Detroit-style pizza

About this recipe

  A thick but airy crust topped with deliciously crispy melted cheese and the topping combinations of your dreams... that's Detroit Style Pizza, your new favorite comfort food. Detroit Style Pizza is a pizza baked in a 'pan' or mold...

A thick but airy crust topped with deliciously crispy melted cheese and the topping combinations of your dreams... that's Detroit Style Pizza, your new favorite comfort food. Detroit Style Pizza is a pizza baked in a 'pan' or mold, and originally descends from the Sicilian pan pizza 'sfincione'. Apparently, a Sicilian immigrant wanted to bake his wife's dough and couldn't find anything better than a steel pan from his workplace in the car factory. Detroit Style Pizza is becoming increasingly popular, and rightly so. The nice thing is that, unlike Neapolitan pizza, you can also bake a very tasty Detroit pizza in your regular oven in the kitchen using a baking stone - although the result is even tastier in a wood-fired oven due to the slightly higher temperature. Authentic DSPs are baked in rectangular pans with sharp corners, but feel free to get started with whatever you have at home (just be careful not to use non-stick pans in your wood-fired oven).

by @baking - Feel free to contact me via Instagram or Facebook.

Ingredients

• 400 g tipo 00 or 0 flour (the higher the protein content, the better, e.g. 11-13 g)
• 272 g water
• 12 g fine sea salt
• 1 g instant yeast (or 2 g fresh yeast)
• 500 g tomato sauce
• 200 g mozzarella (the dry variety, such as Galbani Cucina)
• 200 g cheddar
• 50 g Grana Padano cheese
• 100 g pepperoni salami
• fresh basil
• optional: 1 burrata
• optional: hot honey

Preparation

dough (the day before)

1. We let the dough ferment for 24 hours, so we start the day before you bake.
2. Weigh the water and add the instant yeast (use a precision scale or just carefully use your kitchen scale for the yeast). Stir briefly and let stand for 5 minutes.
3. Weigh your flour in a mixing bowl. Add about 90% of the water-yeast mixture little by little and mix with a food processor or spatula.
4. Weigh the salt, sprinkle it evenly over the dough, and knead it in.
5. Then add the remaining water and knead for about 10 minutes by hand or about 6 minutes with a food processor.
6. Cover and let rest for 20 to 30 minutes.
7. Knead for another 6 to 10 minutes until you have a smooth dough.
8. Place the dough in an airtight container with a lid (you can lightly rub it with some olive oil to prevent sticking) and leave to rise for 20 to 24 hours at room temperature (20-22 degrees).

dough (baking day)

1. About 4 to 6 hours before baking the pizza, we continue. Take a rectangular oven pan or dish (it is best not to use a non-stick pan in a wood-fired oven) and rub it with olive oil (the pan used here measures 25x35cm). If you want, you can also experiment by sprinkling some coarse salt or herbs such as oregano and garlic powder into the pan. Wet your hands (this will prevent the dough from sticking to them), remove the dough from the container, and place it in the pan with the same side facing up.
2. Wet your fingers again (or dip them in the oil) and gently push the dough towards all corners. You will notice that the dough shrinks back after each movement, or at least that you cannot reach all corners neatly. That is why we now leave the dough covered to rest for about 30 minutes, and after every half hour we push the dough a little further into the corners, so that after about 3 times it fills the entire pan. Wait a little longer so that the total rising time of 24 hours is more or less maintained. The dough rises a second time in the pan and becomes extra light and airy.
3. In the meantime, light the fire in your oven—we are aiming for a stone temperature of around 300°C (if you are making this recipe in your kitchen oven, preheat the pizza stone long enough at the maximum temperature). The fire does not need to be burning intensely at this stage.
4. First, we will pre-bake the pizza crust. Cover your baking pan with aluminum foil and place it on the stone in the hot oven.
5. Bake for 5 minutes, then turn the pan 180 degrees and bake for another 5 minutes. Your dough should now be well pre-baked, but the exact baking time always varies a little, so stay nearby and judge by sight whether your dough is well baked. Remove the pan from the oven and place a block of wood on the fire to rekindle the flame.

toppings

1. Now it's time to top the pizza with your choice of cheese and toppings! A classic is the "red top pizza," where you first add the cheese (and pepperoni salami, if desired), let it bake, and then add the tomato sauce in large stripes at the end.
2. Sprinkle your mozzarella and cheddar cheese on the baked dough, making sure to cover the edges well. The characteristic feature of Detroit-style pizza is that the crispy baked cheese edges stand upright after you remove the pizza from the pan (if you have a good pan, of course, and everything doesn't just stick to it). Would you like pepperoni on your pizza? Add the slices now.
3. Put the pan back in the oven, this time uncovered. There's no exact baking time, so check your pizza every few minutes and, if needed, rotate the pan another 180 degrees.
4. When everything looks nicely golden brown (after about 8 to 10 minutes, depending on how hot your oven is), you can spread the tomato sauce in wide stripes or simply over the entire pizza. You can now put the pizza back in the oven for a few minutes so that the sauce warms up as well.
5. Remove from the oven and carefully slide the pizza out of the pan, keeping it intact, by first running a thin spatula around the edges. Then finish it off with, for example, torn burrata, fresh basil, Parmesan cheese, and even spicy honey (see this site for the recipe!).