, you can make your own!)
2-3 cups Shredded mozzarella
2 cups Pizza/pasta sauce
Other options — get creative!
Genoa salami
Chorizo/sausage
Ground beef
Pepperoni
Peppers
Mushrooms
Broccoli (cut one head up into small pieces — it’ll soak up the sauce and it’s so good)
Spinach
Onions
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Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F and coat the inside of your skillet with a bit of oil (and I really do mean only a bit; use a baking spray if you have the option).
Pull or roll your pizza dough out into a round a little wider than the top of your pan. Place it into the room-temperature skillet and pull the dough gently up the sides. You might find it easier to stick the edges of the dough to the top or outside of the skillet just to keep it up while you fill in the pie.
Spread a generous layer of cheese on the bottom of the crust, covering it completely. Next, layer on any meat, vegetables, or fillings you want to include. Top those with your sauce, and cover the sauce with another layer of cheese. At the very least, your pie should be 3/4 of the way filled with toppings. Needless to say, don’t fill it past the rim of the pan, but otherwise, go to town with the toppings.
Place your skillet in the middle of the oven and bake for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, cover the skillet with foil and bake for another 10-15 minutes (10 if you’re light on the toppings, 15 if you filled the pan).
After 30-35 minutes in the oven, remove your skillet and cool on the counter for about five minutes as you think about how you’re going to cut it. I suggest leaving it in the pan and cutting it in quarters with a knife you don’t care that much about. If you’re feeling skilled, you can attempt to remove the pizza to a cutting board with a spatula.
