What’s important for me is that I have something to chew on. The gluten in the flour needs to be developed to give the crust the right mouth feel. Really, the ideal pizza crust for me is not so different from a baguette. You want the outside to have some crunch/crisp, and the inside should be chewy/stretchy.
This can be achieved with a thin crust, but sometimes what people call thin crust seems more like a saltine cracker or a crouton than a proper pizza crust. Even a good dough can be overcooked into the crunchy/crispy direction until it loses that elasticity I want.
Medium and thick crust pizzas are more likely to be good than thin ones, but they don’t automatically get a pass. Billfish mentioned how some are more like a giant biscuit and I agree - that doesn’t cut it.
Once we have it assumed that we’re talking a properly done crust, I don’t have a single preference. It’s all good.
Funny… most of my friends and relatives from Chicago say that deep dish is for visitors and special occasions, but not for normal pizza.
Don’t get me wrong, I was as happy as anyone when Giordano’s opened a place locally. I absolutely love them, but honestly for every one that I get I get 15 or more from other places that serve a thin or “hand tossed” crust.
And you may well be right. I’m going on some pretty old information – like when I was a teenager in the early 1970s. A thing or two has changed since then.
Sicilian pizza, at least in northern NJ, is square with an extremely thick crust. The cheese and sauce ratio is about the same as normal pizza (actually now that I think of it, they tend to have less sauce than a normal pie if anything). Your picture is cut the same way but doesn’t really look like it.
Same here, though these distinctions vary by region and require clarifying. To me regular pizza might be called “New York.” I think in this thread and others are calling this regular pizza “thin,” but there are also thin crunchy crusts. IIRC, places like Pizza Hut offer a variation of all 3 types. Where I live thin crackery crust cut into rectangles is considered “regular pizza.” I have to seek out a place specifically called “New York” something or other for regular pizza. Even thick crusts have completely different styles, like Pizza Hut, Chicago, UNO, etc.
I see “Chicago” frozen pizzas at the store sometimes that just look like a huge loaf of bread with sauce on top. Maybe they are like those chef boyardee “pizzas” with the grated parmesan that can’t be seen with the naked eye. I don’t know.
Do you mean the “pizza” that sits in a box on a shelf in the pasta section? When they eventually do the autopsy on my brother, they’ll find he is NOT 75% water, he is 98% CB “pizza.”
As a Chicagoan, I agree with your friends and relatives. The amount of times I’ve been invited to friend’s house for pizza and gotten deep dish or stuffed pizza is exactly zero, unless I’m forgetting an occasion. I’ve gone out for deep dish or stuffed several times, but the usual pizza eaten day-to-day is typically either than tavern style thin crust, or something a little breadier, but not deep dish or pan. Nothing that requires a knife or fork to eat it. I get in the mood for deep dish pizza about once or twice a year. Stuffed pizza maybe once every two or three years.
While I do vastly prefer thin crust either of the Midwest tavern style or Neapolitan style, I am a sucker for something like Detroit style pan pizza a la Buddy’s or Jet’s from time to time.
It doesn’t look like it because it’s not it. The picture is tomato pie (a different thing), which I thought was obvious from my post. I guess I wasn’t as clear as I thought.
Chicago deep dish is usually nowhere near as bready as most pan pizzas or Italian bakery pizzas or Sicilian pizzas or Detroit style. It’s breadier than a thin crust, of course, but it’s not like an inch of bread, either. Maybe half an inch, if that. There’s a reasonable picture of a classic slice here.
