Detroit Style Pizza

Detroit-style pizza is a rectangular pizza with a thick crust made light and airy. It's topped with tomato sauce, olives, vegan pepperoni, and vegan cheese that melts beautifully.

You're going to love making this Detroit Style Pizza: it's easy, versatile and the result is a fluffy, deep-pan pizza with incredible toppings. You can think of it as a delicious, light, and airy focaccia, with the toppings of your choice. Detroit Style pizza is cut into rectangle pieces, so you can eat it with a lot more ease.

It's perfect for lunch and dinner and it keeps really well for a few days. So you can make it in advance and take it with you for work lunches. It doesn't require much effort, it's a very easy dish to make. Besides, everyone loves pizza. We love pizza and we already made an amazing vegan pizza before including awesome vegan wholegrain pizza. Yum!!!

Detroit Style Pizza Ingredients

There are three sets of ingredients you will need to create the perfect Detroit-style rectangular pizza. Ingredients for the dough, the toppings, and ingredients for the vegan pepperoni if you want to add it to your pizza. We absolutely recommend the pepperoni because it's what makes the pizza taste amazing.

Pizza Dough

Strong flour: I used type 550 which is not the strongest but still enough to leave your pizza base light and airy. You can use bread flour as well, it will work just as fine with this recipe. But we don't recommend all-purpose flour.

Instant yeast: Use a small sachet of instant yeast. Most sachet come in 7g which is perfect.

Olive Oil: You will need to add a bit of oil to your dough and I cannot stress the importance of using a good quality extra virgin olive oil. Not only it's a little healthier in comparison to other oils, but it also tastes better.

Salt: Make sure to use good quality sea salt. I don't ever recommend using simple table salt for any of my recipes. Sea salt is my go-to for everything.

Water: You will need some tap water to hydrate the flour. It can be slightly warm, which usually helps the yeast a little.

Pizza Toppings

Olives: Use a handful of green olives and a handful of black olives. I like to slice them but you can just half them if you prefer.

Tomato sauce: Get a can of passata if you can. If you don't have passata in your pantry, use a can of tomatoes but first, put it in your blender to make it into passata.

Vegan Cheese: I like to use shredded vegan cheese for pizza. It melts so nice and tastes similar to the real thing. I prefer a brand call SimplyV but I know many people prefer VioLife. I don't like VioLife as much because it has too much coconut oil content and it doesn't melt well on my pizza.

Basil: Use some dried basil to add over your tomato sauce. It will make the whole thing taste much better.

Vegan Pepperoni

Smoked tofu: Tofu is going to be the base for your pepperoni. I strongly recommend that you use smoked tofu because that's really going to make your pepperoni taste more like the real thing.

Paprika: I use paprika for almost everything as you know, but on this occasion, the paprika is super important. It will make your pepperoni be bright and red and will give it that incredible taste. Use either smoked paprika or spicy paprika. Sweet paprika won't work really well.

Chili flakes: How spicy do you want your pepperoni? I always say start with 2tsp of chili flakes but you can up it from there. Spicy pepperoni works really well with Detroit-style pizza so you are in control here.

Garlic powder: Use garlic powder and not fresh garlic.

Caster sugar: You can use any sugar you have in your pantry. If you want a healthier option go for coconut sugar. You can add caster sugar, brown sugar, coconut sugar.

Mustard seeds: You can use mustard seeds or, as a tip, if you happen to have pickle spice, you can use that instead. Pickle spice has mustard seeds, but also a variety of other ingredients including juniper which honestly makes this recipe soooo much better.

Balsamic vinegar: This will hydrate your mixture a little but also give it a bit of a kick. You can use any balsamic vinegar. If you don't have balsamic vinegar, you can use cider vinegar.

Mirin: This Japanese ingredient is the holy grail for almost everything I make. A little tsp is all that's needed to brighten the recipe. Mirin is irreplaceable but if you don't have it in your pantry you can add 1tsp of soy sauce instead.

How to make Detroit Style Pizza

Let's start by making the dough. Prepare a standing mixer with the hook attachment. It's actually quite important that you use a standing mixer as otherwise, it will take forever to knead by hand. Plus the dough itself is fairly sticky so it won't be easy.

Add all the dough ingredients in the mixer's bowl: flour, yeast, salt, olive oil, and water. Now allow the machine to knead for 15 minutes at medium speed.

This is the time when I make a cup of tea myself and relax while I wait.

Ok, once the dough is ready, transfer it to another bowl, cover it with a damp towel and let it proof for 60 minutes.

In the meantime, we can start making our vegan pepperoni. Preheat the oven at 180C/ 350F.

In a food processor, mix all the pepperoni ingredients. Blend until you get a crumbly mixture. Should be slightly moist. So when you press it between your hands, it should stick together.

Transfer the mixture to a piece of parchment paper. Add a layer of cling film over it, and using your rolling pin, roll it to create a thin layer of your mixture. This will be the thickness of your pepperoni slices.

Remove the cling film and bake it in the oven for about 15 minutes. You will know it's ready when the edges start to brown a little and the middle feels fairly dry but still somewhat flexible. Remove from the oven and using a round cookie cutter, cut the mixture into small rounds. That's basically your pepperoni slice right there. Set aside.

Now that your dough has doubled in size, it's time to take it out of the bowl. Line a rectangle baking tray with parchment paper. Use a fairly deep baking tray. Drizzle with a good amount of olive oil. Using a kitchen brush, you can brush the oil to ensure all the sides of the parchment paper is oily.

Now transfer the dough to the baking tray, over the parchment paper. No need to knead it beforehand. Now oil your hands a little with olive oil. Using your fingers, stretch the dough to become big enough for your baking tray. Keep on stretching slowly but surely.

Allow the dough to rise for 40 minutes. It will double in size again.

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.

Very carefully and gently brush the tomato sauce over the top of your dough. You don't want to press on the dough. You want your dough to preserve all its air bubbles.

Sprinkle with sea salt and basil. Now scatter the olives and add your vegan cheese. Add the vegan pepperoni slices you prepared earlier.

Bake in the centre of the oven for 30 minutes. When ready, remove from the oven and allow the pizza to cool for a few minutes.

Carefully remove the pizza from the tray, with the parchment paper. Gently remove the paper from the pizza and place it back in the tray. You can now cut it into small rectangles and enjoy it right away.

How to Store & Reheat

It keeps really well on the counter, covered with aluminum foil. It's really delicious and this pizza goes really fast in our house, but it can keep up to 3 days.

We like to eat it cold on the second day but if you want to warm it up, sprinkle some water on the top of it and place it back in the oven for 10 minutes until warm. Delicious!

This recipe has been developed entirely by Yuzu Bakes. Any resemblance with other recipes is purely coincidental.