A much needed taste of home: Detroit-style Pizza

A Detroit favorite, this pan-baked pizza is versatile, easy to make and delicious. Recipe below.

I MISS DETROIT SO MUCH. Since the pandemic started, we have not been anywhere that is not here. We have not been outside the city limits. No one except one of our kids has been in our house, and we have not been in anyone’s house, or in a restaurant, or a store, or a bar, or a hotel, or the office. Our offices are entirely remote (some people at my workplace think we will not reopen for five years). Our usual frequent road trips and train trips and lazy weekends spent wandering around Wisconsin or Michigan and quick drop-ins to see the kids—that has not happened. We miss the kids so much. We miss our familiar places so much. We miss Detroit so much.

One of our daughters lives in Detroit, and, because Detroit is where I was born and raised, visiting her always has this extra layer of wonder at the sites of my youth and sadness for how far Detroit has fallen and joy at how hard people are working to get up and get through and hope that the terrible gaps will be closed and the stupid actions can be put in the past and everyone will be safe and strong and no one will be left behind. There is so much to worry about these days, and be angry about, and so much determination and hope. We know it won’t ever be the same, but it will be different.

Meanwhile, we are trying to wait it out and do what we can from far away, and meantime we can remember what is always one of the favorite parts for us: the food, how people sustain themselves and share themselves. Carne en su jugo at El Nacimiento; pierogis from Srodek; coneys from all over; the huge influence of the now three generations of Muslim immigration (one small aspect of which is Bengali pizza); the great soul food, and the great experiments in vegan soul food; and a crazy vernacular collision which is the corned beef egg roll. There is nothing redeeming about it except everything because it is deeeeeeeeelicious.

For a lot of people the quintessential local dish is pizza from Buddy’s. Detroit-style pizza. Which is: rectangular. Usually made in a special, deep, black-anodized pan, which makes the thick layer of cheese lusciously browned and caramelized and toasty all around the edges. The tomato sauce is traditionally layered on top of all the other toppings rather than directly on the dough.

The other night I was noodling around on the excellent website of King Arthur Flour and came across their version of Detroit pizza. Which is so simple, so very simple, that I thought: I need to be eating this. The longing was instant. I can be eating this. Tonight. Maybe I can’t be in Detroit, but I can have this bit of it.

If you don’t have the traditional black pan, and I do not, then you can use any deepish 9×13-inch baking pan. Beware! A hotel pan or cookie sheet or a conventional pizza pan will be way too shallow. I used a battered old metal pan that I use for sheet cakes.

For the sauce, we used some leftover marinara sauce and I added a cup of roasted cherry tomatoes to it. But use the tomato sauce you prefer. The traditional cheese is a mix of mozzarella and sharp cheddar, cut into 1/2-inch cubes. That is what I used here.

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Detroit-style Pizza

A Detroit favorite, this pan-baked pizza is versatile, easy to make and delicious.

Course Main Course

Cuisine Italian-American

Servings 4 to 6

Ingredients

• 2-1/2 cups unbleached white flour
• 1-1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup lukewarm water
• olive oil
• 1/4 pound of sausage, browned and drained
• 6 – 8 ounces mozzarella and sharp or extra sharp cheddar cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 6 – 8 ounces sharp or extra sharp cheddar cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 3 cups of tomato sauce

Instructions

• Make the dough. Mix the flour, yeast, salt and water in a medium bowl with your hands until a shaggy dough forms. Cover it for 10 minutes. Then knead until it is smooth and elastic—probably about 2 minutes. Coat a bowl with olive oil, put in the dough and swoosh it around, then cover it and let it sit in a warm place for two hours.
• Lightly oil a 9x13-inch cake pan (or a black-anodized Detroit pizza pan). Put the dough in the pan and, working gently, push and press it around with your fingertips so it fills the bottom of the pan. If the dough is not willing to stretch right away, let it rest for a few minutes and then have at it again, repeating until the dough fills the bottom of the pan evenly. Don’t bother to build up a rim; the dough should be uniformly flat. Once that is complete, let it rest for half an hour.
• Gently heat the sauce. You want a thickish sauce. We used some leftover marinara and added in some freshly roasted cherry tomatoes. Use the sauce you have on hand, including store-bought pasta or pizza sauce.
• Preheat the oven to 500ºF and place a rack in the lowest position.
• Assemble the pizza. First, scatter the sausage uniformly across the dough. Then add in the cheese cubes. Be sure they go right up to the edges. Don’t hold back.
• Add the sauce. Traditionally, spoon the sauce on in three long lines up the length of the pizza; or you can dollop it all over.
• And finally, bake it. Slide the pan into the oven. Bake it 12 to 16 minutes. You want the cheese edges to be very, very dark, almost black. Remove it from the oven and set it on a rack. Run a knife or spatula around the edges right away and then let it sit for maybe 5 minutes to set up. Some recipes tell you to remove the whole thing from the pan and then serve it. We just cut it and serve it straight out of the pan.

Kitchen Notes

Reheating the leftover pizza. There are a couple of approaches to reheating leftovers. You can heat it in a 350ºF oven for 10 minutes or so, on a Silpat- or parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Or you can nuke it for 45 seconds; meanwhile, heat a lidded skillet with a little olive oil over medium-high heat. Add in the pizza pieces, put the lid back, reduce the heat to medium and cook for 3 to 5 minutes. We prefer the latter approach for this type of pizza. It makes the bottom slightly crispy—a nice extra with the already deliciously browned, crispy cheesy edges.