Chicago-style pizza

Chicago-style pizza is a special kind of pizza from the city of Chicago. It has two main types: deep-dish pizza and thin-crust pizza.

Deep-dish pizza is baked in a pan with very high edges. This gives plenty of room for cheese and tomato sauce. It can be made normally or stuffed with extra ingredients. The thin-crust version has a very thin, crisp crust. It is usually cut into squares instead of slices.

One popular topping for Chicago-style pizza is Italian sausage. Many pizza places in Chicago offer this tasty meat. Whether you like the thick, cheesy deep-dish style or the crispy thin-crust, Chicago-style pizza has something special for everyone who enjoys pizza.

Deep-dish

Chicago-style deep-dish pizza was created at Pizzeria Uno in Chicago by Ike Sewell and Richard Riccardo in 1943. The first recipe used special dough with scalded milk, butter, and sugar. Later, a cook named Alice Mae Redmond changed the recipe to use water and olive oil, plus a secret ingredient to help the dough stretch. Over time, the dough became bigger and richer.

Many people helped develop the deep-dish pizza style. Chef Rudy Malnati and his sons Lou and Rudy Jr. opened popular pizza places, Lou Malnati's Pizzeria and Pizano's, in the 1970s and 1990s.

Deep-dish pizza has a thick crust, sometimes with cornmeal for texture. It is often partly baked before adding toppings. The pizza is filled with meats, vegetables, and mozzarella cheese, with tomato sauce on top, all baked together.

Stuffed pizza

In the mid-1970s, Nancy's Pizza and Giordano's Pizzeria made a special kind of deep-dish pizza called stuffed pizza. This pizza is even deeper, with an extra layer of dough on top, more cheese, and less sauce than regular deep-dish pizza.

Tavern-style pizza

Main article: Tavern-style pizza

There is a type of thin-crust pizza called "tavern style". People in Milwaukee and Chicago say they created it in the 1940s. This pizza has a firm crust that makes a nice crunch. The slices are cut into squares instead of wedges. It is called "tavern-style" because it was first served in taverns. The square slices were practical because taverns often didn’t have plates and could just put the pizza on napkins.