Detroit-style pizza shines a spotlight on Wisconsin’s brick cheese
Brick cheese, invented in Wisconsin in the 1870s, lately is blossoming under fresh national attention, thanks to the widespread popularity of Detroit-style pizza.
Brick cheese is considered one of the things that make the pizza Detroit style, though it’s uncommon and often unheard of outside the Midwest. (Teena Buholzer, who oversees marketing for the familyowned Klondike Cheese Co. in Monroe, said a focus group on the East Coast found puzzlement over the cheese. “Most people don’t comprehend that it’s a style of cheese,” she said; they think it refers simply to the shape.)
A brick blend is used at Buddy’s Pizza in the Motor City, the pizzeria that lays claim to being the birthplace of Detroit-style pizza in 1946. The owners used squared-off pans meant to hold auto parts at the factories to make its pizza.
The style is being replicated well outside Detroit by restaurants and Instagramming home cooks alike: A rectangular pie. A thick, spongy crust. Pepperoni between crust and cheese. Frizzled, browned cheese at its edges. Three stripes of red sauce — on top of the cheese, not below.
The style has become so popular that even national chain Pizza Hut in January added the pizza to its menu.
A reflection of that popularity: Sales of brick cheese at Widmer’s Cheese Cellars in Theresa have been picking up steam in the past year or so.
“We get people calling every week about it,” said Joey Widmer, the vice president of operations and the fourth generation to operate the 99-year-old Dodge County cheese plant.
Brick comes in two forms, a young, mild cheese and a pungent, aged cheese; the name comes from the bricks traditionally used to press the curds.
It’s the mild cheese, a buttery, high-fat, semisoft cheese, that’s used on Detroit pizza. (Widmer has noticed interest in aged brick is
growing, too, for use on cheese boards, apparently as more Americans become familiar with the assertive flavors of domestic and European washed-rind cheeses).
“It melts great,” Widmer said of the mild brick.
“I’ve made pizzas myself with brick cheese and they’re really good, but the cheese almost does melt too much,” he said, adding that restaurants and home cooks often mix it with mozzarella in proportions of 80% mozzarella to 20% mild brick, or half and half — although some don’t use brick at all.
The Theresa cheesemaker has customers in New York, California and points in between who buy its brick for pizza.
“I’m really seeing Detroit-style pizza pop up all over the place,” Widmer said.
Instagram is loaded with images of photogenic Detroit-style pizzas, some posts denoted with #brickcheese.
“If the Detroit-style pizza isn’t made with fresh brick cheese, I don’t want it!” Collegeville Italian Bakery in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, said in one post in February.
The attention hasn’t gone unnoticed by Wisconsin cheesemakers who haven’t yet seen pizza-related demand for brick. Klondike is working on promotional material, Buholzer said, for pizza makers in search of brick for their square pies.
Contact dining critic Carol Deptolla at carol.deptolla@jrn.com or (414) 2242841, or through the Journal Sentinel Food & Home page on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @mkediner or Instagram at @mke_diner.