Confluence of immigrants that yielded Detroit pizza

That might sound like faint praise, but

I assure you it is not considering how much i love a certain other pizza style.

This is where my number two pizza comes from. Actually, it's quite far from the magnificent Art Deco skyscrapers of Downtown Detroit, 6 Miles north to be exact, because it's up around 6 Mile road. There's a neighborhood where you're still likely to find fresh metal scraps on the sidewalk, in spite of all the deindustrialization that has humbled and hollowed out this proud city of production. Here it is — Buddy's Pizza, the original 6 Mile location. Wes Pikula has worked here since the 1970s when he was just a kid. He remembers delivering beers to cranky old Italian guys who'd get into fights playing bocce out on this court. Wes: They would come here and quite often they would hit this edge, and then the beers would all be in a bocce court, and of course I'd have to run from behind the bar, pour new beers, come out here, clean up.

Adam: Every server or former server out there, felt that one in the chest, Wes. Anyway, pizza. Wes: The story goes that in 1944, a gentleman by the name of Gus Guerra bought a little bar here, and in around 1946, his mother was from Sicily and she had come up with the idea of maybe doing a pizza. The original pizza type in Sicily was called sfincione, which is sort of like dough, meat pressed into the dough, little parmesan cheese. Adam: This is something like what that Sicilian sfincione would have looked like. Square, not round, not thin, but not thick either, tomato sauce, a little cheese on top, but nothing like a solid layer of mozzarella. That was the jumping off point for the pizza that Gus. Guerre and company came up with.

Buddy's then went through a succession of owners. That's Big Jimmy, and over here is Little Jimmy, they came next Wes: Big Jimmy, Little Jimmy owned it till 1970, and at that time the Jacobs family bought the restaurant and they owned it to this day, and when I started at Buddy's, these are the ladies that were significant in the kitchen, and over here you have Sabina, you have Dee, you have Connie, and you have Giga.

If anybody knew came in and wanted to change a process, it wasn't going to happen. If you look at some of the arms on these ladies, you could see that you weren't going to challenge any changes. Adam: Yeah, so not surprisingly, the pizza today is basically what it was in 1970 when the Detroit. News ran a citywide contest. That's a square Buddy's pie in the center, and it won. People who worked at Buddy's or who ate at Buddy's went on to start their own places that came to be known as Detroit-style pizza.

But, here's the original, it starts with a dough that's on the wet side. Wes: It's probably somewhere between 60 and 70%. Adam: That's about what. I usually do for a pizza dough, though they use cake yeast rather than dry. They feel it gives them a slower fermentation they prefer. They don't use sugar or oil or any dough conditioners. Wes: Yeast, salt and water. The initial fermentation could starts at about two hours, and then there's a period where the dough is kind of kept in holding.

Adam: That's what these pans are doing over here. They're covered to retain heat and thereby accelerates the proof. Those pies are for the lunch service, so they have to prove faster than the doughs they're going to bake for dinner.

They do an initial stretch in a

Lightly oiled pan, they let it rest, let the gluten relax, and then they give it a second stretch to get the dough fully into those corners where it can brown and it can get you the crispy edge characteristic of detroit-style pizza, an effect provided by the secret ingredient which is the pan itself, a uniquely detroit ingredient.

Anyway, the secret ingredient of Detroit-style pizza, the pans. Wes: They found these pans here because the whole area was tool and die shops, automotive, small automotive suppliers did a little bit of manufacturing, they had these sort of pans there, or scrap metal collectors, I call them pans now, but they're actually scrap metal collectors made out of blue steel that they would use around the shop as inexpensive drip trays and things like that.

So, we don't know the exact origin of how it happened, but the pans somehow got to the location and they actually put dough in it to see if it would bake.

Lo and behold, the first pizza was made with the pans that were originally sourced from the manufacturing. They weren't food service pans. Adam: See what I mean? Immigrants plus industry equals this. A layer of pepperoni goes on first, instead of last, like you would do with New York-style pizza. That's the Sicilian's sfincione influence. Here's something totally American, Wisconsin brick cheese, not mozzarella. Wisconsin is this historic center of the dairy industry in the United States, it's right across Lake Michigan, and there in the 19th century they developed this particular new kind of cheese called brick cheese. One possible origin of the names that they would press the cheese between bricks.

It's pressed firm like cheddar, but it's cultured at a higher temperature, so you get a softer texture, kind of like mozzarella, but the flavor is more fermented and funky, like sharp cheddar. Wes: The cheese that winds up on the edges can kind of fall in and that creates what they call the caramelized crust these days. Adam: They used to call it the buttery crust, and lots of people try to replicate the effect with actual butter and such these days, but this is just cheese with a little olive oil on the pan. Then they take a sauce based on canned tomatoes from this company, Stanislaus, that's very popular with New York-style pizza places as well. But, unlike New York-style, they spoon it on top of the cheese.

Wes: You don't want it to weigh

Down the pizza, you don't want it to create a lot of water residue and things like that.

So, it's a skim.

We go the three lines, we call them racing stripes for fun because of the automotive.

So, then you're sort of running three stripes across. Adam: Yeah. Notice how he's not covering the cheese in sauce, not entirely, this is key. As pizza stabbed westward across the United States, something gradually went terribly wrong, in my view at least. They kept adding more and more sauce to the very top layer, and by the time you get to Chicago, you've got a pizza that's completely flooded with tomato sauce on top, and the cheese cannot brown. I mean, you do you Chicago, but I prefer things a little bit further back east in Detroit. Some of this cheese will still be able to brown, and we are ready to bake. We're about to see the magic of these blue steel pizza pans.

They don't use drip pans anymore, these are food grade. Blue steel is a very heat conductive alloy of carbon steel with some tungsten and chromium. Chromium is what makes stainless steel very shiny and very rust resistant. Blue steel does not have as much chromium and so people generally still want to season the metal when they're using it for food purposes, burn on some oil to serve as a rust protectant and also provide some non-stick and thermal interface properties when cooking. The way that they season the pans at Buddy's is they wipe out the pans in between use, but they don't always wash it in between use, very deliberately . Wes: Basically, the pan, it seasons itself as it keeps baking. Adam: As a result, the pans get better and better as they age, and so they try to keep them in service for as long as possible. You can see that one is getting a hole in it.

Its working life is almost over sadly. In goes the pizza to an infrared conveyor oven at about 600 degrees Fahrenheit, 315 Celsius for maybe 13 minutes, but time and temperature vary slightly. They're pretty obsessive about their craft at Buddy's and so they consider things like atmospheric conditions and day-to-day variables in the ingredients. These are test pies they did right before lunch just to see how the dough is baking today. They always do tests. Here's my pizza out the other end of the conveyor. Wes: You're cracking that corner, get that crunch. I'm just showing you that that's what you're looking for.

You hear the crunch? Adam: Yeah. Wes wanted me to tell you that he would never crack the corner of a customer's pie. He was just doing that for the cameras to demonstrate. You can tell he's a little frustrated because he feels the dough on this one was slightly under proofed. I did come very early in the day, so the pizza is not quite as tall and light as he would normally like it, but I am still absolutely blown away by it. I thought it wasn't going to be enough sauce for me, but it totally is, and I like how that thin layer of sauce was able to brown a little in the oven. That caramelized edge is just insane. It's not so dark that it tastes burned, and it's not terribly greasy either.

It's blonde, which tastes crispy yet buttery, the buttery crust, and the inside is just light and pillowy, a classic for a reason.

That's what they call their margarita, the

Original, they do other pies now, this one has a tomato basil topping.

Wes: It has a little bit of Asiago on it, and this is where you evolve with customer tastes and things like that. Adam: I love that this is their definition of avant-garde. They keep it traditional around here because they figure the ladies with the big arms are still looking over their shoulders. It's about perfection, not innovation here. I love it, I love everything about it. Go to Buddy's, go to Detroit.

The constant drip of industrial offshoring and automation will never fully drain the spirit of this city. Visit Detroit. It represents what. I think is most noble about the United States. But, speaking of outsourcing, is it possible to make authentic Detroit-style pizza at home? I think we're going to need to order some special things over the internet. I'll get back to you in a few weeks...