Cooking: Best Recipe for Detroit Style Pizza at Home!

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! Recently tried butterkase cheese which worked quite well.

Other than that, give yourself 15 minutes (at least 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 (repeat as needed to cover pan to edges) 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: (I’ve actually used 50% more dough in my recipe and added a little sugar to help the yeast)
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 (Use white cheddar or butterkase as alternative)
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: