Serious Pizza, Serious Questions

Ok gang, since apparently it's impossible to buy a deep dish purpose-built pizza pan anywhere in the 702 area code, I went ahead and ordered one from Amazon. Hopefully it should be here next week sometime. And I also discovered, tonight, that we have a Trader Joe's close by on Eastern and St. Rose Parkway--I'd thought the closest one was down on Sunset and Green Valley. But since the grocery stores around here don't carry the pre-made dough, I can get some at TJ's.

But now I've got questions for those of you who have actually assembled a Chicago-style pizza. I know that I'm supposed to par-bake the crust for about ten minutes before I add any of the toppings. No big deal. But what I don't know for sure is if I need to cook the sausage down in a skillet before I assemble the pizza. On TV shows that feature deep-dish pizzas, they always show them putting the meat in raw--some places even roll the raw sausage out like dough and lay it all in one layer over the cheese, like a big ol' pork manhole cover.

Is this the right thing to do? My gut tells me that it would make the pizza way too greasy if I did that. But then again, I don't think I want to cook off all the meat, then bake it for 45 minutes more, because I think it would be pretty dry if I did that. Anybody have any experience with this? I'm thinking that I should do a quick 'half' cook on the raw sausage, losing some of the grease, but retaining a bunch of the moisture, but I've never heard of anyone doing that, either.

Suggestions would be appreciated.

Now, being a NY-style thin-crust aficionado, I am of the opinion that the perfect pizza only has two toppings besides the cheese and sauce--One meat and one vegetable. One salty, one sweet. Yin and Yang, the chi of the pizza, if you will.

However--

Since the deep dish style (where my experience is limited at best) is more like a casserole, wouldn't it be more conducive to making a 'garbage' pizza? I'm thinking of sausage, pepperoni, onions, peppers, mushrooms, black olives, and of course, cheese. Oh, I'm definitely going to make my two-topping masterpieces that I've talked about before, prosciutto and caramelized onion, and sausage and black olive, but I think the first one should probably include everything but the kitchen sink.

Besides, even if I fark it all up, bad pizza is still pretty good, right?

Mikey