Detroit Pizza

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Detroit-style pizza is a type of pizza that’s baked in a square dish pan. It has the following characteristics:

  • Thick and light crust
  • Toppings all the way to the edge of the pan
  • Cheese is purposefully placed right up to the edge, where it will caramelize and become crispy
  • Crispy, fried crust

Layering

Detroit pizza can commonly defer conventional pizza layering. The order, from bottom to crust, goes:

  1. Cheese
  2. Meat
  3. Sauce
  4. Optional additional meat or cheese

The benefit of layering cheese directly on the dough is to form a water-proof layer. This prevents the sauce from making the dough soggy.

Sometimes, the sauce is cooked, it’s simply added on at the end. From what I understand, there’s no defining tradition here. Withholding sauce from baking seems to practical decision, to reduce the moisture that slows the baking speed.

Origin

The apocryphal origins is that the pan used was originally automotive industrial parts tray.

It’s derived form Sicilian/Grandma styles of pizza. Sicilian pizza, in turn, is related to focaccia. So it inherits all the characteristics of a foccacia dough:

  • high hydration, slack dough
  • shaped and cooked in greased pan
  • no-knead, open crumb

Is it Deep-Dish

Detroit-style pizza is a variant of “pan pizza”, pizzas baked in a pan (cake). The pizza bakes up in the shape of the pan, rising up against the wall of the pan.

This is in contrast to pizzas baked on a flat surface (flatbread). These pizzas baked directly on a pizza stone, baking steel, or baking sheet.

Chicago deep-dish is baked in a cake tin (pie). This shares traits with hot water crust pie, with high walls and lots of filling. Deep-dish pizza has thinner crust than detroit-style pizza would.