Detroit, Michigan, United States

Detroit

Square, crispy-bottomed, sauce on top.

Hydration
70–80%
Bake temp
500–550°F
Bake time
12–16 min
Ferment
24–48 h cold + 90–120 min pan proof
Oven
blue-steel rectangular pan, conventional deck
Flour
Bread flour

Defining characteristics

Cheese-to-edge frico crust, tall airy crumb, sauce striped on top after the bake. The defining gesture is pushing brick cheese hard against the pan walls so it caramelizes against the steel into a lacy, crackling cheese rim.

Classic examples

History

Detroit pizza was invented in 1946 at Buddy's Rendezvous on Six Mile and Conant by Gus Guerra and his wife Anna. The pan that gave the style its shape was an automotive-parts blue-steel utility tray (10"×14"), repurposed from the auto plants that defined Detroit's economy. Buddy's recipe — a high-hydration dough pressed into the oiled steel pan, Wisconsin brick cheese piled to the corners, sauce striped on top — set the template.

For decades Detroit pizza stayed local, known to regulars at Buddy's, Cloverleaf, and Loui's but invisible nationally. The 21st-century revival started with Shawn Randazzo, who won the Las Vegas International Pizza Expo in 2012 with a Detroit pie and went on to license thousands of pans through Detroit Style Pizza Co. Pizzerias like Emmy Squared (Brooklyn, 2016) and Square Pie Guys (San Francisco, 2018) carried the form into the modern artisan-pizza scene.

Common riffs

Detroit bianca skips the sauce stripes for ricotta and herbs. "Jet style" (after Jet's Pizza) leans on a heavier, denser dough and smaller pans. The cheesier-than-cheesy variant just doubles the brick to push the frico edge taller.

Other Detroit recipes