People who have never actually tried deep dish pizza have a tell.

A tell is a quirk in your expressions, facial or verbal, that communicates something about the inauthenticity of what you're saying, that you don't intend for others to pick up or notice.

It may reveal a different motive for saying what you say, or, it could expose what you say to be an outright lie.

'Deep dish' pizza is not 'thick crust' pizza.

The crust on a 'deep dish pizza' is no thicker than the crust on a thin crust pizza. The difference in thickness is not due to bread. It's due to the generosity of the other ingredients that would appear on any other pizza, like cheese, tomato, sausage, olives, pepperoni, spinach, mushrooms, or whatever else you like on pizza.

So, when you see someone draw or describe 'deep dish', and they portray it as having hella bread in the base?

Bzzzzzzzzt! Wrong!!!!

Chicago doesn't do thick crust. That's Domino's or Little Ceasars or Detroit-style pizza.

The other tell is when they try to eat deep-dish with their hands, like a NY slice. Deep dish pizza is a dine-in experience. People do get it delivered, but then they take it to the dining table, give everyone a single slice and proceed to eat it with a knife and fork, as you would in a restaurant.

It's not on-the-go food, and it doesn't pretend to be.

If you meet someone who passes those two tests, and still prefers New York pizza, hats off to them. Nothing wrong with liking what you like.

What I find more often than not, though, is that I'm talking to someone whose life mission is to reinvent themselves as a connoisseur of 'The Big Apple', as an entire concept, and, in the process of trying to graft themselves onto a city they aren't even from, they just declare undying love for anything affiliated with the name 'New York,' even if they've never tried the competition that they so quickly disavow.

They're posers. Fakes.

Here is how a Deep Dish or Stuffed Pizza is actually made as compared to how its often drawn or described:

The Crust

When you make a deep dish pizza, you make it in a pan, with high sides, like a skillet or a frying pan, rather than on a flat pizza tray.

First, you 'blind bake' the crust and the cheese only. 'Blind bake' means that you cook the dough and the cheese first, before adding any other ingredients. If you're making your own dough, it is important that you use a half-flour/half-cornmeal (polenta) mix in place of just plain flour. That's a signature taste with deep-dish pizza. I wouldn't hesitate to knead a small handful of grated parmesan into the dough mix either, to create a sweet and salty pan-char on the end product.

You roll the dough out flat, like any other pizza, and put the dough in the pan making sure that it covers the rim of the pan just as completely as it does the base.

What you're after is the shape of the crusts of a quiche, but, like quiche, the crust is not thick. It's the egg that makes quiche thick, not the dough. Same here.

The Cheese

Then, you make thin slices of mozzarella or provolone, and you fan them out like playing cards, only, in a circle pattern around the outer edge of the base. At the end, there will be a hole in the center, and you'll need one more slice of cheese to cover that hole.

Next, what you want is to put the pan, dough and cheese assembly in the oven, for the dough to get slightly brown and firm, and for the slices of mozzarella to melt into one protective sheet over the base of the pie, to prevent any moisture from the next ingredients you add from making the base of the pie soggy instead of crusty, like normal pizza would be.

[Note: While you do want the base to only slightly brown, you don't want the cheese to brown. You're not looking for char, here.]

So far, what you have is STILL no thicker than a NY slice. The only two things that are different are that:

1.) With a NY slice, at this stage, you would have bread and tomato passata, before adding any cheese, not bread and cheese like the Chicago style has, with the tomato coming next; and

2.) Again, because you're using a pan with high sides, you have a dish, almost like a quiche crust, not just a flat saucer shape.

Beyond that, there is no difference in thickness yet.

Meat

If you want to have meat, this is where you add it, before the tomato and spinach, so that the meat is right with the cheese where the thickness of the pizza starts. The only exception to that would be pepperoni, which I would save for the very top of the pie.

I prefer to cook the meat that will sit on the base of the pie to at least a pinkish color first, and let the residual heat from the final bake bring the meat to its final doneness. [ Of course, if you plan to make a vegetarian pizza, skip this step. ]

Now, the next ingredients are best prepped the day before and kept in small, handy dishes (mise en place), because, the condition the ingredients need to be in certain states before being added to the pie.

The main two ingredients popular with Chicago-style deep dish pizza are tomato and spinach.

Tomato

You need 3-4 tins of double sized whole-peeled canned tomatoes, squashed and drained. Sometimes I use a colander to get the moisture out, but, you can also use a muslin cloth. You don't want the tomatoes dry like paste. You just want any rampant liquid that might destroy your dry crust to be removed so that it doesn't leak throughout the pie during cooking.

Once the tomatoes are squashed and drained, you want to season this tomato mush, with a few cloves of diced garlic, a tablespoon of oregano, salt, pepper and a splash of olive oil. That's your tomato mix.

Spinach

You then blanch one bunch of washed and deveined spinach until wilted. Then squeeze all of the moisture out and chop roughly. Lots of people opt out of the spinach, just because they are afraid of spinach, purely conceptually, but it has a taming effect on the sweetness of the tomato that gives it an authentic Chicago taste. Don't skip it, in my opinion. It's better than you think.

Final Optional Ingredients

This is the part where you really personalize your pizza. Some ingredients are obvious, like mushrooms, green peppers, olives. I happen to also like things like bocconcini cheese, fresh basil and fresh tomato slices. In restaurants, you'll also find extended options, like ham, bacon or anchovies.

DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT USING PINEAPPLE.

I'm not even joking. Hey. It's your pizza, but, NOBODY in Chicago does it, and this just isn't that kind of pizza. It's got an earthier, more savoury and natural flavor than that. That would be like putting gummy bears in your hamburger meat before making a burger.

If you're doing your 100th deep dish pizza, and, I don't know, you're high or something, who is going to stop you? But, for your first 99, give it a miss.

Final Preparation: Deep Dish or Stuffed?

At this point, what you should have is a tomato pie, with a layer of cheese, meat (if using) and spinach, in that order, sitting on top of the inside of the crust with about 1/2 inch of the rim of the pie showing above the pizza.

You have two choices at this point:

A, You can add a blend of grated cheeses to make the top of the pie cheesey. This is known as 'deep dish'; or

B. If you have some additional dough, you can cover the tomato with some rolled out, flattened dough, add a little tomato passata to this lid, and, put your grated cheese blend on top of this dough, to make what is called 'stuffed pizza.'

The grated cheeses should be any combination of mozzarella, Provolone and grated parmesan, with the emphasis heavily on the parmesan.

Bake until everything is golden brown and the tomato pulp is bubbling.

As you can see, there is a lot involved, and you get a lot of ingredients, not bread. However, because of that, deep dish restaurants typically warn you to expect to wait at LEAST 45 minutes for your pizza when ordering.