Deep dish pizza belongs in Chicago. They've known how to do it right since Italians created it there in 1943. Growing up in the city, or just outside of it, means you begin to take the greasy creation for granted as it's not done right anywhere else.
That's where homesick college kids like me have Giordano's deep dish shipping to thank, because they're my home town go-to that understands you can take a girl out of Chicago, but you can't take a Chicago appetite out of a girl. I took my ever-lasting craving and turned it into an opportunity to see whether shipping the classic pizza halfway across the country changed anything about the meal.
Ordering and Cooking the Pizza
Ordering deep dish pizza to be shipped to my campus in Delaware is a pricey trip down memory lane at $65. Chicago's Lou Malnati's does it for a solid $61.99, but I had to stick with what my family orders at home. The order got me two 10-inch pizzas, but it is justifiable to split the cost with a group and consider the up charge as express shipping. For reference, the pizzas were finished by seven people in less than a day.
Cooking a frozen deep dish pizza isn't something I ever imagined myself doing, and I found out there's a reason why. There must be some trick that allows the sauce to cook without burning the crust. The extra pizza sauce that they provided to put on top was definitely needed, but it was hard to tell when to take out the pizza as the sauce remained a less-than-ideal chill temperature for awhile.
It could have been impatience that effected how thawed the pizza was prior to cooking it, but overall it came down to being as simple as putting the pizza in the oven. Still, the pressure was on to give my east coast friends a true experience that was cooked right.
The Taste Test
There stands a solid seven weeks between my last fresh deep dish pizza and the shipping experiment, but years of experience granted me a solid comparison.
Every single one of my friends saw perfection in the pieces, as they had just about nothing to compare it to. To me, the reheating of the pizza definitely conflicted with the texture of the cheese. There wasn't that same loose, stringy pull that comes from a fresh deep dish pizza. The lack of freshness was only slightly evident in the taste of the sauce. Still, these small changes did not take away from the pizza overall.
It may be my homesickness talking, but I would gladly ship a deep dish pizza any time. A pizza that I best describe as a greasy pie can't be ruined completely by the shipping process. It maintains that soft and hard combination, and the familiar taste of the cheese, to give me exactly what I'm missing.
My only other option is to make one by scratch myself, which might just be my next adventure. Still, can't wait to see you in person in a few months Giordano's.