Recipe: Deep Dish Pizza Crust, Chicago style

Deep Dish Pizza Crust, Chicago style
rec.food.cooking/Barb (1998)
From: Joan Ross

I made this for my husband's birthday... It was awesome. I'd have to estimate that he said, "Have I already told you how great this is?" about 4 times and "This is the best pizza ever" at least three times. Thank you so much, Joan for the awesome recipe!

1 pkg dry yeast
1 tsp sugar (I used almost 1 TBS)
1 cup warm water
2 1/2 to 3 cups flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup oil (I used olive)

Dissolve yeast in 1/4 cup water and let stand till foamy. Combine flour, salt, cornmeal, oil and remaining water. Add yeast mixture and stir vigorously. Knead dough on lightly floured surface until smooth and elastic adding more flour if needed. Let dough rise double in covered bowl. When doubled punch down and make pizza. Make enough dough for 1 large 12 inch round pizza pan or 1 10-inch deep dish platter. Let dough rise in pan while you are preparing toppings*. Bake in a preheated 500F oven for 15 minutes than lower heat to 375 and bake 20 to 25 minutes or crust is golden. Serve hot from pan. Enjoy!

* I got caught up in making a birthday cake and so was really delayed in putting this in the oven after I had punched it down and put it in the pizza pan. It had a *lot* of time to rise again before I baked it -- this may have contributed to the extremely light texture of the crust...In a blatant disregard for fat grams, I also lightly oiled the top of the crust before I added the toppings. Barb