Deep crust pizza. Genuine decent grub, or lazy food prep and marketing genius?

Just rolling out some playdough for my daughter and it suddenly occurred to me how much more skill there is in rolling very thing dough. This got me thinking.

Using the above as an example, rolling thick crust pizzas is quicker and doesn’t require as much skill. So if you convinced others – probably not that difficult in the land of bigger means better – that deep crust is a superior pizza, I imagine you could churn out more pizzas at a faster rate, using less skilled (thus cheaper) staff, so excluding raw materials you have a cheaper, easier product that’s quicker to make.

Have I stumbled on the great pizza conspiracy?

May not be trad, may not be popular but for me I prefer a thickness and consistency closer to Naan bread.

It’s an option. If you like it, you can buy it and eat it.

It’s possible, but I try to fight the power by never ordering/buying deep crust pizza…

At the minute, got a bit of a thing for the other extreme – Pizza Express’ really thin and crisp ‘Romano’ crust is awesome.

Surely you buy a pizza on width, so actually there are more raw ingredients in a deep crust? Then people eat less slices so buy 1 between 2…

So no, could weel be the polar opposite of what you think!

Oh, and pizza roller outers are likely to be minimum wage whatever they roll out to

One does not “roll” pizza dough. One flings it about the place to stretch it out.

As per Cougar. One does not roll. One spins.

The dough is the cheapest part of the pizza. More dough = less of the more expensive stuff therefore more profitable.

One does not “roll” pizza dough. One flings it about the place to stretch it out.

Places selling deep pan pizza don’t roll or stretch anything.

You take a frozen disk of dough out of the freezer, spray some oil in a pan and stick the disk in there (roughly in the middle).

You repeat this about 40-50 times until you’ve got a full trolley then you stick the whole lot in a proving cupboard for about 2 hours.

When it’s time to cook a pizza you take the proven (proved?) dough in it’s pan and prepare.

At least that’s what you did when I was a “chef” for pizza hut 20 years ago.

Jimdubleyou, this process hasn’t changed, you’ve just taken me back to the nights in a PH takeaway store a couple of years ago, complete with the smell of that spray on oil 🙁

Still, it was an easy way to earn a bit of extra money of an evening.

Still, it was an easy way to earn a bit of extra money dough of an evening.

Still, it was an easy way to earn a bit of extra money dough of an evening.

Got to earn a crust somehow.

I’ve never been one for flinging around, but certainly there should be no rolling pins involved unless your dough is extremely second rate or you have the type of deep pan with eggs and or milk that really should be classed as cake rather than pizza.

I’m a total thin base extremist. I used to work in a shop that only sold thin bases cooked on oven bottom when I was a student, and if making for myself I’d start by cutting the dough ball in half and stretching it out to the usual size.

What really destroys pizza in my opinion though, is the British fascination with more topping = better. It really doesn’t, it just makes a soggy mess. Seafood, onions etc just contribute to this issue. There is very definitely such a thing as too much topping, and a great many shops overstep this line.

Just my 2c 😀

But more topping = fuller quicker = leftover cold pizza breakfast.

The sounds that pizza base made whilst being spun 😆

We had ‘make your own’ outdoor pizza birthday party the other night with the wood-fired oven working overtime (must’ve seen fifty pizzas!). Adults and kids had at the dough balls in a number of ways (rolling out carefully with wine-bottles, spinning, thumping, throwing from hand to hand. It was ace, and lots of fun watching people put personality into their creations! I really love pizza yet never enjoyed a ‘deep-crust’ one, to my memory they are like gone-wrong oversized open-sandwich cakey things? All bulk and no flavour or decent bite?

Never had a pizza party before but it was hands-down (ah!) bags of fun and not at all expensive like wot takeouts or even decent supermarket ones are. Also tasted infinitely better. Just make sure you have a gigantic table (we used the table-tennis) and plenty of flour for the inevitable food-fights 😀

What really destroys pizza in my opinion though, is the British fascination with more topping = better. It really doesn’t, it just makes a soggy mess

+1. I saw this in action and learned from other’s mistakes. A smear of sauce, few slices of buffalo mozzarella, slices of pepperoni, 2 sliced black olives, few small sprigs of oregano and it was pizza heaven. Am now a convert to less is definitely more in pizza-ville. Especially if the dough is good, you want that texture and taste cooked right through, toppings too.

Top tip – Morrisons sometimes sell their jalapeños (salad/pizza topping) off at the end of shelf-life. I bought two large salad tubs jammed full for less than a quid then promptly cooked up with much garlic and onion and some salt and coriander. Whizzed in blender with white vinegar and water and then filled 6 jars with fresh green jalapeño sauce. Just the job for crust-dipping

The is all good in theory, but every one is talking about Italian style pizza, where thin and crispy with a only two or three toppings is king.

Our cousins over the Pond know how to make proper Deep Dish with a thick crust.

This is from Giordano’s in Chicago*, which is regarded as one of the best places in town to get a proper ‘pizza pie’

nom nom nom nom

*not my picture btw

Our cousins over the Pond know how to make proper Deep Dish

That looks like a quiche.

That looks like a quiche.

Most English response ever 😆

That looks like a quiche.

I was going to say a lidless pie travesty but jim nailed it

side crust =/= pizza

two different foods really.

ultra-thin crust fan here…

nom nom nom nom

No no no no! Faced with Americanus Maximus vs Neopolitan, honestly? Don’t get me wrong, I like US pizza, (LOVE it) – just not that monster-cheese salt-cake thing. But faced with a choice I’d take three perfect thin-crusts over one lardy-fekker. Now look here:

Ok, that’s the starter, whats for the main course ? And where the hell are the rest of the toppings !! Did you forget them ? I need something other than cheese and tomatoe sauce on an over baked piece of cardboard.

That is not a pizza, this is a pizza

My local Italian pizza place makes his Calzone like this, instead of folding them. Amazing !

That is not a pizza, this is a pizza

it’s better looking than your first pic, but when it’s got side walls and is an inch deep “topping” becomes “filling” I’m afraid.

Very much like an eggless quiche with different base/pastry. Like I said 2nd pic looks nice, but not really pizza.

wiki says

Pizza is a flatbread generally topped with tomato sauce and cheese

that’s not flat and it’s not “topped”
I’d suggest pizza pie but that would probably offend “deep dish” pizza eaters and pie-ists everywhere in one fell swoop.

I’m a total thin base extremist. I used to work in a shop that only sold thin bases cooked on oven bottom when I was a student, and if making for myself I’d start by cutting the dough ball in half and stretching it out to the usual size.

What really destroys pizza in my opinion though, is the British fascination with more topping = better. It really doesn’t, it just makes a soggy mess. Seafood, onions etc just contribute to this issue. There is very definitely such a thing as too much topping, and a great many shops overstep this line.

Just my 2c

Totally with you. I lived on a Croatian island several years back which took my pizza appreciation to new levels. There was one restaurant that was only open for two months of the year which was incredible.

No need for that extra topping either. Although I do have a controversial partiality for pineapple…

Anyone else really hungry now?

I’d suggest pizza pie…

Would that make a calzone a pizza pasty?

Would that make a calzone a pizza pasty?

was about to mention that similarity aswell 🙂

My local Italian pizza place makes his Calzone like this, instead of folding them.

Does not compute. Is the chef a flasher on the side too?

Thin and crispy with a few quality toppings for me. I’d still choose a dominos over a McDonalds everyday but it’s still not great pizza. And that thing up there, let’s call it ‘pizza pie’ and not muddy the water with actual pizza.

Turkish pizza (pide) is good too.

If you want it fat, Focaccia is what you have.

Places selling deep pan pizza don’t roll or stretch anything.

Our old local Dominos had a totally open kitchen so you could watch the order go from ball of dough, then stretched out (by hand but not spun, sadly!) through to toppings and then oven. Kept the kids amused whilst waiting at least, and demonstrated that the giant lorries delivering earlier in the day wasn’t delivering frozen completed pizzas!

Hey, if we’re going to selectively grab at sentences from Wikipedia to try and get our argument to stand up, then from the same page

Crust

The bottom of the pizza, called the “crust”, may vary widely according to style—thin as in a typical hand-tossed Neapolitan pizza, or thick as in a deep-dish Chicago-style.

Very much like an eggless quiche with different base/pastry. 😆

You mean, like a pizza. Not all pizza is flat.

Embrace it, you know you want to.

Deep crust requires dough to rise a lot more and that’s faff / time prepping that, maybe comparable or less than rolling/spinning a thin base.

Deep crust though is bread with topping. I prefer pizza which is loaded with topping on a thin base that complements it, not fills you up with bread so you can’t enjoy the topping. As for stuffed crusts! Just, no.

Topping quantity. A lot just load it up with cheese. I prefer thick and rich passata and scatter veg and optional whatever meat/fish or nothing, with a little cheese on top. I’m not a fan of dry pizzas with virtually no topping. Back to mostly bread then.

What doesn’t go on top is salad! Trendy thin base seems to involve a mound of salad on top these days.

American pizza is like all things american big, brash and awful. Domino’s is pretty rubbish overpriced pizza.

Thin Italian pizza all the way. So to the OP yes deep dish is just companies trying to sell a substandard product as premium and improve their margin. Can also add in Pringles to the list, floor sweepings at a premium price.

That is not a pizza, this is a pizza

Yep. Definitions change. I’ll just leave this here as a memorial to the days before a love of food was replaced by a willing (branded) addiction of salt fat, sugar and size. We’re all Americans now…

All in the pan size. Used to make pizza in a proper restaurant or as close as you get with fast food… I used to make the doner kebabs from scratch too with fresh meat and spices the traditional way… omnom!

But on topic, our deep pan sizes were all an inch smaller than thin crust. So the dough was made and weighed out the same as the thin crust an inch larger, rolled through the machine to the same size then the extra tucks up the side of the deeper pan. Then they’d all prove, be pressed again then left to prove again. When time to make the pizza, thin crust would be pressed again to be nice and thin for pizza, deep pan wouldn’t be pressed again to be fluffy and thicker. So technically the deep pan cost the same to make but sold for less than the next size up using the same amount of dough.

Now I’m hungry. 😆

Deep pan pizza. No. Find me one in Italy.

Daughter and I went for pizza last night. Proper pizza too.

Stuck it to the man. 🙂

So technically the deep pan cost the same to make but sold for less than the next size up using the same amount of dough.

You could always cut a hole in the middle which you fill with rocket, then sell it at a premium because it’s lower in fat… 😉