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Sourdough Pan Pizza (Detroit & Sicilian Styles)
Here is a recipe for pan pizza that you can build in the decadent and scrumptious Sicilian or Detroit styles, or as in the pizza above, a mash-up of the two styles. I think pan pizza is perfect for summer because the oven time is brief. Unlike baking a series of thin, single-serving Neopolitan pizzas on a preheated stone or steel, this single topping-heavy pizza bakes for 18 minutes after a normal-length oven preheat, and from the smallest to the biggest pan options I give, you can feed four to six people; even more if you offer side dishes too. I developed this recipe to be 2/3 bread flour and 1/3 whole wheat flour, and I tested it with white sonora whole grain flour and sprouted hard red spring whole grain flour for the whole wheat component. Feel free to substitute flours as you prefer, and simply add water slowly and aim for a barely hand-kneadable dough.
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Both Sicilian and Detroit-style pizza are thick and rectangular, but the former is usually heavier on the sauce and the latter has more cheese. Sicilian pizza comes from the Palermo region of Italy and in its migration to the U.S., it was increasingly baked in rectangular pans rather than round ones. Sicilian pizzas are often topped with onions, anchovies, tomatoes, and herbs. The traditional cheeses for this pizza are strong in flavor, for example, caciocavallo, which has a provolone-like flavor, and pecorino romano, a hard sheep’s milk cheese.
Ample sauce for a Sicilian style pan pizza
Detroit-style pizza was invented in the Motor City (Detroit) in 1946 by Gus and Anna Guerra. They put a Sicilian pizza dough in one of the blue steel pans that were used to hold nuts and bolts in auto manufacturing. This pizza only became well known outside of The Motor City when Shawn Radazzo’s Detroit-style pizza won the International Pizza Expo in 2012. You can learn more about this fascinating history here.
Crispy edges
The steel pans of this pizza style continue to be used today and can withstand high heat, don’t warp, and the dark color conducts heat well and encourages the crisping of the cheese around the edges of the pan. Detroit-style pizzas are topped in reverse, with cheese first and sometimes pepperoni in this layer too. You should use a buttery Wisconson brick cheese if you can. I used a mix of mozzarella and not-sharp provolone and cheddar cheeses, and found the flavor came across as buttery nonetheless. The cheese chunks are arranged all the way to the dough’s edge, and an herby sauce is either dolloped on top or spread in two stripes or “tire tracks” down the center of the dough. Pepperoni is often the final topping so that it curls up in cups on top of everything else.
Sauce tire tracks on the left; no sauce on the right
I’ve baked this pizza dough in a stainless steel roasting pan with parchment paper, non-stick bakeware, and finally a dark steel pan from Detroit. All the pizzas were tasty, but the darker pans and no parchment paper definitely helped the Detroit style of crispy cheese edges and a fried pizza underside. For either style, it’s important to be generous with oil, making sure you rub it up the sides of the pan or parchment paper. Also make sure you don’t exceed any temperature limits of your bakeware. Non-stick usually maxes out at 450F, but you can make tasty crispy pizza at this temperature. For all pans and temperatures, you should bake the pizza on the lowest shelf of your oven so the pizza base gets cooked through before the toppings brown.
You can read more about Detroit pizza techniques in this Serious Eats article. You may also want to check out the pizza recipe of Half Baked Harvest where I got the topping ideas of sliced pepperoncini (friggitelli peppers) and crushed fennel seeds.
These pizzas were cooked at 450F in nonstick bakeware
Deep Dish Sourdough Pizza (Detroit & Sicilian)
These Detroit- and Sicilian-style pizzas are spectacular creations born of hot metal, delicious sourdough, multiple cheeses, savory sauce, pepperoni and so much more. Dough prep is easy and the toppings and methods can be tailored to your tastes.
Ingredients
See the NOTES for ingredient amounts for 11x17 and 9x13 pans
Recipe for 10x14 inch pan, 548g dough
Baker's Percentages
Toppings and Assembly
Instructions
Dough Mixing and Bulk Fermentation
Shaping and Pizza Assembly
Baking
Notes
9x13 inch pan (456g dough), multiply the toppings by 0.83 or top by eye
165g bread flour
85g white flour wheat flour
160g water
43g starter
5g salt
11x17 inch pan (734g dough), multiply the toppings by 1.3 or top by eye
266g bread flour
134g white sonora wheat flour
257g water
68g sourdough starter
9g salt
Sicilian-Detroit Hybrid
Detroit-Style Non-Stick Pans
Detroit-Style Steel Pan
Shopping List
High Protein Bread Flour
White Sonora Whole Grain Flour
$11.75 – $102.70White Sonora Wheat Berries
Sourdough Starter (Dry)
Mockmill 100 Grain Mill
Danish Dough Whisk — Large
Dough Rising and Storage Bucket w/Lid – 2 qt. Round
Sprouted Hard Red Spring Wheat Berries
Sprouted Hard Red Spring Whole Grain Flour
$12.00 – $106.30Stainless Steel Mixing Bowls — Set of 3
$39.99Sourdough Pan Pizza (Detroit & Sicilian Styles)