The Topping Mistake That Can Turn Your Chicago-Style Pizza Into Mush

Chicago-style deep dish pizza is very unique compared to most pizza styles, but there are plenty of conventional pizza mistakes you want to avoid. While Chicago-style pies look very different when finished, the ingredients that go into them are pretty similar to other recipes. Even the crust itself isn't that thick; it's just shaped differently to hold more sauce and cheese. And that's a big reason why when we spoke to World Pizza Champion Tony Gemignani about mistakes to avoid when making Chicago-style pizza, he told us to avoid adding too many different types of toppings.

Admittedly, this seems a bit counterintuitive since deep-dish pizza has built its reputation on massive amounts of fillings, but having too many toppings can cause the base of the pizza to end up mushy. There are a few reasons for that. Most toppings, especially vegetables, give off water when they are cooked, so adding too many is going to throw off the moisture level of the recipe.

This is doubly true of Chicago-style, where the toppings are covered with the sauce before cooking, which will prevent the moisture they give off from evaporating. That extra moisture is also going to extend the time the center of the pizza takes to cook, so when certain parts of the pie are done, the bottom of the crust could still be underdone. Most Chicago deep-dish spots only suggest one to two toppings per pizza, and that's the level you should stick to as well.

Many have had the experience of ordering a supreme pizza that sounded so good in theory, only to find it disappointing in practice. That's because too many toppings is generally a mistake, even for thin-crust pizza. The moisture always becomes a problem, and even more floppy styles like Neapolitan get weighed down and unpleasant when loaded up with half a dozen different ingredients.

But it's also a problem for the flavor of your pizza. With any pizza, you want to taste the cheese and the sauce, and the toppings should be complementary to that. Adding too many overwhelms pizza's core appeal, and even the individual flavors of the toppings themselves often get lost. While light toppings like garlic and basil are usually not a problem, with meat and most vegetables you should stick to three max for the best balance.

Once again taking Chicago's own pizza restaurants as a guide, they often only emphasize one topping. Sausage is the deep-dish specialty, but spinach is also popular as a vegetable with only garlic and onion as an accompaniment, despite being light. Vegetable pies are limited to a few selections, often mushrooms, onions, and peppers. That still leaves plenty of room for creative mixing of popular pizza toppings, but deep-dish is already so thick from the cheese and sauce, you don't need to load it up as much as you'd think.