Detroit Style Pizza

Yields 2 Square Pizzas or 1 Rectangle Pizza Serves Approx 8 People

Hey everyone, Mark here. I love pizza. Like, I REALLY love pizza. I would eat it every day if I could. But until recently I’d only ever had the traditional round styles we’re all familiar with as well as the much debated Chicago style pizza. I stumbled across this style one day when I was scrolling through Youtube for dinner ideas. I’d heard of it before, of course. But I’d never thought to try it myself until now!

So, if you don’t know what Detroit Style Pizza is, it’s traditionally a rectangular pizza baked in a heavy industrial steel pan. It’s dough is thicker than a Neapolitan pizza and almost like a focaccia. The pizza is topped with cheese, with toppings and sauce on top. The cheese goes all the way to the edges and as the pizza bakes, the oils from the cheese fry the dough and the cheese gets extremely well cooked. This pizza is very decadent and should be enjoyed as a treat.

I didn’t have a pan big enough, so I used two square cake pans. They may not have been steel, but these pizzas were incredible.

Anyway, enough waffling!

Ingredients:

For the dough:

• 237ml water
• 7g yeast
• 1tsp sugar
• 3tsp olive oil
• 1tsp salt
• 310g 00 flour (plain flour will work, don’t worry)

For the sauce:

• 790g tin of finely chopped tomatoes
• 50g tomato paste
• 7g salt
• 10g sugar
• 1tsp dried basil
• 1tsp oregano
• 0.5tsp chilli flakes (that’s 0.5…. not 5!)
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2tbsp olive oil
• Cheese of your choice, diced into 1cm (ish) cubes. We used cheddar, mozzarella and havarti
• Optional toppings like pepperoni etc

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Method:

Dough:

1. Pour warm water into the bowl of stand mixer; mix in yeast and sugar and let dissolve. Add 2 teaspoons olive oil, salt, and bread flour. Knead mixture together with a dough hook attachment until dough is very smooth, soft, and elastic.
2. Place dough into a bowl and coat the ball with remaining olive oil. Allow to rise until doubled in size, around 60 to 90 minutes
3. Once dough has risen, turn out into a large, oiled baking tin (10 inch by 14 inch is the official size, we used 2 7×7 inch)
4. Gently press the dough out so it completely covers the the bottom of the tin. Place in a warm spot for around 30 minutes while we do the sauce.

Sauce:

1. Pour 2tbs olive oil and crushed garlic into a large sauce pan and turn on to medium. Allow garlic to soften slightly.
2. Add tin of tomatoes, oregano, basil, chilli flakes, salt and sugar
3. Stir and allow to reduce on low for around 30 minutes

Assembling the pizza:

1. Grab the tin with your pizza dough and grab as much cheese as you want and scatter it across the dough. Making sure it goes right to the edges; little to no edge crust should be visible.
2. Add your optional toppings such as pepperoni, shredded chicken, etc.
3. Ladle 2 – 3 stripes of pizza sauce across the length of the pizza. See photo for reference.
4. Optionally grate on some parmesan
5. Place pizza into preheated 260°c oven and bake for 15 – 20 minutes.
6. Remove from oven and leave in the tin for 5 – 10 minutes or so to cool and relax slightly
7. Using a spatula, carefully turn out the pizza
8. Slice into rectangles or squares and serve.

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