Given the COVID-19 pandemic, I’m guessing that most of you are cooking at home a lot more! And while it stinks being stuck at home so much, there have been some cool recipes I’ve discovered. So here’s one I’d like to share for Detroit Style pizza from Serious Eats and J Kenji Lopez-Alt! Cooked in a deeper baking pan you end up with a thick, crusty pizza slab with lots of browned cheese on the edges, so good! Locally, the long-defunct Klausie’s food truck served up this style of pizza and Trophy Brewing is serving up Detroit-style pies on Mondays. But I had to try to cook it myself at home and I think this recipe gets you pretty close.
A couple of key items to note, they recommend an anodized (probably 13″ x 9″) pan which will get the crust more golden and help with cheese melt. You should also use a high-gluten bread flour, King Arthur is often recommended. And the perfect cheese is Wisconsin Brick cheese which is hard to find outside of the area. I have typically replaced it with white cheddar as an easy substitute and thrown in some provolone or mozzarella for good measure!
Other than that, give yourself 15 minutes (about 3 hours before dinner time) to get the dough kneaded and proofed, you then rest the dough for 2 hours. Once proofed and rested, you stretch it out into the pan, you can let it rest and proof again which is a good time to finish your sauce. The sauce is super basic, crushed tomatoes simmered and heavy on garlic. This recipe should feed about 3 people (6 thick slices) with a side or salad and of course you can go vegetarian. I’ve used hot sopressatta in my pictures as a protein. I’m going to continue to tinker with this recipe and will try a bit of sugar with the yeast to see if I can get a lighter crust but it’s very good as is, buon appetito!
Ingredients from Serious Eats recipe
For the Dough:
300g bread flour (10.5 ounces; about 2 generous cups)
5g instant yeast (0.15 ounce; about 1 teaspoon), such as SAF Instant Yeast
9g salt (0.3 ounce; about 1 1/2 teaspoons table salt or 1 tablespoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt)
220g water (7.75 ounces; about 1 cup minus 1 1/2 teaspoons)
Extra-virgin olive oil, as needed
For the Sauce:
2 tablespoons (30ml) extra-virgin olive oil
3 medium cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons (about 5g) dried oregano
Dash red pepper flakes
1 (28-ounce; 800g) can high-quality crushed tomatoes
1 teaspoon (about 6g) granulated garlic powder
1 teaspoon (about 6g) granulated onion powder
1 tablespoon (about 15g) sugar
Kosher salt, to taste
To Finish:
12 ounces (340g) Brick cheese, cut into 1/2-inch cubes (see note)
12 ounces (340g) high-quality natural-casing pepperoni, such as Boar’s Head or Vermont Smoke & Cure, cut into 1/8-inch slices (optional)
Pictures of the Detroit Style Pizza under construction:
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PRATIK PATEL says
I have two question:
1) have you had success in getting a lighter, airy crust?
2) how do you get that buttery exterior on the crust?
Ron Wen says
Hey Pratik, thanks for checking out the blog and those are good questions. This recipe turns out maybe a 1″ crust but typically I’ve seen a thicker, lighter 1 1/2″ or so crust. So I wanted to research crust options and I figured it would be either more proofing (with sugar) or maybe trying soda water in the recipe for an airy crust. I’m not very experienced with dough so I need to research more! As for the buttery crust, yes I’ve seen some recipes where they cut in cold pieces like a pie crust. In this case, I took the lazy way out and put some butter underneath the dough before baking, came out decent. A lot of fat comes off the cheese and butters up the edges but underneath is a different story.