I made this pizza tonight largely as an excuse to keep seasoning my Detroit-style pans. Also, I wanted to try a more faithful rendition of the genre.
This is a 60% hydration dough. The pans’ instructions say to use a relatively dry dough for the first couple of pizzas, as anything above 65% will have a tendency to stick.Following some advice from Slice reader FredipusRex, I used a blend of mozzarella and muenster cheese—with some yellow cheddar thrown in there. But just for shits, for the frico-like ring around the edge, I tried a few different cheese. I wanted to see how the various cheeses I had on hand reacted to baking at the edge of the pan.
So I edged one long side and one short side with yellow cheddar. The opposite long side I used muenster. On the remaining short side, I used mozzarella. The cheddar fared the best, turning golden brown, while the muenster and mozzarella both came close to burning.
I’m still not happy with the texture of the crust. It’s rather spongey and not all that crisp. I don’t know if that’s what it’s supposed to be like or if I’m just not cooking these hot enough. I am not a fan of the spongey greasy crust.
The Specifics
60% hydration
1 gram instant dry yeast
156 grams King Arthur Bread Flour
95 grams water
3 grams salt
As dmcavanagh noted in a comment somewhere, either on Slice or in Facebook discussion about pan pizza doughs, most pan pizza doughs call for oil. But as they’re cooked in a fair amount of oil, the pizzas end up getting very rich. I’ve dropped the oil because of this. And, anyway, I’m going off Slice’r SonnyC79’s recipe, which doesn’t call for oil (or sugar) in the dough.
I mixed the dough around 9am in small starter bucket. Brought it together into a loose ball, oiled the bucket lightly, and let the dough sit there until 6pm (about 9 hours). At this point, I spread the dough in a Crisco-lined pan and let it rise there for 3 hours. Then pushed down, and topped and baked it.