Detroit style pizza to die for

I love all forms of pizza. Here's a Detroit style one where you put the cheese first and cooked sauce on top. The cheese melts down the edges and caramelized making every bite crispy.

Detroit style pizza to die for
Look at that crispy caramelized cheese all along the edges!
Detroit style pizza video in Polish (!)

The dough

  • 320 grams of wheat flour, the one milled really finely. Called “tipo 00” in Italian. Or unbleached bread flour in general.
  • 6 grams of dry yeast (that’s about 12 grams of fresh yeast)
  • 9 grams of salt.
  • 250 grams of cold water
  1. Dissolve the yeast in cold water. Yes, cold. It will still work, it just needs a bit longer and that will develop a better flavor.
  2. Mix in all the rest of the ingredients. Yes, salt too. No, it won’t kill the yeast.
  3. Kneed in a stand mixer or by hand, until it all comes together. It should be a really sticky and soft dough so don’t add extra flour.
  4. Wet your hands in water, and drag the sides of the dough to its middle. So it becomes kind of a ball on the bottom of the bowl.
  5. Cover. And let it proof until it doubles in size.

The Sauce

  • 40 ml of extra-virgin olive oil (or, if you want to make this as cheaply as possible, use regular cheap ass oil. It won’t taste as good but good enough)
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • 5 grams of dried oregano
  • 5 grams of gotucharu red pepper flakes (or a dash of whatever hot pepper you like)
  • 1 small onion
  • 800 grams of canned whole tomatoes. That’s usually two regular cans.
  • 5 grams of garlic powder (because it gives a different kind of garlic flavor that compliments the fresh one)
  • 30 grams of sugar
  • 15 grams of salt
  1. Oil in a large pot and heat on medium
  2. Mince the garlic and chop the onion
  3. Fry onion and garlic together with chili flakes and garlic powder and oregano. Give it a minute or so.
  4. Add canned tomatoes.
  5. Sugar and salt.
  6. Let it simmer on medium heat until a lot of liquid evaporates and you’re left with about half the amount of sauce, all thick and chunky.

The final steps for pizza

  • A deep oven pan, about 25x35 cm in size. Make sure it’s made of metal to get that crust going.
  • 300 grams of white cheddar cheese, or anything that reminds you of Wisconsin block cheese. Well, if you’re in the US I guess Wisconsin block cheese is what you’ll have. For the rest of the world, you need to find a cheese that melts and becomes crunchy when melted, and that has a slight acidity to it. Like... a cheap white cheddar.
  • Your tomato sauce
  • About 30 g of olive oil (or shitty cooking oil, that will do if you want to save money but it doesn’t taste as good)
  • About 150 grams of thinly sliced salami. Or “pepperoni” as the Americans would call it (!).
  1. Set the oven to 250 C.
  2. Oil the inside of the pan all over the bottom and up the sides.
  3. Put the dough in the pan and stretch it so it covers the bottom. It will take a while, but eventually you’ll manage.
  4. Cover the pan and let the dough proof for 30 minutes. Meanwhile the oven will heat up so that’s perfect. And then...
  5. Add slices of salami evenly over the dough.
  6. Cut the cheese into dices and place them even over the pizza. Yes, cheese first. All the way to the edges. That’s the thing with Detroit style pizza, it makes the cheese melt down the sides and caramelized and get all crunchy.
  7. Spread the sauce on top but not all the way to the edge. Leave the edges with cheese only.
  8. Into the oven for about 20 minutes until the cheese is all crusty on the edges, like really really dark brown.
  9. Push a spatula along the edges to separate them from the pan.
  10. Lift the whole pizza out by using two spatulas. Or one really big one, I guess?
  11. Cut into large squares.
  12. Eat that crispy and chewy pizza!