Sweet Home Chicago I

Friday night is pizza night and so last evening I trotted out my usual Chicago-style crust. Complimentary as the wife was, it was obvious that I’d once again fallen short of the ideal (Gino’s, Gino’s, Gino’s). And as if I wasn’t dispirited enough afterward, I got an email from one of my oldest friends, a fellow Chicago expatriot now living in Minnesota. He complimented the blog, then immediately started waxing nostalgic about, you guessed it, GINO’S. Then asked if I’d bust the recipe for him.

Now me, I’m not a deep-dish pizza guy. Which is not to say I don’t respect it. But to me pizza is nice chewy, full-flavored bread with a little topping (contrary to widespread belief, there’s quite a lot of that in Chicago too, notably Pat’s which does a crust so thin it’s practically a cracker, and The Art of Pizza which does a fabulous job no matter what mutant breed of pizza you prefer: thin, deep dish, even stuffed…a monstrous, perverse form of pie that’s a blasphemy before both God and man). And while I’ve tried repeatedly to strike a balance somewhere between styles (that’s what marriage is after all, compromise), the guantlet has clearly been thrown down. Idle fiddling won’t be enough to nail this recipe. I’m going to have to go Chicago on its ass, as it were.

So, I’ve created a new permanent category over there on the right called State of the Pizza where you can go any old night of the week to find the most current iteration of my recipe. I’ll be taking another whack each week and of course blogging the results. But until I perfect it I’m making no guarantees, so keep your wits about you if you try it. Any of your input would of course be appreciated.