Chicago Deep Dish Pizza

  To make this an authentic recipe post, I'm now going to regale you with a long story about how I learned the meaning of life through making this pizza.  It all began in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings.  King Edward's death on 5 January 1066 left no clear heir, and several contenders laid claim to the throne of England. Edward's immediate successor was the Earl of Wessex, Harold Godwinson, the richest and most powerful of the English aristocrats and son of Godwin, Edward's earlier opponent. Harold was elected king by the Witenagemot of England and crowned by Ealdred, the Archbishop of York, although Norman propaganda claimed that the ceremony was performed by Stigand, the uncanonically elected Archbishop of Canterbury. Harold was at once challenged by two powerful neighbouring rulers. Duke William claimed that he had been promised the throne by King Edward and that Harold had sworn agreement to this. Harald Hardrada of Norway also contested the succession. His claim to the throne was based on an agreement between his predecessor Magnus the Good and the earlier King of England Harthacnut, whereby, if either died without heir, the other would inherit both England and Norway. William and Harald Hardrada immediately set about assembling troops and ships for separate invasions.
  To cut a long story short, William won the battle and then many years later I visited Pizzeria Uno.  Ever since I tasted that slice of deep dish, I've been wanting to make a deep dish pizza at home.   I've never been a traditionalist, so arguments about what is and isn't pizza don't mean shit to me.  What matters is whether it tastes good, and a good deep-dish pizza is my favorite style.  First thing I needed to do was find a good dough recipe.  So I looked around on the internet and found a decent variety of recipes.  Some used corn meal, some said no corn meal.  Some let it rise in the fridge for 48 hours while some just did a normal proof.  I settled on this one from the King Arthur Flour website.
Now for the sauce, I just winged it.  Since this is hopefully the first of many pizzas, I went with a simple recipe that I can build from.  1 28oz can of crushed tomatoes, 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning, and 4 grated garlic cloves.
  Once the dough was ready, I stretched it by hand - nearly tearing it in places and causing my wife to tell me repeatedly (and I quote) "You fucked up."  After she left in disgust, I went about repairing the damage and eventually got the dough in the pan.  I'm using this pan with holes in the bottom, btw, because we like a crispy crust.  No soggy bottoms allowed!
  Now that the dough was in the pan, I blind baked it for 10 minutes to make sure it would be crispy.  Then I layered provolone slices across the bottom and dumped 8oz of grated moz on top of that.  Then I put a layer of pepperonis down because that's how we do it in our household.  Once that was done, I covered that pie with my homemade sauce.  Finally, I sprinkled a cup of hand grated parmesan over the top and tossed it in the oven at 425f.
  When it was done, I pulled it out of the oven.  It was looking good, but I still had to get it out of the pan.  After trying a couple of shitty plastic spatulas, I realized I needed something stiffer to slide into that pan and release this saucy beast from its metal prison.  Eventually I coaxed the pie out using a wooden spatula with just a bit of spillage over its thick crust.  As it cooled, I bound upstairs to tell my wife that I hadn't, in fact, fucked up and that we were soon going to be eating (pizza) pie from heaven.  I cut two generous slices and we dined like pizza kings (and queens) on my fucking awesome deep dish pizza that I made - holy shit!  The end.