Chicago Thin-Crust Pizza

 6 January 2021

Recipe from Cook's Country, August 2018

Chicago is known for deep-dish pizza, but I recently learned about a thin-crust pizza from the Windy City. It looked good on the TV show and can be made in one afternoon, unlike some other thin-crust pizzas where the dough rests for three days. This pizza recipe also comes topped with sweet Italian sausage. In the TV show demo they made sausage, which is easy enough to do, but I opted to purchase some from the butcher case at Whole Foods.

The dough is made in a food processor. All-purpose flour, yeast, and salt were added and processed for a few seconds to combine the ingredients. With the processor running, cold water and olive oil were added until the ingredients were combined and a sticky dough ball formed. This was kneaded by hand into a ball which was placed in a bowl to rise until doubled in volume. A no-cook sauce was made by whisking together canned tomato sauce, tomato paste, sugar, Italian seasoning, and fennel seeds. After the dough had risen, half was placed in the refrigerator for use another day. The remainder was flattened and rolled into a 12" circle. A sheet pan, serving as a pizza peel, was sprinkled with corn meal and the circle of dough was transferred to it. It was topped with the sauce, dime-size pieces of Italian sausage, whole-milk mozzarella cheese, and some dry oregano. It was baked on a pre-heated pizza stone in a 500° oven until dark brown. From start to finish was about 3½ hours of which 2½ hours was for the dough to rise. 

The dough saved in the refrigerator was used four days later. It sat at room temperature for an hour before being shaped and even then needed to rest for an extra 10 minutes so it could be rolled out to 12".

This is an excellent pizza that we both really enjoyed and we will be having it again. It could be interesting to try it with homemade sausage though it was great with the sausage from the supermarket. The Italian seasonings in the sausage and the sauce are what made the dis. The corn meal contributed a nice crunch and flavor to the crust as well as making it easy to slide into the oven.

Thin and Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies

 20 January 2021

Recipe from Cook's Country, April 2019

Yes, another recipe for chocolate chip cookies. This one differs in making cookies that are thin and crispy rather than most recipes that make fat and chewy cookies with crispy edges. I think there is room in the world for both. I ended up making this recipe twice. The first time I made some mistakes but I so liked the cookies that I made a few minor tweaks and tried them again, after eating all from the first batch.

Cake flour, salt, and baking soda were whisked together in a small bowl. Melted butter (cooled), granulated sugar, and brown sugar were mixed using a stand mixer then beaten until the mixture was  lightened in color. Egg yolks, milk, and vanilla were mixed in to the batter then mini chocolate chips were added. The cookies were portioned onto two baking sheets using a measuring spoon, 1 heaping tablespoon per cookie, resulting in 16 cookies. (The dough was too sticky to use a portioning scoop.) They were pressed into ½-inch thick wafers using moistened fingers then baked, one sheet at a time, at 350° until deep golden brown. Baking continued on the sheet for 20 minutes after they were removed from the oven. I used 1 cup of chocolate chips rather than ¾ cup from the recipe because, well, chocolate. Total time was about 70 minutes exclusive of cooling, typical for a batch of cookies.

These are very good cookies, worth adding to the cookie rotation in any home. While not as rich and buttery as thicker cookies, the snap when you bite them and crispiness are hard to resist. They are easy to make, taking just a little longer than other cookie recipes because the trays are baked one at a time.