hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with detroit style pizza that's
right the next time you hear two people arguing about whether Chicago or New
York Pizza is the best style you should probably interrupt them and tell them
they're both wrong America's best pizza in fact could be detroit style which is
what i'm going to be attempting to show you how to make in this video although
please keep in mind i'm relatively new to the detroit pizza party but i think i
have a pretty good grasp on the key elements and of course once this goes
live our friends from detroit can kind of fill in the blanks so with that let's
go ahead and get started with our dough and as usual that's gonna start with
some warm water as well as a packet of yeast and a teaspoon of sugar and by the
way if you found that packaged yeast in the back of the cupboard like I did and
it looks all weird and chunky and you're not sure if it's still good what we can
do is give it a stir and then wait like 15 minutes to see if it foams up which
means it's still good and if the yeast is still alive it's gonna look something
like this so yes we have proof of life and once we've determined our yeast is
alive we can go ahead and add the rest of our classic pizza dough ingredients
which will include some olive oil as well as some salt and some bread flour
and yes of course this will work with all-purpose but bread flour has more
gluten and works a little better for this pizza crust and once that's all in
there we'll go ahead and knead this with our dough hook of course scraping down
the sides once or twice if you have to I didn't film that part but anyway we'll
go ahead and need that for a few minutes or for however long it takes to form a
very smooth very soft fairly elastic fairly sticky dough and if everything
goes according to plan it should look something like this so that was looking
and feeling just about perfect and once that's how we can move on to our very
specific very specialized Detroit pizza pan which in case you're keeping score
at home is 10 by 14 inches and what we're gonna do is drizzle in some olive
oil and then spread it around with our fingers not just to distribute it but
also because we want our fingers covered with olive oil when we transfer our
dough in and the reason is we're actually going to let our dill rise
right in the pan we're gonna bake it so we'll go ahead and place our dough in
the center and then using our freshly olive oil fingers
we will kind of pull and stretch that dough out into a rough rectangular shape
all right just get it close and we absolutely do not have to go all the way
to the edges oh and in case you're wondering yes you can still do this
without this pan and I'll give you two great alternatives in the blog post but
if you do end up liking this you will probably want to order one of these
since it really does such a magnificent job and by the way is just a great
all-purpose roasting pan but anyway like I said we'll go ahead and stretch our
dough out a little bit and then simply cover that and let it sit for about an
hour to an hour and a half or until it doubles in size and while we're waiting
for that let's go ahead and talk pizza sauce and apparently what turns any
regular pizza sauce into a detroit pizza sauce is not the tomato sauce or the
trishal dry oregano and chili flakes it's actually the addition of garlic
powder or I guess granulated garlic and my sources in Detroit tell me this is
one of the major things that gives the pizza its signature flavor so even if
you're using fresh garlic like I did we're gonna want to fortify it by
stirring in some garlic powder and then once this is all together what we'll do
is let that simmer on medium low for at least 15 minutes and yes of course you
can let that simmer longer but we do want to let it bubble at least 15
minutes to fully hydrate our oregano and garlic
at which point we'll simply set that aside until needed and move on to the
other things we can prep while our dough is rising and that would be possibly
slicing some pepperoni and grating or dicing in my case some cheese and for
this I'm going to be using a combination of two parts Monterey Jack with one part
mild cheddar and you could grate this if you want but I'm gonna go ahead and
slice it into strips and then cut across into small cubes cuz it's gonna melt a
little more slowly when we put it in the hot oven and give our crust a little
head start before it gets soaked with rendered cheese fat and by the way the
traditional cheese for this pizza is called brick cheese which is really hard
to find at least in San Francisco or if you're in the Midwest probably not a big
deal but out here we're forced to simulate the texture and taste of brick
cheese by using this combination and of course
if you are using two different cheeses like I am once dice you're gonna want to
give them a little toss and obviously if one of the cubes falls off the cutting
board when you're done you have to eat it for good luck and then once our sauce
is made and our toppings are prepped we'll go back and check our dough which
as you can see is now doubled in size and once that happens we'll take our
finger tips which we probably want to rub with a little bit of olive oil from
the pan and we're gonna perform what they call in Motown the old deflation
rectangle ation all right so what we're doing simultaneously is basically
pressing out all the air while stretching and pushing this into a
perfect rectangular shape that goes all the way to the edges of the pan and
because pizza dough especially ones made with bread flour very elastic it's not a
bad idea to sort of stretch it up the sides like a half-inch or so since it
will kind of pullback and then what we'll do once our dough has been fully
deflated and rectangle ated is go ahead and place on whatever toppings we're
gonna use in my case some sliced pepperoni which as you could probably
see I did not slice myself and while incredibly delicious it was
unfortunately a little too thin and I will explain what I mean by that in a
little while and yes of course feel free to add whatever toppings you want I mean
you were after all the aretha of your detroit style pizza so go ahead and add
whatever you think will make your pizza more soulful but no matter what you use
just make sure you put it down first on the dough and then top that with the
cheese so we'll go ahead and scatter our cubes over and while doing that one of
the most important things to remember is we have to have cheese anywhere the
dough meets the side of the pan okay so as usual we do want to scatter this over
as evenly as possible but we want to pay particular attention to the edges okay
so like I said wherever we have pizza dough medium metal we want to make sure
that is totally covered with cheese because what happens when this goes in
the oven is that cheese is gonna melt and butter fats gonna render out and
basically that's gonna fry the edge of our pizza crust creating the most
incredible textured flavor to crust off' occation then maybe you've ever
experienced which by the way is one of the big advantages to this specialized
pan are you try this in a regular sheet pan you might just have an oven fire on
your hands but anyway once our pizzas been cheesed we're gonna go ahead and
ladle over our sauce and three very distinctive strips because apparently
that's how they do it it buddies and besides being pretty and giving us the
perfect sauce - cheese - dough ratio it will also show us where to cut these
slices later so we'll go ahead and apply our sauce as shown at which point
technically they should go in the oven okay
from what I'm hearing Detroit pizzas only have the toppings under the cheese
but since this is a pepperoni pizza after all and the best part of pepperoni
pizza are those crispy caramelized pieces on top I decided to decorate mine
by placing over a few more slices which is why them being sliced so thin almost
was a problem okay when you use this such a hot oven we really do want to
slice that a little thicker but having said that it did work out barely but it
did but anyway once I had this applied this was finally ready to pop into the
center of a very very hot 500 plus degree oven or whatever your highest
setting is for 15 minutes or so until it's somewhere between golden brown and
golden black and be very careful as you pull this out because your dough is
literally gonna be frying in olive oil pepperoni grease and rendered cheese fat
but you'll see in just a few seconds that bubbling will stop and that fat
will disappear somewhere nobody quite knows where exactly and right here you
can get a great look at that signature crust and why we want to make sure we
have cheese all along the edge and then what we'll do is let this cool for just
about five minutes or so before very very carefully using a spatula to slide
it onto our cutting board and once we've accomplished a successful dismount we
can go ahead and slice this into nine rectangular pieces using our strips of
sauce as a guide and yes it should sound and be very crisp
and right about here I realize my pizza was exactly three slices of pepperoni
short since I could have had two on each slice oh well I'll do it that way next
time that is what we refer to in the business as the learning process but
anyway I went ahead and sliced that up and went in for closer examination and
as you can see here not only are the edges crusty but that bottom should be
beautifully browned as well so it was very very excited to take a bite and
that my friends really was to die for possibly literally if you eat this too
often right just by being frightened fat and very crispy that crust was
beautifully light and airy and it had just a wonderful ratio between the sauce
and the cheese and the pepperoni so I just absolutely loved how this came out
and you usually hear this referred to as a type of deep dish pizza but that is
now what it reminded me of all right your typical deep-dish pizza has a
totally different texture than this okay for me this was much more of a
combination of like a really good for kaca
and like a charred thin crust pizza that would come out of a really hot
wood-burning oven and even though I don't know much about Detroit Pizza I
did instinctively know to eat towards the corner so that is the last part weed
since it's pretty obvious that's the money bite but anyway that's it my take
on Detroit style pizza I've never actually been to Detroit but after doing
this video I feel like getting on a plane and flying there so I can thank
them personally and maybe probably pick up a few tips but in the meantime I
really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to food wishes comm for all
the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy
you