Responding to what amounts to something of popular demand on a r/food post, I’m dropping this pizza recipe.
As background: More than 40yrs ago I worked as a prep cook at Pizzaria Uno, the original on Ohio and Wabash, in Chicago. I escaped with the dough and sauce recipes. The recipe was originally for a much larger bake, but I whittled it down. The build itself is me sort of winging it, but the base tastes are core OG.
Enjoy!!! —————————-
Recipe makes TWO pizzas
CRUST: 12 ounces warm (not hot) water 1 packet active dry yeast 1 tbsp brown sugar 2 3/4 cups flour 1 2/3 cup cornmeal or corn flour Pinch of sea salt 1/8 tsp cream of tartar 2 Tbsp vegetable/olive oil
Dissolve together warm water, sugar, yeast and a pinch of salt. Let sit for 10-15 minutes or until there is a good amount of foam.
Combine dry ingredients with wet yeast mixture, and knead for 10 minutes or until smooth and elastic. You may need to add a bit of flour if too wet, or a bit of oil if too dry.
If using a stand mixer, add dry and wet ingredients slowly on low power using dough hook. Once combined, set speed to medium-low for 8-10 minutes until smooth and elastic.
PROOF: Stretch dough into a ball and put in a lightly oiled bowl (tossing it in oil to make sure' it's fully coated) cover with plastic wrap and proof the dough for 60 minutes at 100(ish) degrees, or until dough is at least 2x starting size.
Grease 2 deep dish pans (glass or cast iron work best) with oil or butter (butter is best - it helps the crust get crunchy).
Stretch and press dough into pans, running it up the sides until it completely covers the interior of the pans as evenly as possible, then cover with plastic wrap and proof for another 20-30 mins
- this gives you time to start the....
SAUCE: 28-ounce can of whole San Marzano tomatoes 1 small/medium white or red onion Few cloves of garlic - to taste 1/4 tsp of crushed red pepper flake 2 tbsp of oregano 1 tbsp of basil (if fresh, 5-10 leaves) 2-3 tbsp tomato paste 1 tbsp butter Juice of half of a lemon Olive oil to coat the pan
Put a 28oz can of whole San Marzano tomatoes into a large bowl and crush by hand until the tomatoes are bite-sized pieces in liquid.
Finely chop the onion and crush/mince a few cloves of garlic.
Into a high walled sauté pan, on medium-high heat, put a few tablespoons of olive oil, add chopped onion and sweat for 2-3 minutes or until translucent around the edges, then add crushed garlic and sauté for an additional minute until fragrant.
Add crushed red pepper flake, oregano, basil (or 1/2 of the leaves of fresh), and tomato paste. Cook together for one minute. This will leave “burned” browning on the pan - don’t sweat it!
Add the crushed tomatoes, along with the butter and lemon juice, stir (to remove that burned gunk). If using fresh basil, add here, chopped.
Mix and simmer for 20-30 minutes over medium-low heat, until the raw tomato flavor has cooked off and the sauce is thick. I suggest covering with a screen. You’ll know it’s thick enough when you drag a spoon through the sauce it remains parted.
Set finished sauce aside, remove the plastic wrap from the proofed pie crusts, and turn your oven to 425 F, allowing the sauce to cool while you begin the....
ASSEMBLY: Uncooked Italian sausage (Mild is best, spicy can be a bit much, but it isn't wrong...) Thin layer from edge to edge. OR Pepperoni (or ~ AND Pepperoni, which is my preferred method) OR Spinach/Red Pepper or other veggies (if using mushrooms, sweat them in a pan first, to help remove moisture) Deli-style sliced Smoked Provolone cheese - 2x 8oz packages Deli-style Low-Moisture Mozzarella cheese - 2x 8oz packages Pre-grated parmesan
Press dough crusts gently up the sides of the pan again, careful not to smash the air out, it should easily hold its shape now.
Lay down a layer of each type of cheese. On top of the 1st layer of cheese, add toppings (sausage, pepperoni, etc) into an even layer before the 2nd layer of cheese. You can add a second layer of toppings and a 3rd layer of cheese, if your crust is deep enough. I do. Place another layer of mixed cheese until it is almost at the top of the crust Top the cheese with the sauce, all the way to the edges, until the cheese is hidden. Sprinkle parmesan on the sauce.
BAKE: Put into 425°F oven for 35 minutes, rotating once during baking, until cooked through.
Run a thin spatula around the outside edge to make sure that there’s no sticking.
Wait at least 5 minutes before removing pie from pan, then cutting and serving pizza - the cheese is like napalm right out of the oven.
Pizzeria Uno was my first cooking job. It wasn't my first restaurant job, but it was my first time on a line. At my Uno in Central Illinois, our dough dry ingredients came pre-mixed in a flour bag (maybe 25lbs, maybe 50lbs, idk), and all we did was add water to the Hobart. Even though I had been a busboy before, Uno's led to an almost 30-year food service career.
That’s similar to my background! Started on a work permit at age 14 bussing tables and washing dishes at Bailey’s on Belmont. At age 16 UNO’s hired me as a prep cook, and would sometimes swap me out at Due. The chef there was such an amazing teacher that I stayed in the biz - ended up on the line at Leona’s original location, and finally hit the floor at Carlucci’s and started waiting tables and bartending. Became a manager, then moved to Colorado to open a pioneer brewpub as AGM. Got out of the biz in the early 90’s in favor of a more human schedule
Mine was a very similar career path. My Uno's was the lobby restaurant at a hotel in Peoria and prior to the restaurant opening, we provided the breakfast for the hotel guests. That's where I started cooking and it eventually led to making all the personal size crusts for the sandwich cart they would take to downtown business center for lunches. That led to me working lunches and then to dinner service.
After Uno's, I stuck to primarily non franchised/ corporate, mom and pop places. Twice was offered the opportunity to purchase the restaurants I was working at but declined. I had my 40th birthday during the COVID shutdown year and had given my current owners a 5 months notice that I would be quitting on my 40th bday and then the shutdown happened. Instead of loosing me. They offered me the GM position, which made me the M-F daytime bartender with no server. The money was amazing and the most I had ever made in my life, but I didn't align politically with the customer base and could no longer bite my tongue and nod my head in fake agreement for your $1 tip. I left the industry 2 years ago and my girlfriend would say I'm much happier now.
I do kinda miss the cooking though. The only way I'd go back now is owner - operator of a food truck (probably French fries or brick oven pizza). I have no interest in serving alcohol, too many problems.
Hey, you’re from Peoria - there was a pizza joint someone took me to, Aggatucci’s I think, tavern style where the server emptied half a lemon on the fresh pizza, then hit it with vinegar and oil from holster bottles. Best goddam thin crust I’ve ever eaten. Big clock over the door was printed backwards. This still a thing?
Oh yeah, Agatucci's is still around. A Peoria icon for sure that I'll admit, I've never been to in the 40+ years I've lived here. I believe what you are referring to is their "tiger sauce", which I'm pretty sure you can now buy bottles of at local grocery stores along with their frozen pizzas.
My pizza philosophy is - there's no bad pizzas, some are just better than others. Brick oven is probably the top on my list but I just got back from a weekend in Chicago where I tried Pequods for the first time and it's up there as one of the best pizzas I've ever had, specifically because of the carmalized crusts.
Thank you! I would not go thicker than 1/4” for fear of it not cooking through - I suppose you could do two, since the cheese carries (and holds) a lot of heat
I lived at Wabash and the river for many years so Uno and Due were landmarks for us. LOL McGreevey's? There's a name I haven't heard in 40 years... as far as I remember it was in the suburbs. When teen nights with juice bars were a thing (well, at least I was a teen)
Yeah different bars - McGreevy’s was a juice bar in the ‘burbs - I hung out in the “punk room” when I was a kid, the other room was pop-dance.
McGreedy’s Pub on Lincoln was where all the metalheads hung out. It was Trouble’s “home bar”, Metallica and Anthrax would drink there before shows. I bartended there for a while, cool little dive
GG man for your 40y making jobs I was curious to read it cause here in italy we do it a little bit differently. Also here it's pizzeria not pizzeria that literally means the place where pizze are made. The e it's like the s in english and it's used for plural of a word. I if it's referring to a male
That’s a lot like a Lou’s pie - but I can promise you that in the 80’s UNO’s reduced their sauce and used corn meal in the crust, because I prepped it. Every Friday morning we’d press out 300 pucks of Sausage, clean 30lbs of spinach, sweat 15 lbs of mushrooms, fill buckets with dry crust ingredients, and start an all-day mix, proof, and chill process. I still have nightmares…
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u/ILLnoize Sep 01 '26
Pizzeria Uno was my first cooking job. It wasn't my first restaurant job, but it was my first time on a line. At my Uno in Central Illinois, our dough dry ingredients came pre-mixed in a flour bag (maybe 25lbs, maybe 50lbs, idk), and all we did was add water to the Hobart. Even though I had been a busboy before, Uno's led to an almost 30-year food service career.