DETROIT-STYLE PIZZA (The Best Pizza in a Pan)

Hey , what's up ?

This pizza could very well be the best pizza that you can make in a pan .

It's like making a loaf of bread and frying a whole pizza at the same time .

It's dope .

Get started .

I need to grab my instant reed thermometers so that I can confirm that this water is the proper temperature for this dough .

We need water .

That's about 80 to 85 F .

And we're good to go .

This is 240 g of water and I'm gonna measure it into my stainless steel bowl here on top of that , I'm gonna add two g of yeast this time around .

I'm using rapid rise yeast .

It's been a cold winter in my house so far and this stuff is definitely gonna speed things up a bit on top of that .

I've got 335 g of bread flour and seven g of salt .

Now , I'm gonna grab a sturdy spoon here and start to stir everything together to combine all this .

I don't usually use bread flour .

You guys probably noticed that on this channel , but all purpose flour isn't strong enough to hold up the cheese and the sauce and all the peps that this pizza needs .

Once this dough is stirred up to combine , we're gonna come back with a wet hand and give it a series of slap and folds for this .

We're just gonna grab a corner and basically fold the dough in half 20 or 30 times to develop a little bit of strength .

This move replicates a mechanical stand mixer , which is also gonna be an appropriate way of mixing this dough if you've got one of those and you wanna make sure you're getting your money's worth after a few of these folds there .

Now we're gonna wrap this dough with some plastic and set it in a warm spot for me .

That's gonna be on top of the refrigerator .

I'm gonna set a timer and come back to this dough in 30 minutes .

Now , after 30 minutes , we need to build a little bit more strength into this pizza dough .

And for that , I'm just gonna grab a grip of the dough , stretch it out and then fold it back over .

I'm gonna repeat that 5 to 6 times until the dough is starting to get nice and tight from there .

I'm gonna use my right hand to tuck and fold and tuck and fold a few more times to get the ball stretched into a little ball .

Detroit style pizza is essentially a bread that's baked in a pan with cheese and sauce on top .

So there's no reason not to build strength just like we would for a loaf of hearth bread that needs to stand up on its own in the oven .

And this looks great .

Now I'm gonna wrap it once more with some plastic wrap , put it back on top of the refrigerator at this time for two hours to rise .

And now I'm gonna grab a nice 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes .

I'm trying out this new brand here , Cento got at the grocery store kind of a value brand .

We'll see how it goes .

Let me know what your preferred brand of tomatoes is .

In the comments .

I'm curious about that .

Once this thing is peeled open , we're gonna pour out about 75% of it into a tall sided pork container .

And on top of that , I'm gonna add 50 g of tomato paste , seven g of salt , 10 g of sugar , a half gram or about a teaspoon of basil and oregano and then one g of chili flakes .

Now I'm gonna grab my immersion blender and give this stuff a quick puree .

I want some texture to this sauce but I don't want it all as chunky as these crushed tomatoes are right out of the can spitting this up .

I find is gonna give a sauce that doesn't slide off the pizza and it also kind of tastes exactly like Pizza Hut or uh dope after 25 seconds of spinning or so we've got things pretty smooth .

I'm gonna top that off with the other 25% of this can stir it all up and take a look .

It's kind of chunky .

It's kind of smooth and this is gonna be enough sauce to make this recipe two whole times or for four Detroit style pizzas .

I'm gonna freeze half right now because next weekend I'm definitely gonna wanna make this pizza again .

One last thing here , I'm gonna smash two garlics .

Give them fine mince .

Uh , garlic press will also work here .

You guys know I've got one of those and I use it a lot once these are all well chopped , I'm gonna grab a medium saute pan and preheat that over medium heat .

Once it's hot , I'm gonna glug in two tablespoons of oil .

This is avocado oil .

I would have preferred olive , but I was out and I'm flexible .

Next goes in the mince garlic and be careful here .

As always , this stuff can go from golden and perfumed to black and racked in seconds once it's starting to change color and it's smelling good .

I'm gonna add in my tomato stuff and then we're gonna stir all that up to combine .

I'm starting to cook a lot of pizza sauce on this channel and I would consider myself an uncooked sauce guy in good times , but you gotta go with what works .

And we need a very concentrated , very thick smooth sauce for this style of pizza because as you're gonna see later , Detroit style pizza is special and weird and there's some interesting considerations that need to be made .

But I'm gonna get to all of those .

After 25 minutes of simmering , we have a nice thick pizza sauce .

When I push my spatula through it , things stay put and I'm gonna give it a taste real quick .

Yum .

I'm gonna scoop it into a bowl now and then throw it into the refridge into a ready to party later on .

Ok .

Now , one of the weird things about this pizza is the cheese .

It's a Wisconsin made cheese product called brick cheese .

It's unique .

It's kind of weird .

It's got some age on it more than your average mozzarella .

It's nice and melty and it feels cool .

It looks cool and it smells totally sick .

Normally this cheese is gonna be cubed when you put it on the pizza , but I'm gonna be grading it on the largest hold sides of my box grater because my friend and Detroit style pizza master Michael Petri turned me on to this tip .

The cube stuff sits really heavy on top of the pizza and it will deflate things when it's fully proof sometimes .

So grating the brick is gonna give us feathers of cheese that will not bring down the house as it were later on .

I've graded four cups of cheese here .

That was too much .

Two cups is probably enough for two pizzas .

Once that's all graded , I'm gonna scoop it up and then throw it in the fridge .

The next very important consideration here is the vessel Detroit style is a pan pizza and the pan that you use makes a big difference .

These are the classic eight by 10 Lloyd pans and I think they're about $30 each on Amazon .

These also have lids which are very handy .

But yeah , check it out .

These hold heat and fried dough exceptionally well .

If you're a pan , pizza enthusiast , like the B boy , I think these are pretty worthy investment of your resources .

I'll throw a link down below to this one specifically .

But if you're a frugal boy and you still want a party Motor City style , a tradition eight by eight baking dish like this will definitely work .

Your crust is gonna be slightly less crispy on the bottom and make sure you've got two of them just like the Lloyd pans to prep these pans .

Now for dough , we're gonna glug in two tablespoons of oil .

We're gonna smear it all over .

Make sure you get in the corners , get in the edges and I'm gonna hit this other one real quick .

Now again , this is avocado oil , but anything unflavored or even olive oil will work fine and voil .

There we go .

Now we're gonna stack these up and set them aside so that I can check on my pizza dough .

It's been two hours now and it looks great .

It's just about doubled .

It looks gassy .

It looks and alive .

Now I'm gonna flour the top of this thing .

Then my cutting board spread around a little bit and then we're gonna flip out the dough .

We're gonna lightly flour the top of that .

And then very gently , we're gonna press this into a roughly square in shape .

When I got to cut this in half , it's gonna give us two roughly even pieces that we don't really need to shape much to fill out the pizza pan .

Once they're divided , we're gonna gently lay them into those oiled pans .

And as you can see , they're already kind of shaped like a rectangle .

Now , we don't have to degas it and risk a bunch of it snapping back from it being worked too much .

I'm gonna gently press these to be just a bit flatter , but they need to relax before we go all the way to the edge of the pan .

So the lids will go back on foil or plastic wrap will work as a lid if you don't have one and I'm gonna set a 30 minute timer to let the dough relax before we can come back and finish the job .

Ok .

After that , 30 minutes , now , we're gonna gently spread and poke and stretch these doughs to get as much coverage in this pan as we can .

I don't wanna press out a bunch of gas if I can avoid it , but also , don't worry about babying this thing .

The dough is really active and it's got powerful yeast in there and any lost gas will come back in the future .

Sure .

Once that's looking good and spread to the edges , we're gonna lit it up and let it rise for 45 to 60 minutes .

Wow , that's rising .

We're gonna finish up the prep for this pizza .

And for me , that means pepperoni , Detroit style pizza is more about fried dough , brick cheese and thick sauce than toppings in my opinion .

So , go crazy with whatever you prefer .

But for me , fried crispy cup up , Peps are definitive and I gotta have them on this style .

I've got a whole stick of pepperoni here and I'm gonna be cutting it into 1/16 slices .

Maybe not too thick .

Basically , this is Boor's Head brand , by the way , it's probably my favorite of the most widely available stick pepperonis .

And once these are all cut up , now I'm gonna throw them in the ref fridge with the rest of the pizza toppings .

And now I'm gonna grade a little bit of Parmesan .

This is just some decent domestic stuff .

I do not think that the Detroit pizza man that we're trying to replicate here is gonna be springing for a huge block of imported Regian .

This stuff tastes good .

Bels .

So what's up ?

Ok .

That's into the fridge .

Now , let's make some pizza first though .

I gotta preheat my oven and my pizza stone to 500 degrees Fahrenheit .

After one hour in a warm place , my doughs have risen the proper amount .

They're just shy of about halfway up the size of these pans and now it's time to build one that means cheese goes down first .

Yes , this is that Wacky Detroit signature .

But remember this is bread as pizza , it bakes for a long time and cheese under the sauce is gonna protect it a little bit .

That being said , you can definitely do cheese over the sauce , but you're gonna have to experiment to make sure you don't get weird oily cheese .

Now .

So we're gonna go on to the sauce and this stuff is looking really good .

It's her .

It's a little bit sweet and it's super robust .

We need to keep the sauce segmented from the cheese though .

This is not a spread across edge to edge type situation because we need places where the cheese can still get some caramelization and the sauce here is more of a supporting character anyways , next up is my pepperoni and I'm gonna put down a lot of those .

This is about a half stick per pizza and then some Parmesan , we're gonna snow down a ton of that and wow , this pizza is now ready to load into our 500 degree oven and we're gonna bake this right on top of the pizza stone for 16 to 18 minutes .

The pizza stone is pretty important here .

It transfers all of that heat to the bottom of the pan , making our dough much more crisp and fried .

Which is important because this pizza is all about the fried dough without it .

It's just a flabby pan pizza .

It's still good , but it's not special .

Also , I'm gonna make these one at a time in a fully heated up oven .

Here .

It gives me the crisp crust .

I know how to make .

Now , after 18 minutes this pizza is done and wow .

I mean , it's just , oh my God .

Look at this thing .

It's baked hard .

It's sizzling and frying in the pan .

The pepperonis are crisp .

They're cup , the cheese is brown and you know , the bottom is gonna be golden and crisp .

It's beautiful .

It's incredibly fun .

And now I'm gonna burn this out of my mouth .

Let's eat this thing .