Chicago Deep-Dish Pizza

1. 1Mix the flour, cornmeal, yeast, sugar and salt. Add the warm water, melted butter and oil and knead for 5 minutes to a soft, rich dough. It should feel more like shortcrust than bread dough.
2. 2Prove for 1 hour, until nearly doubled.
3. 3Roll the dough into a rectangle about 38 x 25 cm, spread the soft butter right across it, then roll it up tightly from the short edge like a swiss roll. Coil that log into a spiral, flatten it slightly, and chill for an hour. This single lamination is what gives deep-dish its flaky, biscuity layers.
4. 4Mix the drained tomatoes with the garlic, oregano and sugar and season. Leave it chunky and do not cook it — it cooks on the pizza, and a pre-cooked sauce ends up flat.
5. 5Grease a 23 cm cake tin or cast-iron pan heavily with oil. Roll the chilled dough to a 33 cm circle and press it into the tin, pushing it right up the sides to the rim. Trim any excess.
6. 6Lay the mozzarella slices directly on the dough in an overlapping layer. This is the part that looks wrong and is not: cheese on the base insulates the crust and stops it going soggy under the sauce.
7. 7Scatter the raw sausage meat over the cheese in rough clumps — it renders as it bakes and seasons everything around it.
8. 8Spoon the tomato over the top, spread it to the edges, and scatter the Parmesan across.
9. 9Bake at 200°C fan for 35–40 minutes, until the crust is deep golden and pulls away from the tin. Rest for 10 minutes before running a knife round and lifting it out, or the molten cheese runs straight out of the side.

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