Working A Shift Making Chicago's Iconic Deep Dish Pizza

My honest thoughts on deep dish pizza?

I feel like there's a lot of deep dish pizza

that's pretty gnarly.

But I like it when it's, like,

the outside's kind of crisp and crunchy.

There's, like, a little bit of cheese

and, like, a bunch of really good tomato sauce,

where you feel like you're more eating,

like, a tomato sauce pie.

Today we're in Chicago, Illinois.

We're outside of Pequod's Pizza,

home of some of the deepest dish pizza in Chicago.

And today I'm gonna work and see if I can keep up.

[orchestral music]

I've never tried to make deep dish before.

But the dude I'm working with seems like an expert

and I'm excited to just, like,

suck as much knowledge from his brain as I can.

Hey, Sean. Hey.

Nice to meet you. Cody.

How are you? Nice to meet you.

Thanks for having me. You ready?

Yes, absolutely. All right, let's go.

[Cody] Cool.

How would you describe Pequod's,

and what sets it apart from other pizza places all over?

[Sean] We're viewed as a ma and pa shop,

but really we're not anymore.

We're a big place.

We seat 215 people.

And we're gonna pump out

somewhere between 700 and 1,000 pizzas.

In a day. Oh, yeah.

Holy moly. Yeah.

That's crazy.

It's gonna be nonstop through, so.

So what about, like, pizza wise?

Like, what sets apart?

[Sean] We put the cheese up on the sides of the pan.

So what that does is there's a certain amount of sugar,

mozzarella cheese that's in there.

It caramelizes and it looks like I burned your pizza

when you get it outta the pan.

That's awesome.

And so, when you look at the bottom, yep,

Oh, you're right.

It is golden brown.

Yes, it is.

It's just on the sides? It's just on the sides.

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah.

Cool.

So feel free to push me around.

Tell me what it's like, you know,

if I'm not going fast enough-

Sure. you can, you know.

Yeah.

You can give me a little kick in the tush.

I'll let you have some rope,

let you hang yourself a little bit.

For some reason that made me nervous.

It does, yeah, it does. [Cody laughing]

All right, we are ready to go.

Here's your uniform. Sweet.

[Sean] Wash room's down the hallway.

Cool. Change shirts,

and then I'll meet you in a minute.

[orchestral music]

Someone order a pizza?

Just kidding. That's it!

All right, buddy, you ready to roll?

Yeah, I'm ready. All right.

So first things first, we gotta make dough.

It's a yeast dough?

A yeast and water dough Cool.

[Sean] We're gonna go four liters

plus the one and a half, so- Okay.

five and a half liter mixture.

[Cody] Beautiful.

[Sean] So we gotta make sure the water's

between a 95 and 105. Sweet.

[Sean] Now we're gonna get our yeast.

One and a half, you said? One and a half, yep.

[Cody] Beautiful.

[Sean] If the water's too cold,

it won't activate the yeast.

If the water's too hot, it won't activate the yeast,

which will, in turn, shock the yeast.

Well, we're going toss it in slowly

and then whisk it up as you go in.

Cool. If we activate

the yeast correctly, then it tastes better,

it rises better,

and overall it makes for a better product for us.

So oil.

We're gonna dump this in here.

All right.

[Sean] Then we're going to do a salt and pepper mixture.

Okay, we're spewing.

So we've got about two more minutes on the yeast water.

We're gonna make anywhere between 18 and 30 batches

of dough a day. So this goes in?

[Sean] So we're gonna give that a stir real quick.

[Cody] Sweet, so here's our semi-frothy

yeast and water mixture here.

Bowl this?

[Sean] We're gonna go straight into the bowl,

then you're gonna give it a good whisk.

[Cody] All right, here we go.

[Sean] Then we're gonna add in the flour-

The whole bag? Yep.

[Cody] So far I'd say this is the most difficult thing.

[orchestral music]

We wanna get it to where it just starts to congeal

all the little yeast packets.

The flour balls are distributed evenly

so that it comes out as a nice soft bowl.

We don't wanna overmix it

'cause we don't want to beat it up.

You know, it's interesting,

I wonder what the difference is.

'Cause at my work,

we'll let it go for, like, 20 or 30 minutes,

just mixing it up.

Maybe because you're doing

the thinner pizzas. Yeah.

You want a crispier cracker crust.

Yeah, maybe.

And you wanna flatten it out.

Cool.

[Sean] And we're trying to get the opposite.

[Cody] Right.

[Sean] We don't want to continually beat the dough up.

[Cody] Right, right, right.

You're beating the dough up on purpose.

Yeah.

That might be not getting that...

The big puffy rise. Yeah.

Cool.

We're gonna take off the hook.

Set that off to the side.

We're gonna pop that out. Okay.

Lift up on that side for me. Sweet.

We're just gonna flip it in there.

Cool. Okay.

Nice.

There you go, whoo!

All right, perfect.

We're gonna take a little bag, throw it over the top.

That'll keep some of the moisture.

And as the gas escapes from the yeast,

that'll help it rise up a little nicer.

[Cody] Oh nice, cool.

And that will give us a nice, fluffy product.

We're in our dough station now,

so we're gonna lay out pizzas.

The easiest way to describe it is

you're just gonna fold it over

and you're tucking it in on itself.

[Cody] Okay.

So I always tell all the guys here,

and I usually get in trouble.

You're making it into a breast.

A breast.

That's it. All right.

You're making it into a breast.

You said it, not me. That's it.

Is that right? That is awesome.

Or do you want this all closed?

No, that is perfect.

We're gonna lay it out into large pans.

Okay, these are greased.

They're already greased on the size there.

So I'm just gonna put this bastard right here.

Put that right there. Cool.

So when you set it in the pan,

you're gonna just sort of...

Rub it around? Move the dough a little bit.

Since we have so many pizzas- Right.

we're gonna oil out a bunch of pizzas.

We're gonna stack 'em all up.

So the oil's gonna run in here.

[orchestral music]

We never wash the pans. Okay.

They're scraped, they're clean, water ruins 'em.

So easiest thing to do is use your hands,

if you want to use them.

Flatten it out.

See this here? Yep.

Similar when we get to the sauce,

what we're gonna do is you're gonna create

a bowl of sauce in the middle.

Okay.

And you're gonna spread it to the edge.

It's the same concept with the dough.

Okay.

[Sean] You're taking this little section here

and I'm moving it to the edge.

Oh, okay.

Okay, cool, that's what I need to know.

[Sean] Does that makes sense?

[Cody] Absolutely, 100%.

[Sean] So now you're just flattening it to the edge

and you want to use more of your...

[Both] Fingertips.

[Cody] This is like...

It's an unfamiliar motion. Yeah.

But I don't understand how it's possible

to not get oil on it, when there's so much oil.

You can't get no oil on it, but you can minimize the oil.

Right, okay.

[Sean] And that's kind of what I want.

[Cody] Okay.

[Sean] Because we don't want it to be overly saturated.

I feel nervous 'cause I feel like

I can hear your thoughts in your head right now.

And they don't sound super good.

Yeah, it's like anything else.

Sort of like teaching a kid to drive.

[Cody] Thank you.

Nice. What's the rating?

That works, I like it.

80%. 80%.

That's a B minus.

[orchestral music]

We're gonna make some sauce.

Sauce time, okay.

I've got one of these at work.

Yours is, like, a lot more like slick than ours is.

[Sean] This is just one small batch,

just so you can get a feel for how we make the sauce.

How big of a batch are you normally doing?

So like on a weekend day, I'm gonna open up 144 cans.

Okie-dokie.

[Sean] And that'll get me through the day.

[Cody] Beautiful.

We want a little bit thicker sauce.

Why is that?

If it's too thin, it gets a little runny

with the amount of heat that's coming off of the ovens.

My boss likes a sweeter sauce. Okay.

So we want it heavier flavored with basil,

so a nice fat two-ounce cup of dry basil per can.

And then you're gonna get your Julia Childs on

after that [Cody gobbling]

and get a nice pinch of fresh basil.

There you go.

That's so bad. All right?

Why do you do it in the cans as opposed to, like,

all the tomato and all the, like, the fresh, all the dry.

Two reasons.

One, it's easier for me to monitor.

Okay. So as I'm walking around-

It's, like, visual.

Well, I can walk around making list, I can tell.

Plus I can see if the guy's doing it correctly.

So if I dump it all in the bowl first,

then I gotta stand there and have him count.

Now if you're, say you throw in 13 cans of sauce in there,

you're doing 13 two-ounce cups-

It's easy to forget when you're doing a bunch of stuff.

[Sean] So I'm gonna dump one,

and since I don't wanna get filthy,

I'm gonna have you dump the rest in there.

Okay, cool. So just dump 'em all in.

Yes.

[orchestral music]

Pretty satisfying.

Scoop it out. All right.

[Sean] It's nice and easy.

I'll be right back. Oh, yeah.

Scoop and slop, I was born to do this.

[Sean] We're gonna put a label on it

and I'll throw it in the cooler.

Now we're gonna make a bunch of ranch.

[Cody] Ranch, cool.

[Sean] So we're gonna grab two cases of mayonnaise,

and we're gonna dump it on in with the buttermilk.

You know it's mayonnaise when it jiggles.

We tweak it just a little bit by

the ratios and the portions.

So I can't divulge that because that's kind of

what makes our ranch taste so darn good.

And I'm having the same problem you are

as I can't get this thing off of here.

You're a lot younger than I am.

I'm an old codger. I'll be here forever.

[orchestral music]

[Sean laughing]

This is literally impossible.

[Cody] Oh, it's not gonna happen [grunting].

Something tells me I'm gonna be wearing mayonnaise.

All right, so we're gonna fix that in a second.

Wait, I can't give up.

This is gonna piss me off.

[orchestral music]

It's just, like, it's too big for a normal hand,

I would say is the problem.

It's one of the problems.

Little piece of crap.

Show you who's boss.

Yeah, there you go.

There it is!

Don't ever talk to me like that again.

All right, so, and this is fairly self-explanatory.

[Cody] Oh yeah.

I'm familiar with this. Dump, scrape, dump scrape.

[Cody] How much ranch are people guzzling here?

We're gonna make this particular thing

that we're doing here with the eight gallons of mayonnaise

three times a week.

Friday, Saturday, roughly.

We're gonna do about almost 1,000 cups of ranch.

Holy crap.

A bunch of ranch freaks in Chicago, huh?

They are ranch freaks in Chicago.

And my ranch is really good.

It is a thicker and tastier,

more tangy, little spicier ranch.

I will be honest, I'm sweating.

Yes.

We're gonna add all the buttermilk in there.

I think one thing I learned in restaurants

is trying to focus on doing one activity

over and over again, right? Yes.

Like, instead of opening, pouring, opening, pouring.

Yes. You kind of just like knock-

Yeah. each tasks.

And then the secret ingredients.

This is the good stuff? That's the good stuff.

[Cody] This is what makes the world go around.

Is it time to mix? It's time to mix.

Let's do it.

Probably the most ranch I've ever been around.

Moment of truth.

Dig in.

Not so bad.

I just want, like, a bunch of chicken fingers.

[orchestral music]

Second rise is complete.

We're gonna start assembling some pizzas now.

[Cody] Sweet.

[Sean] A nice little order there.

All right, perfect.

Small, all cheese, extra cheese...

[Sean] Cody, why don't you grab me two little personals.

[Cody] Two little personals.

Yep, so cheese wise, like a deck of cards.

Awesome.

[Sean] So you're gonna go long ways.

[Cody] Overlap?

Overlap it just a little bit.

And you want the cheese to go right up to the edge.

Lovely, you're so fast.

You're blackjack player?

[Sean] No, I like to keep my money.

[Cody] So this is kinda the trademark here, right?

It's like the cheese...

[Both] The cheese burns on the side of the pan.

[Sean] So the sauce for us is each pizza is gonna get a...

[Cody] Big ass ladle?

Eh, it's not a big ass ladle.

So this one here,

a medium is gonna get just shy of a full ladle.

Okay.

And the personals will get a little,

like a medium dollop.

So you should look at it and you should not be able to tell

if it's light, extra, or medium.

Looks right in the middle.

I'm gonna drag, spread, drag, spread.

Drag, spread.

And why this?

Oh wow, oh yeah.

Oh, go get it.

Okay. Come on, Mister.

Look at that.

That was cool.

[Sean] Okay, so you're taking literally only using

the bottom third of this ladle.

Yep. Like this?

[Sean] Nope.

So why this instead of just like the, you know,

little circle style?

[Sean] What's gonna cook better?

Well, yeah, probably this one, huh?

Yeah. Okay.

This one here is extra cheese and pepperoni.

Great. I'm gonna give you that one.

Beautiful.

[Sean] So the pepperoni's pretty simple.

Yeah? Cover the pizza.

Cover it. One single layer

and cover the pizza.

Those ones, we take 'em out.

I use the poker reference again, sort of like poker chips.

Okay.

[Sean] I will usually build down the middle.

[Cody] Oh, okay.

[Sean] And if they get two on there

and it overlaps a little bit, it's fine.

[Cody] All right.

This was one of those ones where I was telling you

quantity over quality.

We're gonna season the pizza-

Okay. with a little Romano.

Okay. So if you shake that

on the side like this, like a wheel.

Okay. You create airflow

and it comes out faster.

And another shake of oregano. Cool.

[Sean] Sort of ties and blends the flavors together.

Love that. That looks great.

Wonderful, do I pass it this way?

Throw the ticket on there. Tickets there.

And that goes in the oven.

Thank you. All right.

He'll throw that in.

He's gonna time it about 18 minutes or so

and then we're good to go.

Now sausage is a little bit,

can be a little tricky for everybody to learn.

The object for this is to make it into a patty.

[Cody] Yeah?

You gotta get this off of here,

onto your pizza, about as thick as my pinky.

Can you slow that down? Nope.

[Cody laughing]

No, okay, so.

What you wanna do,

and I'm pinching it off and then I'm flicking it down.

Yeah, this is a weird motion for sure.

It is.

It's one of those ones where it's, like,

this makes zero sense. It doesn't, yeah.

[Sean] Just like when you started making the dough balls.

Right.

So a ticket came in.

Yes. I'm gonna make this ticket.

It's a medium pie.

We got a sauced and cheesed one here already.

So half of this is gonna get pepperoni.

Yep.

And then we're gonna check your visual skills

in a second here. Oh [beep].

Don't do it, don't do it.

[Sean] I have to.

We gotta make sure before we build it correctly.

[Cody] Yeah, you're right, you're right.

The pepperoni's actually incredibly frustrating.

Wait until the summertime and it's

103 plus in here. Is it sticky?

[Sean] And it's like, yeah.

I feel like I need to detach from

the feeling of wanting to get them all separate

and just kind of go for it.

Slide it on down. Cool.

[Sean] And do green peppers first and spread it out.

That's perfect.

[Both] Then onions.

[Sean] Perfect.

And then you'll do the sausage,

and then I will finish it up with oregano and cheese.

[orchestral music]

All cheese, pepperoni

And mushroom. And mushroom, cool.

[orchestral music]

Hot [beep].

Okay, cool. No, you're fine.

Take your time. Beautiful.

If it goes in beautiful, it comes out beautiful.

That's nice. If it goes in like [beep]

it's gonna come out like [beep].

We just wanna make sure that we build it better in here.

'Cause this is also building that caramelized edge,

which we need to have solid.

[Cody] This part is surprisingly hard for me.

[Sean] It takes a little time.

Big ladle on all these three.

Oh, splash. That's okay.

Well, it's gotta go up higher.

We wanna get the cheese all the way up.

And you'll drag, slide, drag, slide.

Yep, that's it. Nice, there you go.

Are you proud? Yes, very.

Yay. I'm surprised.

That takes a lot of people a long time.

That feel okay? That looks great.

Whoo! Awesome.

I started saying, Whoo more often recently.

I was doing, Yay for a while.

This one is gonna be our pepperoni mushroom pizza.

All right, and then ticket.

[Cody] Ticket

And then window. Thank you.

Beautiful. And then we're good to go.

Good job. Awesome.

I'm impressed.

I just got a little bit of sauce on me too.

How did it even get in there?

That's a secret place.

Few have traveled.

[orchestral music]

So we've already built some pies.

Obviously, these aren't the ones we made

but we're gonna get these out.

[Cody] Oh, yeah.

They're in there probably almost 20-ish minutes or so.

So, object is to grab 'em with your gripper

on your left hand. All right, okay.

[Sean] And you're gonna see there's a little bit

of an edge here. Yeah.

So I want you to get started on the edge.

This is one of the harder parts.

So you're basically trimming- Yeah.

the caramelized cheese off the edge.

Edging the pan, basically.

This is edging. Edging.

So then you are going to cut that one for here.

So I'm gonna do this one.

You're gonna do that one. All right.

So then you're gonna take this here,

you're gonna lock it in place,

and you're gonna start on the top middle.

You're gonna cut this in eight.

Okay. So four.

So you're gonna cut it,

you're gonna throw it in there,

and then give it a little twist there

to make sure that that is good for the servers

so that they can get it out of the pan.

Okay, then just keep going down?

When I cut pizzas at work, it's like with a little,

with your normal, like, pizza cutter or rolly tolly thing.

There's no...

This is definitely weird, but I like it.

I think the most confusing part is the left hand.

Like, the clumpers.

[Sean] That takes the most amount of time

to get the dexterity and the rhythm on that.

I feel like a monster.

[Sean] All right, and then we do the fun part.

[bell dinging]

Hit the bell, get this [beep] outta my way.

Get the [beep] outta here!

Get the [beep] outta here! Exactly!

Order up!

Come on! [bell dinging]

Is that the vibe or not really?

That's it. Cool.

Yeah, except they'll be quite perturbed if they come back

and hear that. Yeah, that makes sense.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

That was [beep] up.

And so the object is we're gonna open the door.

We're gonna take out that pan pizza.

We want to get it out and on the table.

Then we're gonna edge it.

Then we're gonna flip our spatula over.

Let's open it up, let's see where you're at.

[Cody] All right.

[Sean] So grab the two little personals first.

[Cody] Little boys.

These are a little more tricky.

All right. You gotta edge it.

They take a little bit more practice.

And I think you're destroying this customer's product.

[Cody] Oh, I know [beep], sorry.

Oh, I feel it, I feel it.

It's mine, it's mine.

Got it. Yes!

All right, get in there.

[bell dinging]

[Sean] And this is gonna be cut into six,

so we'll straighten that out. Cool.

Is there any strategy here?

[Sean] There is.

So you want to cut through and down

in a sort of a swift kicking motion.

But be careful because we don't want to cut ourselves

with a knife or burn.

There you go.

[Cody] Ooh, not quite in half.

But what are you gonna do? That's okay.

So now that one's okay.

But as you can see here, the reason it fell apart?

[Cody] Uh-huh?

Too slow. Oh, you do it?

Okay, got it.

If you go through it, you'll have less of that.

I'm gonna go like through, oh [beep].

And then through. Yeah.

[beep] That's okay.

Bastard. That was pretty good though.

All right. All right.

Then we'll tidy it up a little bit.

[Cody] Beautiful.

[Sean] We're gonna give the customers

all those lovely sausage and goo.

[Cody] Come on, baby.

Then this goes down? Reflective side down.

Beautiful. Tuck that on the front,

tuck that on the back

so that it stays nice and hot for the customer

when they get it as long as possible.

And then it goes on top of the oven.

Cool.

Hit the bell.

[bell dinging] For it.

And you are good. Cool!

[Sean] And then we give this man a job.

How do you think that I did, honestly?

I wish all of them did this well.

That's really, yeah. Not so bad.

But it's also kind of a bittersweet

because there's no chance you're gonna work for me, so.

I'm so sorry. Yeah.

It was very exciting. Yes.

Like at first I was, like, a little hesitant.

But then, like, once we were actually diving into

the pizza pies and we were taking 'em out,

and crusting them off and it was a blast.

Do you think that you would

hypothetically hire me for this job?

Hypothetically, no.

I would actually hire you if you wanted to work for me.

Oh, yay.

There we go, that's amazing.

It was a pleasure.

Thank you so much for having me.

Hey, anytime. Yay.

So I know you have your way of doing a thin crust.

But maybe we can do it the way

that I learned how to do it,

just to show. Yeah.

So you can do it with me.

[Cody humming]

So this was the Italian restaurant, the end.

I'm not gonna ruin anybody's day by trying to sing, so.

Why not, come on!

No way.

♪ Molto bene ♪

That's exactly right.

I need the checkered shirt. Ah.