This Recipe is an extract from Steve’s book “The Ultimate Chicago Pizza Guide”

Here’s a simple recipe for a Chicago tavern-style pizza. You’ll notice that all the ingredients for the dough are given by weight. We can’t stress this enough—get yourself a digital scale for the kitchen! Measuring by volume isn’t as accurate. Plus, you’ll later use the scale to weigh your dough balls. You should also invest in a pizza stone or, better yet, baking steel. It’s the only way you can get a nice crispy bottom.

Ingredients

DOUGH
525 grams of bread flour
300 grams of water
80 grams of extra virgin olive oil
1 gram of instant yeast
14 grams of salt

SAUCE

800 g canned tomatoes (crushed or tomato puree)
2 cloves of garlic, grated or diced
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 stem of basil, torn into pieces
1/2 tsp. of salt
1 pinch red pepper flakes

CHEESE
450 g whole milk low-moisture mozzarella (shredded)*
120 g provolone (shredded)*
*For both cheeses, buy them whole and shred them yourself.

FOR ASSEMBLY

salt
dried oregano
Parmesan or Pecorino cheese

Instructions:

To Make the Dough

1 To mix the dough by hand, combine your flour, yeast, and salt in a large bowl or a twelve-quart Cambro container (this can be found online or at a restaurant supply store) and give them a good stir to make sure they are well incorporated. Next, add the water and oil. Sometimes people add the oil after the water is mixed in, but I find it’s harder to incorporate it after the fact and it sort of sits on the surface of the dough. Stir everything with your hand in the bowl (or Cambro) until the water and oil are absorbed by the dough. Once it is, you can dump the dough out onto your countertop and then proceed to knead the dough for about ten to fifteen minutes. It should look very smooth. If you are using a stand mixer, combine the flour, yeast, and salt into the bowl and run it with the dough hook attachment for about thirty seconds to make sure the dry ingredients are well incorporated. Next, add the water and oil and run it on its first speed for about ten minutes. Once the dough is mixed, dump it onto the countertop.

2 Cover the dough with a clean, moist dishtowel. Let it sit for about fifteen minutes.

3 After fifteen minutes, the dough should be relaxed. With a dough scraper, cut your dough in half. Use your scale to weigh out two 385-gram clumps of dough. There will be a little dough left over, don’t worry.

4 Next you need to ball your dough. Honestly, it’s a lot easier to look this up online and watch a video than it would be for me to explain. So find some balling videos on YouTube.

5 Once you’ve successfully balled your dough, lightly flour the balls and put them in an airtight container. We use dough boxes, but Tupperware will work just fine. Make sure there’s a little extra room because your dough will expand a bit.

6 Now put the dough into your refrigerator for at least twenty-four hours and up to three days. The reason we do this is to slow down the fermentation, which will give you a better texture and, more importantly, a better flavor.

To Make the Sauce

The sauce can be made ahead of time, just like the dough. Tomato sauce gets better with time, so it’s best to make it early. This is a simple sauce, but it’ll be nice and bright tasting. Combine your tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, basil, red pepper flakes, and salt in a medium container. Give it a good stir and taste. Add more salt if needed. Store your sauce in the fridge until you’re ready to bake your pizza.

To Assemble the Pizza

When you’re ready to bake your pizzas, insert a pizza stone or steel toward the top of your oven and set it to 500 degrees (or even a bit higher if your oven allows). Let it heat up while you prep everything else. Remove the dough from the fridge and put it on the countertop covered by a clean towel. Let it rest for at least an hour, if not two. You want it to relax and come to room temperature. Once your dough is ready, take one dough ball and roll it out with a rolling pin. We use a sheeter machine at our shop, but most people will not have one at home. A rolling pin will work just fine. Roll the dough until it’s round and roughly fifteen inches across. For this amount of dough, it should be fairly thin.

Now it’s time to build the pie. You’re going to need a wooden pizza peel that’s lightly floured (you can also use cornmeal). Put your dough on top of the peel and give it a little jiggle to make sure it’s not sticking. Top your pizza dough with several spoonfuls of your tomato sauce. Use the back of the spoon to work the sauce around the pizza. Take the sauce almost to the edge but leave approximately a half inch of crust. Take a pinch of dried oregano and sprinkle it over your sauce. Do the same with a pinch of salt. Cover the sauce with two handfuls of your cheese mixture. Work the cheese from the middle to the edge of the pizza with your fingers. Once again, leave yourself about a half inch of crust. Grate some Parmesan or Pecorino over the top of the cheese. This will add a nice salty, nutty flavor. Slide the pizza onto your pizza stone or steel. Make sure to jiggle it before you do this, just to make sure it hasn’t stuck to the peel. Let it bake for about eight to ten minutes. The crust should be nice and golden brown and the cheese should be melted and have some good coloring.

Remove the pizza with the peel and drop it onto a cooling rack. If you don’t have one, that’s fine, just drop it onto a cutting board. But if you do, the rack will keep the bottom of the pizza nice and crispy. After a minute or two on the rack, move the pizza to a cutting board and cut into squares. That is very important. This is Chicago tavern-style—it needs to be squares. Enjoy!