Chicago tavern pizza — the recipe
The other Chicago pizza — not the deep dish the tourists photograph, but the one Chicagoans actually order on a weeknight: thin, rolled cracker-crisp, loaded edge to edge with sausage and cheese, and sliced into little squares. The “tavern cut” or “party cut” is the point — a bar full of people can each grab a piece with one hand.
Sausage is the hometown move, low-moisture mozzarella runs wall to wall for a crisp, brown top, and the sauce carries a touch of sweetness. Everything is weighed per ball and scales with your dough — the Tavern preset rolls out the snappy, low-hydration crust.
What goes on top
Per pizza, on the default 250 g ball — in layering order:
low-moisture, shredded wall to wall — even onto the rim for a crisp brown border
a pinch in the sauce
Stretching bigger or smaller? The model rescales with the dough:
| Topping | 200 g ball | 250 g ball | 320 g ball |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pizza sauce | 70 g | 85 g | 110 g |
| Low-moisture mozzarella | 75 g | 95 g | 120 g |
| Italian sausage | 50 g | 65 g | 85 g |
| Dried oregano | 1 g | 1 g | 1 g |
The dough
Chicago tavern is built on Tavern dough. Chicago tavern thin crust — rolled cracker-thin, party-cut into squares. For 4 × 250 g balls:
| Ingredient | Baker's % | For 4 pizzas |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 100% | 632 g |
| Water | 52% | 329 g |
| Salt | 2% | 13 g |
| Olive oil | 3% | 19 g |
| Sugar | 1% | 6.3 g |
| Yeast | 0.23% | 1.4 g |
The yeast is weighed for an example 8 h rise at 21°C — your kitchen disagrees, and that’s the point: set your real schedule in the calculator and it reweighs the pinch.
How it’s done
- Make the dough: 4 × 250 g Tavern balls — the calculator weighs the flour, water, salt and yeast for your schedule.
- Stretch each ball on a little flour, pressing the air from the middle out to the rim.
- Top with 85 g pizza sauce (a thin layer of the sweet, cooked kind).
- Top with 95 g low-moisture mozzarella (low-moisture, shredded wall to wall — even onto the rim for a crisp brown border).
- Top with 65 g italian sausage (raw, in small crumbles scattered edge to edge).
- Top with 1 g dried oregano (a pinch in the sauce).
- Bake at 290 °C / 554 °F — on a preheated steel or stone if you have one.
Questions from the counter
What's the difference between tavern and deep-dish pizza?
They're opposite pizzas that share a city. Deep dish is thick, built in a pan like a casserole and eaten with a fork; tavern-style is thin, crisp, cut into squares and eaten with a hand. Most Chicagoans eat far more tavern than deep dish — it's the everyday order, the deep dish the special occasion.
Why is it cut into squares?
It's the “tavern cut” (or “party cut”): a thin, crisp round sliced into a grid of little squares instead of wedges, so people standing at a bar can grab a piece without a plate. The corner and edge pieces are crispiest; the famously crustless center squares are their own debate. No folding, no wedges.
Why take the cheese all the way to the edge?
Because a rolled thin crust has almost no rim to protect, and cheese carried to the very edge browns into a crisp, lacy border — the best bite on the pizza. It's the same instinct that builds a Detroit frico edge, just flat instead of up a pan wall. Sausage and sauce stop short; the cheese doesn't.
Get the dough
The Tavern preset weighs the balls and writes the schedule — mix, rise, ball, stretch, bake.
The clock is a suggestion. The dough is the boss. In bocca al lupo!
Impasto is a free pizza dough calculator for Neapolitan, New York, Roman, Sicilian, Detroit, thin crust and focaccia doughs — flour, water, salt and yeast weighed in baker's percentages, with the fermentation schedule written for you.