Deep Dish Pizza

Ingredients:

Crust: (makes two pizza crusts)

1 and 1/3 cups warm water
1 packet yeast
3 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Pizza Toppings:

2 cups freshly grated mozzarella cheese
6 oz ground, browned sausage
14 oz can canned diced tomatoes, drained
8 oz black olives, roughly chopped
Sprinkle of kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Garlic powder
Dried oregano

Directions:

Dissolve yeast in warm water.  Let sit for 5 minutes.  Meanwhile, combine flour, salt, sugar and olive oil together in a large bowl.  After 5 minutes, add yeast-water to flour mixture.  Stir with a fork until mixture comes together.  Knead by hand for 7-8 minutes.  Split dough into two equal parts.  Roll each piece of dough into a neat ball and place each ball into their own oiled bowl, seam down.  Coat top of ball with a small amount of oil (or cooking spray) and cover with plastic wrap.  Let rise for 2 hours in a warm place.  (I pre-heated oven to 200 degrees, then turned it off and let the dough rise in the warm oven.)

Divide the dough into two equal size pieces.  At this time, you can store it for future use by wrapping in plastic wrap and a baggie.  Store in the fridge or freezer.  Or, go ahead and make it now:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Coat the bottom of an oven-safe skillet with about 1 1/2 – 2 Tablespoons of olive oil.  Stretch pizza dough (without overworking it) over the bottom and sides of the pan.

Cover pizza crust with half of grated cheese.  Spread tomatoes in an even layer over cheese.  Season tomatoes with salt, pepper, garlic powder and dried oregano, to taste.  Add olives and the remaining cheese.  Top with sausage.

Bake in 400 degree oven for 30 minutes.  Resist the urge to take it out earlier to avoid an undercooked crust.  If the edges get too dark, you can cover with a pie crust shield or a piece of foil.

Let pizza sit for 5-10 minutes before serving.