This No Knead Deep Dish Pizza is the perfect comfort food. The crust is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

This No Knead Deep Dish Pizza is light and airy, and topped with hot, melty, and gooey cheese.

Sometimes a slice of thin crusted artisan style pizza or flatbread sounds wonderful. Then there are those times when you just need a piece of amazing bread topped with everything that makes you crave pizza. Those are the days when this pizza is perfect.

The gooeyness of the cheese and the spiciness of the pepperoni combine to satisfy your pizza cravings (or at least mine!).

One of my favorite things in the world is slightly burnt cheese. I baked this pizza in a dark 9 inch by 13 inch cake pan, and the cheese melted down the sides of the bread, and got nicely charred and tasty. The pizza itself stayed really hot for a long time too.

My oldest grandson loves it whenever I make homemade pizza.

Every day after school, he comes over to our house, and Mr. Kitchen keeps a watchful eye over him while he does his homework. Last Friday I had the day off from work, and decided to try making a sourdough pizza. Unfortunately, I got my timing wrong. The dough wasn't ready to bake before he was picked up (with two long rises), so I promised him that I would make a special pizza for him to be ready when he came over on the following Monday.

Thus, this pizza. With a total rise time of about 75 minutes, and a baking time of 30 minutes, you can have pizza in a flash (in bread terms).

P.S. I was a little worried, but he loved it! A lot!

Leftovers can be wrapped and saved in the fridge and are wonderful reheated in a 350 degree F oven for about 15 minutes.

For more deep dish pizza recipes, try this Grandma Pizza (with photos me and my grandbaby), this Pepperoni and Mushroom Pan Pizza, or this Detroit Style Pizza, which takes burnt cheese to a whole new level.

No Knead Deep Dish Pizza

Ingredients

• 10 ounces lukewarm water
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 11 1/4 ounces bread flour
• 3 ounces durum flour 
• 1/2 teaspoon barley malt
• 4 teaspoons finely shredded hard cheese or 2 teaspoons cheddar cheese or another cheese powder
• 1 teaspoon granulated garlic
• 1 teaspoon granulated onion
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• Scant 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder
• About 6 ounces of your favorite tomato sauce
• 12 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese
• 4 ounces sliced pepperoni or other sliced sausage (I used a combination of linguiça and ham)
• 1 3/4 ounces grated Parmesan cheese

Instructions

1. Oil a 9 inch by 13 inch pan with olive oil.
2. In a large bowl, mix all of the crust ingredients with wet hands until you have a sticky soft dough.
3. Let the dough rise, covered, for 30 minutes.
4. Scrape the dough into the pan, cover with plastic wrap, and let rest for 15 minutes.
5. With wet hands, gently pat and stretch the dough out until it covers the bottom of entire pan. Cover, and let rest for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
6. When ready to bake, spread the sauce over the risen dough. Top the sauce with the mozzarella, top with the pepperoni, and then the Parmesan.
7. Bake the pizza for about 25 minutes. The topping should be bubbly and golden brown.
8. Removed the pizza from the oven and, using a large spatula, lift the pizza out of the pan onto a cutting board. Let the pizza rest for about 10 minutes before cutting.
9. Using a large serrated bread knife, cut the pizza into 12 squares and serve.
10. Refrigerate any leftovers. They are excellent reheated at 350 degrees F for about 15 minutes.

Yield: 6 to 12 servings

Recipe adapted from the April 2017 edition of King Arthur Flour's Baker's Catalog. The original recipe calls for 14 1/2 ounces of their Pizza Flour Blend instead of the flour, durum, barley malt, cheddar, granulated onion, and granulated garlic.