Something Different

Suquamish, WA - 5 Dec 2025

On weekends when I don’t have commitments, I like to charge up my sourdough culture and make quality bread. The thing about sourdough is timing. It doesn’t take a lot of effort, but once committed, the process has to follow some sort of schedule. The culture lives in the refrigerator, asleep. When the urge to create comes upon me, I take it out and start waking things up. That happens on Thursday afternoon. I bring it out and feed it some flour and water and put it in a cozy spot to come to room temperature. By morning it is bubbling away. I feed it some breakfast, and once again it sparks to life, only now it is in overdrive. On Friday night, most of the culture gets poured off, and then I refresh it again. That is to keep it from blowing its lid. Sourdough needs room to breathe.

When Saturday morning arrives, it is time to decide what to do with my hyperactive culture. It is bursting at the seams to become something. My job is to give it direction. Because it is late fall, we like to get something seasonal for the table, so I pick up a loaf of Costco cranberry walnut bread. It is the perfect complement to the stews and soups I make on colder days. It seemed a little foolish to make up a loaf of sourdough bread, so instead, I made pizza. Sourdough makes an amazing pizza crust with lots of flavor and chew.

I had my mind on Detroit-style pizza - a new to me concept - intriguing. I could replicate something like that. After some research, I gave it a go. One thing that differentiates Detroit-style from Chicago deep dish is the cheese. Instead of mozzarella, Detroit style uses something more common to the Detroit area, Wisconsin Block Cheese. Unfortunately, I don’t live in Detroit or Wisconsin. Some say mixing Monterey Jack and mild white cheddar works. I didn’t feel like doing that, and hunted through the grocery stores and found Wisconsin Brick cheese. The description seemed to match the characteristics of the block cheese, so I grabbed half a pound. The sauce was easy to make. I started with a can of good Italian whole peeled tomatoes, blitzed them down to a puree and seasoned them with Italian herbs, red pepper flakes and garlic. I reduced that until it was a thick sauce.

Something else that distinguishes Detroit-style is the pan. Traditionally, the pan was an unused square pan that auto manufacturers used to catch oil from car engines. They were rectangular and made of thin steel. Now, pans are for food prep and not oil changes. I don’t have one of those, and the closest substitute was a carbon steel skillet. It is thin steel, takes heat quickly and easily and won’t warp under extreme conditions - a perfect substitute.

A large baking stone went into the oven, and I cranked it up to five hundred degrees to simulate a proper pizza oven. I generously oiled the pan with olive oil and pressed the dough into it right to the edges. The brick cheese got grated and layered on the dough, ensuring to have plenty piled up against the walls of the pan. Then, a layer of thinly sliced pepperoni and salami went on before finally saucing the pizza with three broad stripes of the thick red sauce. It wasn’t as thick as tomato paste, but mighty close with rich concentrated tomato goodness. Into the oven it goes for fifteen minutes.

Under such high heat snugged right up to the searing steel walls of the skillet, the cheese not only melts, but the edges crust up to a chestnut brown crown rimming the remaining cheese, sturdy sauce and thin sliced deli meats. After baking under scrutiny, I transferred the pizza from the pan right onto the scorching stone to render the bottom crust crispy crunchy. Five minutes later, the pizza is at the penultimate moment of becoming a charred hockey puck when I extract it from the oven to cool on a wire rack - not burnt, not charred, but oh so close.

The pie gets divided into squares. It is eaten in the hand or with a knife and fork. Forgoing the formalities, I hoisted the heavy slab of goodness to my mouth and cracked into it. A pleasant crunch and a powerhouse of flavor, this pizza was the perfect choice for a cold, rainy PacNW afternoon.

Will I make this again? Probably, but not habitually. Detroit-style pizza is comforting and satisfying, but eaten too often would send me to an early grave. It is best reserved for those cold, miserable days when a physical and mental boost is required.

Keep on truckin’
-Mike