Personal Pan Pizza (Pizza Hut Copy-Cat)

At our house, we love Beth's pizza recipe.  We have it at least once a month.  However, my chief minion had a hankering for some deep dish pizza and found this recipe online.  After reading the reviews, I decided to give it a try and it was amazing.  It's a bit more time consuming than the other recipe, but a good deep dish option.

The recipe makes 3 small pizzas (baked in a 9" cake pan or a pie pan).  I've also included the pizza sauce recipe.  Jake really liked it (he said it was much better than our usual Walmart generic brand sauce), but it needs some work.  I plan on tweaking it a bit...

Ingredients:

2 & 1/4 tsp yeast
1 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup dry milk
1 & 1/3 cups warm water
2 Tbsp olive oil (for the dough)
3/4 cups vegetable oil (for the pan)
4 cups flour
No-stick cooking spray

Mozzarella Cheese
Pepperonis

Sauce--

8 oz can of tomato sauce
1 tsp dry oregano
1/2 tsp marjoram
1/2 tsp dry basil
1/2 tsp garlic salt

Directions:

1.  Mix yeast, sugar, salt, and dry milk.  Add warm water and allow the yeast to activate for about 2 minutes.  Add in the oil and mix.

2.  Mix in the flour, adding one cup at a time until the dough forms.

3.  Pour 1/4 cup oil into each of your 9" cake pans. (Yes this is a lot of oil, but it kind of boils the crust in the oven and makes it AMAZING.)  Turn out the dough on a floured surface and knead for 10 minutes.  (I only made it 7 minutes before I gave up.)  Divide the dough up into 3 balls.

4.  With a rolling pin, flatten each of the dough balls into a 9" circle.  Place the dough in the cake pans and spray the tops with no-stick cooking spray.  Cover with a plate.  Allow to rise for 1-1.5 hours.

5.  Combine all of the sauce ingredients in a bowl and allow to sit for an hour.  (I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I grabbed a can of tomato paste rather than sauce, so the picture looks funny.  It should be a lot more soupy.)

6.  Preheat the oven to 475 degrees.  Once the dough has risen, spread sauce onto the crusts and top with pepperonis and cheese.  Bake for 7-10 minutes until the crust is golden and the cheese is melted.