Make Authentic Detroit-Style Pizza From Scratch

Hi Bold Bakers! I'm Chef Gemma Stafford, and this week on Bigger Bolder Baking, I'm showing you how to make this Detroit-Style Pizza. Here's how to do it. So the Detroit-Style Pizza, this is something that's actually quite new to me. Somebody on our team actually suggested that we make it. I didn't know a whole lot about it. I'll tell you what it is. It's a thick-based pizza, so kind of similar to a focaccia but like chewier. Then you have cheese, your toppings, which we're doing pepperoni, and then your sauce on top. And the secret to Detroit-Style Pizza is the cheese. Traditionally it's a cheese from Wisconsin. We're going to do a mix of jack and mozzarella. And you need to get those edges almost burnt. I mean like burnt in the most delicious, yummy way. So let's start out by making our dough. You can do this on a stand mixer like I'm going to do, or you can do it by hand. You're just going to need a lot more welly. More than I have today. Here goes our bread flour. Now listen to me, I want you to use bread flour for this recipe. I'll tell you why. We want that extra protein. Detroit pizza has a lovely chew to it, like really quite unique and delicious. So I want you to use a flour that has higher protein. In goes a little bit of salt. Very important in our doughs. We know this. On one side of the bowl, and then instant yeast on the other side of the bowl. Now if you're going to use active dried yeast, you can't just add it into your flour like I'm doing here. You have to activate it in your warm liquid. And you'll need a little bit more yeast if you're going to do that. You've seen me do this before. Mix in your salt there into your flour. Then go over and mix your yeast into your flour. And then you can mix them all together. Okay turn on your machine to like a medium, medium low. And slowly add in your lukewarm water. Now I've told you about lukewarm water before, blood temperature water. Yeast loves warm water. It needs it to grow. It makes it happy. If it's cold water, it's going to make your dough very sluggish and we don't want that. So lukewarm water, just pop it into the microwave for a few seconds and take that chill off. So when your dough starts to come together just like this where it forms a ball and there's no more dry flour or bits left in your bowl and it's just swirling around, this is the consistency, this is the dough that we want. If yours is a little bit dry, then add a splash more water, just a little bit more until it starts to look like this and form one ball. This is looking great. Now all you want to do is just let this knead for around 8-10 minutes. If you're doing it by hand, you'll need to knead it for a little bit longer because it might just take a little bit more. There you go. That is our dough, nice and kneaded. So here's what we're going to do, I have an oiled bowl here, a little bit of olive oil just to make the life of your dough nice and easy. And what we're going to do is cover it up now with a shower cap or cling wrap and a tea towel and let it proof for two hours. There's a few things that yeasted doughs love, that yeast loves. It loves food, which it's going to get from the air, it's going to get from the flour and the water and everything, it loves warmth which we're going to give it in the water and then also covering it up like this, it loves time to proof, to relax, to chill. So we're going to set this over to the side at room temperature for two hours, let it proof and then come back and then we can start to get it into our pan. So fast forward two hours and our dough is ready. It doesn't proof a huge amount, it's kind of a heavier dough, but it does rise, you will see bubbles. So let's talk about the pan for this pizza, it's a special type of pan, it is rectangle, you can use a 9x13 if you don't have this, I have put a link on my website of where you can buy this on Amazon, it's a little bit pricey but I have to say it is really worth it, it gets you that lovely scorch on the pizza which is what we're going for and it just makes the crust really brown and chewy and absolutely delicious. So into the pan, this is one of the things I love about this pizza, we are going to pour a lot of oil, two tablespoons of oil, not a lot of oil, but this makes the pizza like lovely and greasy and fatty and delicious. So rub that all the way around and then let's take our dough, put it straight in there, here's what we're going to do, push the dough into the corners, try and spread it out as much as you can, such a lovely soft dough to work with and with the oil everywhere, just makes it greasy and yummy. So there you go, just shape it into the pan, now here's what's going to happen, watch this, the dough pulls back, so here's what we have to do now, we're going to cover it up and let it rest for a minimum of half an hour, the gluten will relax, it will be easier to pull all the way to the edges. So just like all our rules with dough, we cover it up, we keep the air off it, we keep it nice and warm, set it over to the side, for at least half an hour, we're going to come back, mold it, and then we'll be able to put on our toppings. So my dough has relaxed for a little bit, I also just stuck on my oven because it needs to be 500 degrees, nice and hot, so it's going to take some time. So let's check this dough out, now when you go in with your hands now, you can feel the bubbles under your finger, but you'll also notice you can push it right there to the very edge, and it'll stay put, and then you have all that lovely olive oil going everywhere. Which I think is my favorite part. Now next we're going to flip the script a little bit and we're going to add in our cheese, the cheese goes on top of the bread. So like I said, this is traditionally a cheese from Wisconsin, we're going to use, to replicate that flavor, we're going to use cubed mozzarella, now I don't want you to use fresh mozzarella, I don't want you to use grated mozzarella, I want you to get that block of mozzarella that you don't normally buy, chop that up into cubes, and this is what we're going to scatter all the way around, and make sure to get into those edges. Want this everywhere, all along the sides, everywhere. And then I have some jack cheese, just regular jack cheese, nothing else in it, and we're going to put this all around also. Next we're going to add in our toppings, pepperoni for me, always, always pepperoni. Now I ask for you to have a lot of pepperoni for this pizza, and you might think like, you don't need that much pepperoni, and that's not true, you need all the pepperoni, you need lots and lots of pepperoni, and we're just going to layer it on and just put it everywhere. Pepperoni everywhere, pepperoni on pepperoni. And then lastly, our sauce. So some people do this different ways, some people do drizzles down the sides, and some people just dollop it on, in big dollops on top. I like to do the dollop, use all of that sauce, get it into the edges, over the sides, everywhere. Dollop-y, dollop-y, dollop. Now the lovely thing is we don't have to proof it anymore, we are done. My oven just pinged, it's nice and hot, so let's get it in there, waste no more time. Bake your pizza in a really hot oven, 500 degrees Fahrenheit, 250 degrees Celsius, for roughly 15-20 minutes, until you see a lovely char on those edges, and the pepperonis really start to pop. The timer went off, and our pizza is done, look at how gorgeous that looks. It's hot from the oven, bubbling, cheese everywhere, absolutely gorgeous. Once this is out of the oven, don't wait too long, cut yourself a nice big slice. Look at that, still steaming. This is what pizza dreams are made of. If you like a big, meaty pizza, then this is for you. The crust is thick, it is loaded with cheese, lots of sauce on top, pepperoni, it's greasy, it's fatty, it's comforting, it's carby, it's absolutely delicious. Definitely if you have not had a Troy Style pizza, now is the time to try it. If you want more pizza content, you have come to the right place, stick around because I've got hours more videos for you to check out. Thanks so much for being here, and I'll see you back here again really soon.