Detroit red-top pizza — the recipe
Detroit builds its pizza upside down: the cheese goes on first and all the way to the steel walls, and the sauce lands last, laddered over the top in bright stripes — the red top. Where cheese meets bare metal it fries into the lacy, caramelized rim the style is famous for: the frico edge.
This is a pan recipe, so everything below is weighed for the pan, not a ball — dough and toppings scale together with pan area, and the table covers the common sizes. The dough itself is light and buttery; the Detroit preset weighs it for whatever pan you own.
What goes on top
Per pizza, on the default 35 × 25 cm pan — in layering order:
cubed small, scattered edge to edge — cheese against bare steel is where the frico happens
Different pan? Dough and toppings scale together with the pan’s area — the common sizes:
| Pan | Dough | Brick cheese | Pizza sauce |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 × 22 cm | 475 g | 190 g | 115 g |
| 33 × 23 cm · 13 × 9 in | 546 g | 215 g | 130 g |
| 35 × 25 cm | 630 g | 250 g | 150 g |
| 33 × 33 cm | 784 g | 310 g | 185 g |
| 40 × 30 cm | 864 g | 345 g | 205 g |
| 46 × 33 cm · 18 × 13 in | 1093 g | 435 g | 260 g |
The dough
Detroit red-top is built on Detroit dough. Buttery steel-pan square with crispy frico cheese edges. For 4 pans:
| Ingredient | Baker's % | For 4 pizzas |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 100% | 1436 g |
| Water | 70% | 1006 g |
| Salt | 2.2% | 32 g |
| Olive oil | 2% | 29 g |
| Sugar | 1% | 14 g |
| Yeast | 0.23% | 3.3 g |
The yeast is weighed for an example 8 h rise at 21°C — your kitchen disagrees, and that’s the point: set your real schedule in the calculator and it reweighs the pinch.
How it’s done
- Make the dough: 4 pans of Detroit dough — the calculator weighs everything for your pan size.
- Stretch the dough into the oiled pan and let it relax into the corners.
- Top with 250 g brick cheese (cubed small, scattered edge to edge — cheese against bare steel is where the frico happens).
- Top with 150 g pizza sauce (two or three stripes laddered lengthwise over the cheese — resist spreading them).
- Bake at 250 °C / 482 °F — no steel or stone needed: the pan is the baking surface; set it low-to-middle in the oven.
Questions from the counter
I can't find brick cheese — what's the substitute?
Half low-moisture mozzarella, half a mild young white cheddar, cubed together. Wisconsin brick is buttery and high-fat, which is what fries into the proper frico edge; the blend gets convincingly close. All mozzarella works too — the edge just turns out a little politer.
Why does the sauce go on top?
Tradition with a function: under all that cheese the sauce would steam the crumb and dull the bake, but riding on top it concentrates in the oven while the base stays crisp. Some shops even spoon it on after the bake — hot dough, hot stripes. Either way, the cheese goes down first.
Do I really need the deep steel pan?
The blue-steel Detroit pan is the genuine article — deep, dark and seasoned, it fries the base and walls at once. No need to special-order for the first try: any sturdy metal pan with tall sides gets you a very good square; dark metal beats shiny, and depth matters more than pedigree.
Pepperoni under the cheese — is that a thing?
The old-style move: thin natural-casing pepperoni straight on the dough, then the cheese buries it. The slices baste the crumb from inside instead of cupping on top. Weigh it like the pepperoni page does and tuck it under — the red stripes still get the last word.
Get the dough
The Detroit preset weighs the pan and writes the schedule — mix, rise, pan, dimple, bake.
The clock is a suggestion. The dough is the boss. In bocca al lupo!
Impasto is a free pizza dough calculator for Neapolitan, New York, Roman, Sicilian, Detroit, thin crust and focaccia doughs — flour, water, salt and yeast weighed in baker's percentages, with the fermentation schedule written for you.