Detroit Style Pizza Techniques

[JoeSousa]

I have those pans on my wish list. The company that makes them is local to me too. Wish they had a retail store or sold factory seconds or something like that.

[RonB]

I'd happily eat either one of those.

[coreyo]

I had a very busy weekend, but I managed to do a few pizzas on Friday. First, let's look at the new equipment.

https://lloydpans.com/landing-pages/detroit

Behold! My new Lloyd 8" x 10" Detroit Style Pizza Pan:




My first impressions really are very good. From the moment that I held it in my hands, I could tell that this was a high-gauge, high quality pan. I was actually quite surprised that the inside of the pan resembled your standard, non-stick Teflon pan. The literature says that these pans are rated for up to 700F. The literature also points out that this is a commercial pan. As such, the focus is on full functionality, not aesthetics. Because of the processes they use, you can see all types of imperfections that happen during manufacturing such as weld marks, rivet marks, marks from the clamps used to manipulate the pan during construction, etc. They refer to these as "beauty marks":


Personally, I do not mind these at all. The pans are still beautiful to me. I've never owned a high-end commercial-grade pan before. This is easily the nicest, highest quality pan that I have ever owned. The lids are very nice to have, especially if you want to get several of these pans and stack them on top of one another while the dough is proofing. I also bought the 7" mini pizza peel. In all honesty, this is not something that really has much of a function. I'm not sure how often I'll use it. It's too wide to slip into the short side of the 8" x 10" pizza pan. I'll let you know if I find a good use for it. I'm excited to see how well this pan holds up over time and just whether or not they are worth the money. I can tell you they are definitely over-priced, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't buy them.

A word on the pans that I'm using: It should be noted that most of the cast-iron and baking pans are flared. Like all of my other pans, even though the Lloyd pan measures 8" x 10" at the top, the surface area on the bottom of the pan is only 6.25" x 8.25". The pan is actually much smaller than it seems in the pictures. Likewise, my Bayou Classic 8" x 8" cast-iron pan only has a bottom area measuring 7.5" x 7.5". Regardless, At 51.56 square inches and 56.25 square inches respectively, I was delighted to see that the ingredient proportions would be the same for both of them. I still think that this is the perfect size for a Detroit-Style pizza.

Now onto the pizza! I wanted to show a comparison between the products of my cast-iron Bayou Classic 8" x 8" pan and the Lloyd aluminum 8" x 10" pans. For both of the pizzas, I used about 10oz of Alton Brown's dough with a slow rise overnight in the refrigerator, and a 4-hour proof in the pan before baking. I also used about 7oz of my cheese mixture for each of the pizzas. The pizza oven was set between 600F and 650F.

My mom flew in for Mothers day, and so ended up making a much more boring cheese pizza for my wife and mom. For this, I used my tried and true cast-iron pan. Because I was not adding pepperoni, I decided to allow the crust and cheese to bake for 9 minutes, then add the sauce and allow an additional 3 minutes to finish. As usual with the cast-iron pan, the olive oil under the crust began to boil right about the 4-minute mark.

Here are the results:




I was eager to make a cheese pizza because I wanted to show a few things.
#1. You can see how the overall shape of the pizza is light and puffy in the center with a thin, jagged, crusty cheese perimeter. It's like a little square puffy pillow.
#2. This is the optimal way to apply your tomato sauce: One wide, thin dollop of sauce in the center of each individual slice of pizza. This obviously requires you to plan where you are going to cut your pizza ahead of time. Here you can clearly see that this pizza was made to have 4 pieces.
#3. You can see the caramelization of the cheese on the top. Even better when the pepperoni turns crunchy. This is one of the reasons that I have really enjoyed using the hotter pizza oven as an alternative to the cooler kitchen oven.

Overall, the crust looked beautiful. You can see the the thin crusty layer on the bottom that fried in the olive oil. Only a few millimeters in, you can see the light. fluffy-white center of the bread. I'm not sure why, but a small part of the crust did stick to the bottom of the pan this time. You can see on the bottom left where it ripped a little bit as I was releasing it from the pan with a metal spatula. My wife is not particularly fond of pizza, nor has she been particularly excited about my weekly pizza experiments. Even so, after wolfing down a bite of this pizza, she described it as "Great!".

Next I made my usual pepperoni pizza in my new Lloyd pan. I knew from previous attempts with cheap, thinner cake pans that I would probably need to alter the temperature, bake time, or both. I lowered the heat down just a smidge (closer to 600F). The layer of olive oil underneath the dough began to boil in under 2 minutes (less than half the time it takes with the cast-iron pan). I ended the first cheese-and-dough phase a minute early, allowing only 5 minutes. I piled the pepperoni on top and cautiously placed it back in for another 5 minutes. Being afraid of the blazing pizza oven now, I noticed that the pepperoni and cheese didn't get quite as much time to really crisp up and caramelize as I would have liked. It was still pretty good, just not ideal. I pulled the Lloyd-pan pizza out after 10 minutes of total bake time. Here were the results:





As you can see, even with the temperature lowered just a smidge and the cook time reduced by a total of 2 minutes, the crust was significantly darker all-around. The cheez-it crust around the perimeter of the crust was the most noticeable difference. Not only is it darker, but the smoother, non-stick finish of the Lloyd pan made it look almost glossy. Overall, the results from the Lloyd pan are not as visually appealing as with the cast-iron. The cast-iron pan seems to provide a buffer that slows down the heating process and spreads it more evenly. It is yet unclear to me if lowering the temperature when using a thinner pan will produce the same results. I will need to do at least 2 or 3 more cooks with it to properly experiment.

I also took the time to cut some cross-sections and document them in photos.

Here is a cross section of the cast-iron cheese pizza:



Here is a cross section of the pepperoni pizza done in the Lloyd pan:


You can see that the inside of the crust on both pizzas was fluffy, moist, and spongy regardless of the color on the outside. The inner consistency of each pizza was very close. I think that the cast-iron crust was a just a little bit fluffier. It felt a little bit lighter in the mouth. In the pictures, it looks like the sponge cells (air pockets) are slightly larger in the cast-iron pizza than the Lloyd pan pizza. Let me know if you think that I'm imagining it.

Despite being less visually appealing, the darker Lloyd pan pizza had a more satisfying "crunch" factor. Cutting the Lloyd pizza was a louder affair. Each bite had a little extra crunch to it. In some ways, it was preferable to the prettier cast-iron pizza. This only raises more questions! How can I split the difference for the perfect mix of crunchiness, flakiness, pillowy-ness, and sex appeal?

I wanted to take this opportunity to note that this is not a knock on the Lloyd pans. From what I can see, these pans are about as good as they come. Being a fan of cast-iron, I know how it is generally superior to even the most expensive all-clad pans when seasoned and utilized properly. Any comparisons are purely due to the fact that the cast-iron pans have significantly more mass and a better ability to store and distribute heat. My approach here has been a major departure from Detroit-Style tradition, and I will have to experiment more before I can claim any superiority over the cast-iron approach.

From here, I will continue my experiments with the aluminum pans vs the cast-iron pans. I might also try experimenting with some additional chemical leaveners to see if I can get just a bit of extra lift in the final bake process. Does anyone have any ideas about how to do that?

Until Next Week...

[JeffJ]

coreyo Please don't post any more pictures. I'm on a diet and the pictures you've already posted are killing me. :-)

[coreyo]

I appreciate the support guys. Let me know how yours turn out. Let me know what equipment you are using and what works and what doesn't work for you. Post some pictures! Once I am reasonably satisfied with my experiments, I will completely rewrite the first post and add a lot more pictures.

[CaptainMike]

Another great, entertaining, and informative write-up Corey. You have a nice way with words, keep 'em coming!

[au4stree]

I gotta tell ya, I've subscribed to this thread and enjoy getting your weekly updates. It is appreciated, at least from this guy. I'll be purchasing a pan and giving this a go soon. Thanks again!

Best quote: "It was as if focaccia bread and angel food cake had a fried love child." LOL

[coreyo]

Another weekend, another experiment (or two). My previous attempts have mostly been fantastic. However, as always, I know that I can do better. After focusing on technique, ingredients, and equipment, I decided to work on my composition. Up until now, my pizzas have seemed a bit to heavy and dense. After 2 pieces, I'm pretty full. 3 pieces and I'm uncomfortable. 4 pieces ... well only after taking a break. As much as I enjoy eating it, I'd like to enjoy eating more of it. Here is was the focus of this weekend's experiments:

I've been looking at the resources here: https://detroitstylepizza.com/at-hom...-pizza-recipe/ . They give dough and cheese measurements for a 10" x 14" pizza. I noticed that they were significantly less than what I typically use (ratio-wise), and I decided to give it a shot.

1: The Dough:
They use 18 oz of very wet, sticky dough for a 10" x 14" pizza. Then they let the dough proof for 3 hours in the pan before building and baking the pizza. In my last attempt, I let the dough rise during my afternoon nap before baking the pizza. The texture was a bit different, but I didn't see a huge rise or increase in fluffiness. This week, after reducing the dough amount significantly, the lower weight of the dough seems to have allowed for a much higher lift making the crust lighter and spongier. I used 9oz of dough for my 8" x 8" cast iron pan and allowed the dough to rise for about 3.5 hours. Now that I had a clear dough weight for my pizza, I decided to splurge on a slightly better dough recipe: https://altonbrown.com/pizza-dough-recipe/ . I cut all of the ingredients in half and I still had more than enough for 2 8" x 8" pizzas. I made a second pizza in the same pan and did not allow the crust to rise. This would give me a good comparison.

2.The Cheese: I went all the way down to 8 oz of cheese this time. This dramatically cuts the cost of the pizza. I did one pizza with shredded cheese, while I did the second with small cubes of cheese. Again, this was for comparison. The shredded cheese was much easier to apply to the fully proofed pizza dough without accidentally compressing it or weighing it down. The cheese went on evenly, except around the border of the pan where I piled it twice as high as the center.

The Result (you really have to click on the pictures to zoom in):



This was probably my best pizza yet. It was undoubtedly my best crust yet. How do I describe it? Have any of your ever had pan pizza from Pizza Hut? Right ... I would never order pizza hut either. But if I had, the one thing that I would have noticed about it is how they use some chemical wizardry to achieve light, spongy fried crust with golden flaky brown spots all around. Well this was some deep dish Pizza Hut-level light fried crust! As you can see, there were fried golden flaky spots all over the bottom of the crust. It was as if focaccia bread and angel food cake had a fried love child. The golden fried outer layer gave way to a light, fluffy, airy, spongy crust that disintegrated somewhat on my tongue. Even though I still put a stupid amount of pepperoni on top, the overall feeling of the pizza was significantly lighter and more binge-worthy. I managed to eat 4 slices in 20 minutes. This was something that I could not have done in my previous experiments.

The second pizza was made after cleaning out the pan and reassembling all of the ingredients. The crust was certainly not bad, but having only 15 minutes to rise, it was not nearly as light and flaky as the first one. Likewise, I found that I had a very difficult time evenly covering the pizza with only 8 oz of cubed cheese. After the first bake phase, there were multiple spots where the bare crust was poking out through the cheese. With such a high temperature and such short bake times, the shredded cheese did very well. I think that, at higher temperatures, the cubed cheese is not necessary.

Some Final Thoughts:
This time I substituted Muenster in my cheese mixture instead of Provolone. I did not have a side-by-side comparison, but I didn't really notice any apparent difference. I'd say that you can use either of them with almost identical results. The cheese was still a bit stringy and melted nicely. the flavor was, for all practical purposes, identical.

I went with a thinner pizza sauce than last time as part of my attempt to create a lighter pizza. I still had water leaking from the sauce after I applied it to the top of the pizza, causing some soggy pool under the crust after the pizza was cut. I'm still trying to find the right balance between a thick paste and thin runny sauce. As for applying the sauce, I found that I could apply the sauce in small drips to each section of the pizza to achieve what looks like a big dollop of sauce that is much thinner. You do not want a thick layer of sauce or it will take away from the magic of the rest of the pizza.

If the oven gets a little too hot, the olive oil on the bottom will burn up. If this happens, part of the bread might stick to the bottom of the pan. If your pizza does not pull cleanly out of the pan once you've released the crusty cheese layer around the sides, you probably need more olive oil or a slightly lower heat.

Focus For Next Time:
I have ordered a Lloyd 10" x 8" Detroit style pizza pan (with mini pizza peel and matching lid). I'm very excited to try it out and compare it with the cast-iron. I'll otherwise be attempting to hone the same technique that I used this weekend to refine the final product just a little bit more.

[CaptainMike]

Heck yeah, I'd wash dishes for a taste of that pie!

[JeffJ]

It looks like you really nailed it. Nice work!

[klflowers]

You need to move to Detroit and open a pizza joint. I am originally from Detroit, I'll move back and be your helper. Just pay me with a slice or two

[coreyo]

Alright, another week and another batch of pizzas. This weekend I had a nice new Bayou Classic Cast Iron 8" x 8" baking pan:



In my opinion this is the the perfect size for making Detroit Style pizza. It's also a nice thick-walled pan which seems to help evenly distribute the heat. As with any new piece of cast iron, I oiled it up inside and out with flaxseed oil and baked it in a 450F oven for an hour. I repeated this step a second time for good measure. After my first bake, the pizza released from the sides of the pan pretty easily, and I was able to pull the entire pizza out of the pan with minimal effort and no sticking or tearing.

This time I oiled the pan, stretched the dough from edge-to-edge, covered the pan with a wet towel, and allowed the dough to proof for about 3 hours before adding any toppings. I'm still unsure about this step. As you will see, the crust has a spongier, more focaccia-like quality to it. On the other hand, I did not achieve any of the nice big bubbles that I like to see form in the dough.

I've also been playing around with placing pepperoni between the cheese and the dough. I use the very large, thinly sliced deli pepperoni for this, and I believe that is a mistake. It forms a pretty impenetrable barrier between the crust and the cheese that I do not like. I also think that this step is completely unnecessary if you're going to load the pizza up with pepperoni on the top. If you're going to do this step, use smaller, thinly sliced pepperoni with plenty of space between each pepperoni so that the dough and the cheese can properly meld together.

For my next point, I just wanted to thank Pequod for his post on Chicago Style pizza (also sticky in this thread). I tried microwaving my pepperoni for about 45 seconds and wringing them out between paper towels before placing the pizza in the oven. I do recommend this step. It accomplishes 2 things: It allows you to get crispier, bacon-like pepperoni more quickly without long bake times, and it drastically reduces the standing grease in the final product. You won't see large pools of grease in this one:



I set my Camp Chef 16" pizza oven topper to about 580F in the center of the oven stone, and 620F at the back of the stone (as measured by my IR thermometer gun). The integrated dome thermometer read about 650F. As far as I can tell, this is the perfect temperature for cast iron Detroit Style pizza. I reduced my cook time to 12 minutes total (6 minutes for the dough and cheese phase, and another 6 minute for the pepperoni bake phase). The oil began to bubble after only 4 minutes. The last 6 minutes was more than enough time to achieve some nice, crispy pepperoni. Behold the finished crust:




You'll note that the fried Cheez-It crust around the outer ring is perfectly golden brown without being overly dark. The bottom of the crust is perfectly browned as well. Because of the 3 hour rise, you can see just how focaccia-like it was. Cutting the pizza into quadrants also produced a very pleasant crunch sound.

The last thing that I'd like to mention is the sauce. In past batches, the sauce has been too thin. This time, I accidentally left the sauce to simmer for an extra hour and the result was a very thick, very sweet, very pleasant caramelized tomato paste. When I did the final re-heat of the pizza sauce, I also added a little bit of shredded parmigiano reggiano to the sauce for some added flavor. Here it is loaded onto the top of the pizza quadrants:



While the sauce was great by itself, it did not work for the pizza, and I instantly regretted it. It was too thick and the flavor was too intensely concentrated for the pizza. It detracted from the other elements of the pizza. This is why the sauce should be kept simple. You want to highlight the fruity "tomatoey" qualities in the sauce and the final product should be light and not overly thick, dense, or overwhelming.

That's it for this week. I've already bought my cheese blend for the next pizzas that I will make. Next week I will experiment with muenster cheese as a replacement for provolone and see what it does. I may also try using shredded cheese again now that I have a good target oven temperature. Let me know if there are any other suggestions, and thanks again for all of the input that I've already received.

[au4stree]

This is a great thread. Thanks for sharing...

[coreyo]

yeah, I saw the limburger comment on the description and it gave me pause. I've never tried the stuff. I'm told that, despite its strong and terrible smell, it's actually quite a mild cheese.

[CaptainMike]

BTW, I did the German style brick cheese last week. It is basically a Limburger and if you can get over the smell while preparing it it's pretty good. Gawd, it makes me wonder who was the first person to ever smell that stuff and say "Wow, this smells good enough to eat!" Too pricey to continue ordering it when there are very good options available locally.