We really like the Detroit style pizza from a local restaurant here in town, but having such a large family, it is expensive enough that we really treat it as a 'treat'. Since my standard pizza has been such a hit at home, I thought I'd take a stab at making Detroit style. So, I did some googling (that is a verb now isn't it?) to try to learn the intricacies of producing this style of deep dish pizza.
The first thing I learned is that Detroit style pizza is generally made in a square pan. This is contrary to what we've been eating locally, but I think I'm okay with not trying to be nit-picky about the finer details. To me, the main things that define this pizza style is a caramelized cheese crust, dollops of sauce on top, a caramelized cheese crust, a thicker bread-like crust, and also a caramelized cheese crust. Yes, we really like the caramelized cheese crust around the outside.
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| Pizza Dough in Pan |
One of the aspects that had me wondering if I could do this was the pan used to bake the pizza within. I had toyed around with trying to find a deep dish pizza pan, and did find a few online that would probably do the trick. But there were quite a few options; coated steel, coated aluminum, non-coated, non-stick coated, anodized, etc. So, again I googled to see what might be the 'best' pan to use. I found out something that should have been obvious. My cast iron skillet would work just fine for this task. And so began my giddiness to try my hand at this endeavor!
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| Ready for the Oven |
In looking at various dough recipes, it became apparent that my standard whole wheat pizza dough recipe should do fine in this application. So I whipped up some dough Friday morning (I forgot to make it Thursday night!) so that it could rise during the day and be ready to make into pizza that evening. The intent was to make some standard pizzas, and create one experimental Detroit style in the cast iron pan.
I won't go into the details on the standard pizzas, as I have
another post on that topic. For this great experiment, I first greased the cast iron skillet with olive oil, and then rolled out a ball of my dough to just fit the bottom of the pan. There is not supposed to be any lip/edge to the crust, so that the cheese can be spread to the edge of the pan (for the delicious caramelized cheese!). I have a small cast iron pan as well, and decided to also make a small pizza in that pan, which actually became my pre-experimental pizza since it got baked first. The dough was covered in cheese (mozzarella, colby-jack, and cheddar), and topped with a few dollops of pizza sauce.
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| Fresh from the Oven! |
Baking time was around 15 minutes for the small pizza, and 17-18 for the large one, with the oven set to 500 F. The indicators I used for determining when to pull the pie out were a browning of the cheese on top of the pizza, and seeing that the cheese at the edge had caramelized. It almost looks burnt I suppose, but it tastes oh so good!
The pizza came out sizzling and smelling absolutely wonderful. It slid out of the pan easily enough so I could cut it into slices, then promptly put the pizza back in pan to keep warm.
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| The Caramelized Cheese Crust!!! |
So, how did it taste? Well, you can ask my wife, but if we didn't have another event (with even more great food) later that evening, I would have scarfed down the whole pizza myself. I was absolutely giddy with how well this turned out. The crust was crispy on the bottom, chewy in the middle, with a perfect edge of 'burnt' cheese at the edge. The kids have dubbed it their new favorite pizza, and I'm thinking I may have to buy some more cast iron pans to keep up with demand!
The whole wheat crust does add a very different dimension to the taste of the pizza that I'm still trying to decide is good or not. The whole wheat flavor of my standard pizza is fantastic, but this combination in the pan pizza may need some more experimentation! Bummer! :)
