Lou Malnati’s deep dish is not just a thicker pizza. The entire assembly runs backward from every other pizza you’ve made: cheese goes down first on the raw dough, a full blanket of sausage gets pressed on top of the cheese from crust edge to crust edge, and cold chunky tomatoes get spread over everything last. The sauce never touches the dough. The cheese never touches the sauce. And the thing that distinguishes a Lou Malnati’s from every other deep dish is that the mozzarella is sliced, not shredded — thick overlapping slabs that fuse during baking into a single pulled layer, so every slice comes out as a clean cross-section of crust, cheese, sausage, and tomato without anything sliding apart.
Lou Malnati opened his restaurant in Lincolnwood, Illinois in 1971. His father Rudy Malnati Sr. was the chef who developed the deep dish pizza recipe at Pizzeria Uno in 1943. Lou grew up in the pizza business, refined his father’s formula over decades, and built what is now the most-visited deep dish pizzeria in Chicago. The restaurant ships frozen pies nationwide; at the restaurant, the signature medium runs about $28.
The two things most copycat recipes get wrong
Shredded mozzarella. Pre-shredded cheese contains cellulose (an anti-caking coating) that prevents it from melting together. Sliced whole-milk mozzarella — cut 1/4 inch thick from a block — fuses into one cohesive layer. Buy a block, slice it yourself.
Sausage in the center only. The Lou Malnati’s sausage is a blanket, not a patty. It covers the pizza all the way to the crust edge. Press bulk sausage into a flat sheet in the pan, covering every inch of cheese below. This is not optional for the authentic texture — scattered or crumbled sausage migrates into the cheese and loses the cross-section.
The butter crust
Lou Malnati’s calls its crust a “butter crust” explicitly — more enriched than the triple-fat formula at Pizzeria Uno, leaning heavily toward butter. The dough contains more butter per cup of flour than a standard deep dish recipe, which is what produces the flaky, almost pastry-like bite at the edges. Small amount of cornmeal goes on the pan bottom (not in the dough) — this is where the subtle gritty texture comes from. For a crust at the opposite end of the spectrum — thin, hand-tossed, and sweet — see our honey-enriched Papa John’s pizza dough.
What to expect from each component
The crust: golden and flaky at the sides, with a distinct lacy-crisp bottom where the butter fried against the cornmeal-dusted pan. It should hold its structure when you lift a slice — not collapse inward.
The cheese: one cohesive pulled layer, not individual melted pieces. When you lift a slice, the cheese should stretch between the slice and the rest of the pizza, then snap cleanly. This is only possible with sliced whole-milk mozzarella.
The sausage: a distinct, intact layer — not broken up into crumbles mixed into the cheese. Each bite has a full cross-section of crust, cheese, sausage, and tomato.
The tomatoes: reduced, concentrated, slightly caramelized at the edges. Not wet or soupy — they should hold their position on the slice without running onto the plate.
Cost comparison
| Restaurant | Home | |
|---|---|---|
| Small (6”) | ~$15 | — |
| Medium (9”) | ~$28 | — |
| Large (12”) | ~$35 | — |
| Home 9” (4 servings) | — | ~$12 |
| Per serving | — | ~$3 |
Notes
- Cheese-only version: Skip the sausage and double the mozzarella (1 lb / 450g sliced). Increase bake time by 3 minutes.
- Pepperoni version: After the sausage blanket, lay 3 oz (20 slices) of pepperoni over the sausage before adding the tomatoes.
- Pan size: A 10-inch cast iron skillet produces a thinner, crispier pizza; a 9-inch round cake pan (2 inches deep) produces a taller, more restaurant-like depth. Both work.
- Shipping: Lou Malnati’s ships frozen deep dish nationwide at loumalnatis.com — the home version here is close but the restaurant’s proprietary sausage seasoning is not publicly available; bulk Italian pork sausage with a little fennel seed added (1/2 tsp per pound) gets very close.
For the pizza that started it all, the Pizzeria Uno Original Deep Dish covers the 1943 Numero Uno build with the slightly different triple-fat crust formula. For a completely different thick-pan style with a caramelized cheese border baked into the edges, the Detroit-Style Pizza uses Wisconsin brick cheese and a rectangular pan. And if you’re going full Chicago, Portillo’s Italian Beef is the other dish the city is most obsessive about recreating at home.
