Hello Supper For One readers! My name is Sara and I am the imperfect home chef behind the blog My Imperfect Kitchen! (http://www.myimperfectkitchen.com) I’m very excited to be sharing my Deep Dish Pizza recipe with you. A few weeks ago, my husband Steve and I were sitting in the living room, discussing dinner ideas. Now that we’re nearly empty-nesters, dinner for two (instead of five or more) is a bit of a challenge. We were making a mental list of some of our favorite dinners when Steve said: “What if we tried making our own deep dish pizza in a cast iron skillet?” What a brilliant idea, right? We’ve made pizza on the grill before, but a smaller, deep dish pizza for the two of us, sounded perfect!

Twenty minutes and a few Google searches later, we discovered making deep dish pizza in a cast iron skillet at home was not an original idea. It seemed easy to do though, so after reading through several recipes, we decided to try our own!

Using store-bought pizza dough, our favorite homemade pizza sauce and a bunch of our favorite toppings, the new-to-us, deep dish pizza project began! For this recipe I used a 10″cast iron skillet.

I like the prepared dough we get from Trader Joe’s, but feel free to make your own! Let the dough sit on the counter and come to room temperature before you start working it. It will be easier to stretch, if it isn’t cold.

Lightly flour a large work surface and roll out the dough into a 14″ circle. Gently place the dough in the skillet and roll down the excess to form a crust around the edge. If your pan is well seasoned, you won’t need to oil it. Ours is still fairly new, so we put a few drops of oil on a paper towel and rubbed it around the bottom of the pan. We also sprinkled a tiny amount of corn meal on the bottom of the pan to give a little extra flavor and crunch to the crust.

One of the recipes we saw, used cheese sticks rolled up inside the excess dough to make a cheese filled crust! We didn’t do that, but I thought it was a great idea!

Spread 1/3 – 1/2 cup pizza sauce on the dough and top with your favorite pizza things! We used Italian sausage, pepperoni and red onion.

We topped that with slices of mozzarella cheese, then added more toppings and a bit more sauce.

Now here is the secret to a great crust… heat the skillet on the highest setting on your stove top for three to five minutes. You won’t notice any difference in the toppings, but heating it this way will help create a crispier crust on the bottom of your pizza. Make sure you use pot holders to transfer the skillet to the oven. It will be super hot!

Place the skillet in a 450 degree oven and bake for 15-18 minutes. Remove it from the oven and let cool 5 minutes before cutting. You can either serve it in the pan, or slide it out and serve off a plate.

One of the best things about this dish (aside from not having to share with the kids!) is that it comes together easily in 30 minutes or less! Enjoy!

Deep Dish Pizza For Two
1 14 oz pkg prepared pizza dough

For the tomato sauce
6 fresh basil leaves, fairly large
2 cloves garlic
1 14 oz can diced tomatoes, drained
1 TBLS tomato paste
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

Toppings
1/2 lb Italian sausage, cooked and drained of fat
20 slices pepperoni
1/4 of a medium red onion, diced
1/3 lb sliced mozzarella cheese
Italian Seasoning to taste