I grew up in the Chicagoland area, so I consider myself a deep dish pizza expert. And as far as I’m concerned, Chicago deep dish pizza is all about the crust. Giordano’s has a super flaky biscuity crust. Pequod’s has extra-caramelized bits of frico around the edges. And Lou Malnati’s (my favorite!) has a buttery, deeply flavorful cornmeal crust.

Until recently, I was only an expert in eating deep dish pizza, but I tried recreating that iconic Lou Malnati crust, and I finally cracked the code. It took me a long time to get there, but last week I had a major revelation that I probably could’ve gleaned from a cheesy corporate motivational poster: Many paths lead to the same destination.

(Oh! And: adding beer makes most things taste even better.)

How I cracked the code:

What I tried first:

I watched every video of cooks making pizza at Lou’s. I read every interview with their owner. I read every article speculating about how they make their iconic cornmeal crust. Over the years, I tried one or two copy-cat recipes. I tried tinkering with my own recipe, closely following what I had learned. But nothing tasted like the Lou’s I knew.

Then I decided to go a completely different route:

I took everything I knew about the final product, and backwards engineered it, paying less attention to the way it’s supposed to be made.

My ingredients and method weren’t in line with the real deal, but the results were weirdly even more Lou-ish than recipes that stick closely to the original.

So, no—this is not exactly how Lou Malnati’s actually makes their pizza. But here are the main things you can do to end up with a crust (and pizza!) that’s uncannily similar:

How to make very good deep dish pizza:

1. Add beer! Lou Malnati’s does not actually add beer to their crust (as far as I can tell). But their crust has always reminded me of beer bread. Adding beer gives it that characteristic flavor that’s simultaneously a little bitter and a little tart (sort of like sourdough bread). Lou Malnati’s achieves that flavor with some combination of good quality yeast and a very long rise time. However, I have not been able to achieve the same results that way. But I have discovered that beer gets you to something very similar!
2. Use olive oil. Ok, now this one’s a hot take. The Lou Malnati crust is known as Buttercrust™, so the idea of using something else is a little out there. But I’ve noticed that olive oil dough sometimes tastes even more buttery than dough made with butter, if that makes any sense. So I use a generous glug of extra virgin olive oil in mine.
3. Go parmesan crazy! While a Chicago deep dish pizza without a heap of parmesan or romano on top is wonderfully bright red, it’s so much tastier with a generous amount of sharp cheese on top. Lou Malnati’s goes this route, and I do too.
4. Bake it on the floor of the oven. Here, I’m following tradition. By cooking it on the floor of the oven, the bottom of the crust will cook up super crisp.
5. Use some cornmeal in the dough, but make it a wet dough. Cornmeal does not absorb water as readily as flour, so your raw dough should be a little on the soft side. As it bakes, the cornmeal will absorb some of that liquid and it will firm up without becoming dry. Follow the gram measurements in the following recipe for maximum accuracy and you won’t even have to think about it, but if you’re eyeballing it with volume, keep in mind that it should not be a very firm dough, and that it will firm up as it bakes.

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