Detroit Style Pizza: The Square Pan Pie With the Crispy Cheese Edge (With Recipe)

What is Detroit style pizza?

Detroit style pizza is a deep, square-cornered pan pizza, usually 8 by 10 or 10 by 14 inches, with four defining features. The crust is thick but open and light, closer to focaccia than to a dense deep dish. The cheese, traditionally Wisconsin brick, is cubed and spread to the very edge of the pan, where it melts down the sides and caramelizes against the hot steel into a crunchy, lacy border that pizzerias call the frico edge. The sauce goes on top of the cheese, in two or three stripes, so it stays bright and the crust under it stays dry. And the whole thing is baked hard, in a dark steel pan, so the bottom comes out fried and crisp rather than bready.

The result is a pizza you judge by its corners. On an 8-slice pie, four squares have two walls of caramelized cheese, and people fight over them. Our pizza styles atlas puts it alongside the other American pan pizzas; this page goes deep on the one from Michigan.

What goes on a Detroit style pizza, in order

The build is upside down compared with a round pizza, and the order is the whole point.

• Dough: a high-hydration, no-oil, no-sugar dough pressed into an oiled pan and allowed to rise a second time until it fills the corners.
• Pepperoni first: pressed straight onto the dough, under the cheese, so it stays moist and its fat soaks into the crust rather than sitting on top. Buddy's, the originator, still does it this way.
• Cheese: brick cheese cut into small cubes, covering the top edge to edge and heaped along the pan walls. That wall of cheese is what becomes the crisp edge.
• Sauce on top: a cooked, seasoned tomato sauce spooned in two or three stripes down the length of the pizza, either before the bake or, at some shops, ladled on hot after it comes out. The stripes are called racing stripes in Detroit, and a plain cheese version with sauce on top is a red top.
• Anything else: cupped pepperoni on top for crunch, pickled peppers, a dusting of grated Parmesan or Romano. Toppings stay sparse, because the crust and the cheese edge are the attraction.

The pairing rules for everything else you might add are on our pizza toppings page.

Detroit style pizza dough spec

Same spec card we use for every style in the atlas. The numbers below scale in the dough calculator, which has a Detroit preset.

• Flour: bread flour, 12.5 to 13.5 percent protein. All-purpose works but gives a softer, less chewy crumb.
• Hydration: 70 to 75 percent. This is a wet, slack dough you press rather than stretch.
• Oil in the dough: none. The oil goes in the pan, generously.
• Sugar: none.
• Salt: 2 percent.
• Yeast: 0.3 to 0.5 percent instant for a same-day dough; less for an overnight cold rise.
• Ferment: 2 to 3 hours bulk at room temperature, then 1 to 2 hours in the pan; or 24 to 48 hours cold, then 2 hours in the pan to warm and rise.
• Dough weight: 450 to 500 grams for a 10 by 14 inch pan; 280 to 300 grams for an 8 by 10.
• Shape: pressed into the oiled pan with oiled fingertips, rested, pressed again to the corners. Never rolled.
• Cheese: 250 to 300 grams brick cheese, cubed, for a 10 by 14; spread to the walls.
• Sauce: 200 to 250 grams cooked, thick tomato sauce, in stripes on top.
• Bake: 500 to 550°F, lowest rack, 14 to 18 minutes, dark steel or anodized aluminum pan.
• Cut: 8 squares on a 10 by 14 (two rows of four), 4 to 6 on an 8 by 10.
• Origin: Buddy's Rendezvous, Detroit, 1946.

Make this style: open the calculator with the Detroit preset

Where Detroit style pizza came from

In 1946 Gus Guerra, who ran a neighborhood bar called Buddy's Rendezvous at Six Mile and Conant on Detroit's east side, started baking a square, Sicilian-influenced pizza for the after-work and returning-veteran crowd. The pans were the accident that made the style. Buddy's own history says they were forged steel pans from local automotive plants; a trade account in Restaurant Business describes them as rectangular blue steel pans that auto suppliers had been using, passed along by a supplier. Either way they were heavy, dark and seasoned deeper with every bake, which is exactly what a crisp bottom and a caramelized cheese edge need. Buddy's still describes its dough as double proofed and stretched twice in the pan, with the toppings layered in reverse order.

For decades it stayed a Detroit thing. Jet's Pizza, founded in Sterling Heights in 1978 by Eugene and John Jetts, grew the square pie into a franchise that now counts more than 400 stores in 25 states. Little Caesars, also a Detroit company, put its Detroit-style Deep! Deep! Dish on sale nationwide in April 2013. Pizza Hut launched a Detroit-Style pizza across the country on January 26, 2021, after what it said were more than 500 test versions, and that is the moment the style stopped being regional. Our history of pizza page follows the longer American story, from the first New York slice shops to the pan pizzas of the Midwest.

Detroit vs Chicago deep dish vs Sicilian: how the pan pizzas differ

People lump every thick square pizza together, and the three big American pan styles are built on different ideas. Detroit is cheese-to-the-edge and sauce on top. Chicago deep dish is a buttery, pie-like crust pressed up the sides of a round pan with cheese on the bottom, toppings in the middle and chunky tomato sauce covering everything. Sicilian, in its American form, is a rectangular sheet-pan pizza with a soft, bready crust and a conventional sauce-then-cheese order.

The Detroit vs Chicago pizza argument is mostly a texture argument. Deep dish is a casserole you eat with a knife and fork, dense and rich and slow to bake. Detroit is lighter than it looks, holds in the hand, and bakes in a quarter of the time. Detroit is sometimes sold as Detroit deep dish, which is a marketing name rather than a kinship; the two styles share a depth and nothing else.

The Detroit style pizza pan

The pan matters more here than in any other style, because the pan is what makes the edge. The originals were blue steel, which is untreated carbon steel that darkens and seasons with use like a cast iron skillet. Modern pizzerias mostly use hard-anodized aluminum pans made for the purpose, 8 by 10 or 10 by 14 inches, about 2.5 inches deep, with straight or slightly angled walls and a dark finish that absorbs heat. LloydPans, the Washington maker that supplies much of the trade, said in December 2022 that the Detroit style pan had become its best-selling pan style of that year, which tells you how far the style had traveled.

At home, you do not need a special pan to start. A 9 by 13 inch metal baking pan with straight sides works for a first batch; use a dark one if you have it, and a light one will give a paler edge. A 10 inch cast iron skillet makes a round Detroit-ish pizza with the same cheese edge. Glass and ceramic dishes do not get hot enough fast enough, and the cheese sticks to them. Whatever you use, oil it heavily, 2 tablespoons for a 10 by 14, since the oil is frying the bottom of the crust.

Brick cheese, and what to use instead

Brick cheese is the Detroit cheese, and it is a Wisconsin cheese. According to the Wisconsin cheesemakers' own account, a Swiss-born cheesemaker named John Jossi invented it in 1877, pressing the curds with bricks to drain the whey, which gave the cheese its shape and its name. It is semi-soft and higher in fat than mozzarella, milder than the Limburger it is related to, and well-aged brick turns sweet and pungent. Young brick is what goes on pizza. It melts creamy, browns well, and when it hits the hot pan wall it renders enough fat to fry itself into that dark, crisp edge without turning to oil the way cheddar does.

Outside the upper Midwest it can be hard to find, so pizzerias and home cooks blend. The closest everyday substitute is low-moisture mozzarella mixed half and half with Monterey Jack, or two parts mozzarella to one part mild white cheddar; both give the fat content the edge needs. Cube the cheese rather than shredding it. Half-inch cubes melt into pools and build the edge; shreds melt flat and burn before the crust is done. Our guide to the best cheese for pizza covers how each of these melts and browns.

Detroit style pizza recipe for a home oven

This is how to make Detroit style pizza in a standard kitchen oven, in one 10 by 14 inch pan or a 9 by 13 baking pan. It is a same-day dough; the total time is about 4 hours, most of it rising. The sauce is a quick cooked sauce, because the stripes on top need body; our pizza sauce page has the longer version and the reasoning. The dough is also on our pizza dough recipes page as the pan dough.

Common mistakes with Detroit style pizza

A pale, soft edge means the cheese did not reach the pan wall, or the pan was light-colored, or the oven was not hot enough. Push cubes of cheese right up against the metal, all four sides, and bake on the lowest rack so the pan takes heat from below. A dense, tight crumb means the dough was under-risen in the pan or over-handled; let it fill the corners on its own, with two gentle presses an hour apart, and do not knock the air out. A soggy middle is too much sauce or sauce spread as a layer instead of stripes; 200 to 250 grams in stripes is the ceiling for a 10 by 14. A pizza that sticks means not enough oil in the pan or a pan that was not hot when the cheese caramelized; lift the whole pizza out with a thin spatula within two minutes of it leaving the oven, before the cheese edge cools and glues itself down. And cutting in the pan scratches the seasoning you spent three bakes building; move it to a board first.

Frozen and chain Detroit style pizza

Since 2021 you can get a Detroit style pizza almost anywhere. Jet's and Little Caesars keep one on the menu year round, and Pizza Hut's 2021 launch put the style in front of the rest of the country; the chain versions use mozzarella blends rather than brick and bake in conveyor ovens, so the edge is crisp but less deeply caramelized than a pizzeria's. Buddy's has shipped its frozen eight-square pizzas nationwide through Goldbelly since late 2020. Frozen Detroit style pizza is now a supermarket category of its own, and it reheats better than most frozen pizza because the thick crust tolerates an oven; bake it directly on a preheated steel or sheet pan rather than the rack so the bottom crisps. Our best frozen pizza ranking covers which brands are worth the freezer space.

Leftover Detroit squares are the best leftover pizza there is. The crust is thick enough to survive a day in the fridge and the cheese edge re-crisps in a covered skillet over medium heat in 4 to 5 minutes; our how to reheat pizza guide has the method.

Detroit style pizza calories

A 10 by 14 inch Detroit style pizza made to the recipe above, with 480 grams of dough, 280 grams of cheese, 220 grams of sauce and 60 grams of pepperoni, comes to roughly 2,800 to 3,100 calories for the whole pan, or 350 to 390 per square when cut into eight. That is about a third more than a slice of a New York cheese pizza and a third less than a wedge of Chicago deep dish, which puts it where you would expect for a thick pizza with a lot of cheese. Skipping the pepperoni saves about 35 calories a square. Our pizza calories page has the chart for every style, and the thin New York style slice is the comparison most people want.