Brick cheese to the edges. Sauce on top. Lloyds pan, always.
Time: 18 min | Yield: 1 8x11 pan pizza | Difficulty: Intermediate | Serves: 6 | Published: 2026-03-05
Detroit Pizza is truly an incredible experience. The airiness and thickness of the dough, rectangular shape, the caramelized cheese edges, the way it comes out of the pan with those crispy lacy borders that make people audibly react when they see it. It's a showpiece.
In this recipe, we are par baking the Detroit pizza out of ease. A traditional Detroit pizza actually skips the par bake, uses brick cheese and sometimes puts sauce on top AFTER the bake. If you want that version, keep an eye out, my Traditional Detroit Pizza recipe is coming to the site.
The star of the show is the frico, that deeply caramelized, crispy, almost-burnt cheese crust that forms where the cheese touches the pan. You can't get it without three things: brick cheese (or a 50/50 blend of low-moisture mozz and aged white cheddar if you can't find it), a real Lloyds steel pan, and the discipline to push cheese all the way to the metal. No bare-edge Neapolitan instincts here. The cheese has to touch the pan.
Detroit pizza is engineering disguised as food. Every element exists to produce a specific outcome: airy interior, crispy bottom, and that signature caramelized cheese edge.
The pan is the whole game. Blue steel pans (Lloyds is the gold standard) are a specific alloy developed for Detroit-style pizzerias. They conduct heat aggressively but evenly, season like cast iron, and develop a non-stick patina over time. A regular baking pan won't give you the same bottom crust or the same cheese release. If you plan to make Detroit more than twice a year, buy a real Lloyds pan. It's $30 and it'll outlive you.
70% hydration is the sweet spot for pan pizza. Higher than my NY dough (63%) because this dough sits in an oiled pan and needs to stay soft through a long 12-15 minute bake. Too low and the crumb is dense. Too high and the dough can't support the cheese load. At 70% you get the airy, focaccia-like interior that's signature to Detroit, see my hydration guide for more on pan-pizza hydration.
Brick cheese is traditional, but there are replacements. You can use white cheddar, provolone, and low moisture mozzarellas. Originally a Wisconsin farmers' cheese, brick is semi-soft with a milkfat content around 50% and a specific calcium-to-sodium ratio that makes it melt, bubble, and brown better than any other cheese. Low-moisture mozz melts but doesn't brown aggressively enough. Cheddar browns but doesn't stretch. A 50/50 blend of low-moisture mozz and aged white cheddar is the best substitute when you can't find brick, you get the melt from the mozz and the browning from the cheddar.
The sauce goes on last on traditional Detroit pizzas, after it's cooked. But I often put the sauce on raw. Just make sure it's on top of the cheese before cooking. In every other pizza style, sauce goes on first. In Detroit, cheese goes on the raw dough and bakes alone. Then you finish with three stripes of sauce across the top after it comes out. Why? Because if you put sauce under the cheese in a 15-minute bake, the sauce bubbles and steams the cheese from below, preventing the browning and frico formation that make the pizza work.
Press the cheese into the corners aggressively. The frico edge is what sells this pizza. If you leave any cheese margin (even 1/4 inch), you get normal pan pizza, not Detroit. See How to Make Detroit-Style Pizza at Home for the full technique breakdown including pressing the cheese against the pan wall.
Cheese didn't touch the pan walls, OR your pan wasn't properly seasoned (cheese can't release), OR you used pre-shredded cheese (anti-caking agents prevent proper melt). Push cheese cubes hard against ALL four pan walls. Use a well-seasoned Lloyds pan (re-season if needed with neutral oil at 400°F for 1 hr, 2-3 times). Use whole brick cheese cubed, not pre-shredded.
Pan was on the middle or upper rack, OR you skipped the preheated pizza steel underneath, OR the oven wasn't hot enough. Lower-middle rack only. Place pan on a preheated baking steel/stone, the conductive heat from below is what browns the bottom. 500°F minimum. If your oven runs cold, go 525°F.
Dough was too cold when you pressed it, OR you didn't do the 20-minute rest between presses to let the gluten relax. Let dough come to room temp for 30 minutes BEFORE first press. Press, rest 20 min, press again. The rest is the secret. Cold dough fights you, room temp dough cooperates.
Rack position too high (cheese too close to broiler element), OR oven temp set too high (550°F+ burns the top before the deep pan cooks through). Lower-middle rack at 500°F is the gold standard. If your oven is convection, drop to 475°F. Cover loosely with foil for the first 8 minutes if you have an aggressive top element.
Too much oil in the pan, OR pepperoni rendered oil into the cheese pockets without anywhere to drain. Use just enough oil to coat the pan surface, not pool. About 2 tablespoons for a 8x11 pan. If using pepperoni, pat slices dry with paper towels before placing on dough.
Under-fermented dough (skipped the cold ferment or rushed it), OR pressed too aggressively during the in-pan proof. Minimum overnight cold ferment. In-pan proof is 90 minutes uninterrupted, don't poke or press it during the rise. The dough should visibly double and look pillowy before cheese goes on.
You put pepperoni on TOP of the cheese, exposed to direct top-down oven heat. Pepperoni goes UNDER the cheese. Place pepperoni directly on the dough, then cover with cheese cubes. The cheese protects it from the broiler. Pepperoni oil seeps up through the cheese during baking, that's the magic.
Either you skipped the sauce simmer (raw sauce doesn't have the right depth) OR you put sauce under cheese instead of striping on top. Simmer the sauce 15 minutes with garlic, olive oil, oregano, salt. It should taste cooked, slightly sweet, with concentrated tomato flavor. Stripe on top AFTER bake, not under cheese.
Widmer's (Wisconsin) is the most authentic, Amazon or widmerscheese.com. Best substitute if unavailable: 60/40 blend of low-moisture whole-milk mozzarella and aged white cheddar. Avoid yellow cheddar, the color looks wrong on Detroit pizza.
You can try with a 8x11 metal baking pan, but the crust will be noticeably worse. Blue steel conducts heat much better than aluminum or nonstick. For regular Detroit-making, the Lloyds pan is $30 and worth it. Cast iron works as a last resort.
Two common causes: kitchen too cold (below 70°F, try placing the pan near the warm oven), or under-kneaded dough with no gluten structure. The dough should visibly double in size before baking. If it's not rising at all, the yeast might be dead, check the expiration date.
Yes, scale the dough down proportionally. A 9x9 square pan works with ~250g of dough. Just keep the 70% hydration ratio and adjust yeast accordingly. See my Detroit pizza dough recipe for ratios.
Both are pan pizzas with different traditions. Sicilian: round or square, sauce on top of cheese, thicker crust, no frico edge. Detroit: rectangular, sauce after baking, cheese pressed to pan edges for frico crust, airier interior. See vodka-sauce Sicilian to compare.
A well-seasoned Lloyds pan should release naturally after 5 minutes of cooling. If it sticks, run a thin offset spatula or butter knife around the edge. Lift from one corner, the pizza should slide out as a unit. If it's still sticking regularly, your pan needs more seasoning.
Yes. Prep dough up to 3 days ahead (cold ferment in fridge), pull morning of baking, press into pan, rise 90 min, top, bake. Sauce can be made 4-5 days ahead. Don't pre-assemble the full pizza, top and bake fresh.
Yes. Let cool completely, wrap individual slices in plastic wrap then foil, freeze up to 2 months. Reheat at 375°F in a toaster oven for 10-12 minutes, the bottom gets crispy again, the cheese re-melts. Microwave reheating turns it to rubber.
The cheese has to touch the pan. That frico edge is the whole point, don't chicken out and leave a margin.
Nutrition (1 square (1/6 of a 8x11 pan)): 425 calories, 19g protein, 38g carbs, 22g fat.