Detroit-style pizza invasion
Where to find South Florida’s hottest square pies
Every square pizza at Detroit Eats in Boynton Beach is fired at 516 degrees for 7 minutes and 38 seconds. That’s exactly how long it takes for Wisconsin brick cheese to blister in the oven, leak out, and burn along the edges of the deep-dish pan, forming a browned, lacy cheese crust. That’s exactly how long until chef-owner Mark Tocco’s focaccia-like dough earns its chewy, buttery underside.
“I took a bite out of a thousand pies to learn the perfect Detroit pizza crunch,” says Tocco, a 35-year pizzeria veteran.
Detroit Eats surged in popularity the moment it debuted last summer as customers sought out “easily deliverable comfort food” in the pandemic, Tocco says. He’s not alone: Over the past year new South Florida new pizzerias have started firing up Detroit pizza, also known as “red top” and “square pie,” driven partly by savvy Instagram marketing campaigns and surging demand for comfort food. (Your geometry teacher will say it’s rectangular, but they know nothing. It’s square pie.)
The local love affair with Motor City-spawned pizza, of course, follows a recent national obsession with
“When the fat from the cheese spills over and drips down and combines with the oiliness of the pan, man, that’s nirvana.”
— Craig Agranoff, a Boca Raton pizza expert and longtime blogger
square pie. International chain Pizza Hut unveiled its version of Detroit-style pizza in January. (Buddy’s Pizza, credited with inventing the style in 1946, wrote in a tongue-in-cheek clap back that Pizza Hut’s copycat “isn’t even a good knockoff.”) In recent months the Let’s Eat, South Florida Facebook group, run by the Sun Sentinel, has heaped praise on local Detroit pies.
“We created our pizzeria to be pandemic-ready and now we can’t stop selling out. It’s crazy,” says Koby Wexler, founder of Death by Pizza, a Detroit pie pop-up in Delray Beach. “Thin crust is already everywhere here. People just want something different than a New York slice.”
Unlike New York pies, pizza from Michigan’s Motor City is deep-dish with light, airy focaccia-like dough, and a savory perimeter of caramelized cheese that curls up like crust. Slices overflow with blistered Wisconsin brick cheese — which is fattier than New York-style mozzarella — and dollops of red tomato sauce top the pie last. Detroit pizza encourages savoring the corner pieces, where the crust real estate is crunchiest, and the interior tastes chewy without feeling dense.
It differs from Chicago-style deep dish, which is round, with a thinner focaccia crust and heavier toppings. Ditto for Long Island’s so-called grandma pies, which are square but baked in a lower-walled pan for a thinner, denser crust than Detroit-style. It’s also distinct from Sicilian pizza.
“I try to describe Detroitstyle as a Sicilian pie, but with a much-fluffier inside and crustier outside,” says Craig Agranoff, a Boca Raton pizza expert and longtime blogger whose website, WorstPizza.com, has reviewed local pizzerias for 15 years. “When the fat from the cheese spills over and drips down and combines with the oiliness of the pan, man, that’s nirvana.”
There’s no consensus about the perfect configuration of a Detroit pie but any pizzamaker worth their crust worships Buddy’s Pizza, Tocco says. Detroit pizza lore holds that Buddy’s owner Gus Guerra, in 1946, took a square, blue steel utility tray from an auto assembly plant and used it to bake a new kind of Sicilian-like deep dish. Yet another apocryphal origin tale says Guerra liberated the pan earlier, during World War II, when Detroit factories stopped making cars and switched over to making war munitions. Even if such stories are shaky in their accuracy, Buddy’s remains the gold standard for doing Detroit-style right, Tocco says.
“Buddy’s is the trademark for anyone who ever wanted to get into the Detroit pizza business,” Tocco says. “It’s all about the crust, the sauce, the cheese and the blue steel pan.”
Eagle-eyed customers can even find Detroit-style pies hiding on the menus of South Florida’s New Yorkstyle slice shops — if they know where to look. Because making Detroit-style takes longer and requires a special pan — plus proofing the dough can last days — some pizzamakers treat it as an off-menu special, made only by request.
At family-run Italian restaurant Nino’s (7120 Beracasa Way, Boca Raton), owner Mark Tornabene owns just one Detroit-style pan and refuses to bake pies except on Nino’s slowest days, Monday and Tuesday. Grande Pizza (8373 W. Sunrise Blvd., Plantation) and Augy’s Pizza (1501 NW Boca Raton Blvd., Boca Raton) both list “Sicilian” on their menus but the pizza is actually Detroit-style, with caramelized cheese crust and red sauce on top. (And, of course, there’s Jet’s Pizza, the Sterling Heights, Mich.born pizza chain that serves square pie — notably without red sauce on top — at six South Florida locations.)
Here are four pizzerias specializing in Detroit-style:
Rara’s Pizza & Wings
11419 W. Palmetto Park Road, Suite D, Boca Raton; 561-945-8984, RarasPizza.com
Chef-owner Samir Changela (Tilted Kilt) turned his stifling pandemic boredom into a Detroit pizza obsession when he debuted Rara’s on Feb. 1 in a west Boca strip mall. Last summer, in self-quarantine, he started baking what he calls “authentic” pies, which were inspired by a recent visit to Detroit’s Buddy’s Pizza with his uncle, a Chrysler executive. “I had neighborhood friends over for pizza parties because they didn’t feel comfortable going to restaurants yet, and they were blown away, saying things like, ‘We don’t want New Yorkstyle anymore,’ “Changela recalls. “My wife told me to get a store because I was destroying the kitchen.” His menu of 14 Detroit pies ($17.99-$23.99) is crafted from dough that spends 36 hours fermenting in his
walk-in cooler, which turns his crust light and chewy. Then he layers Wisconsin brick cheese to the edge of the pan, which is coated in imported Italian olive oil. “If it’s not a blue steel pan it’s not real Motor City pizza,” says Changela, who ordered his pre-seasoned pans from a Livonia, Michigan, factory. Detroit pizza soon won’t be the only pies on his menu: A custom-built oven, arriving June 8, will let Changela expand with New York-style pies.
Detroit Eats
1313 W. Boynton Beach Blvd., R-5, Boynton Beach; 561-509-0944, DetroitEats.com
If there’s a science to authentic Detroit-style pies, Detroit Eats is chefowner Mark Tocco’s pizza laboratory. The Michigan native, who runs the pizzeria with wife Vanessa and children Jack and Ella, ran 15 Jet’s Pizza franchises in west Michigan and has lived part-time in Boynton Beach since the ‘90s. “I used to get Buddy’s Pizza as a kid. My dad would pop it into the toaster oven for me, my brother and my sister,” says Tocco, 54. “I have pizza sauce in my veins.” At Detroit Eats — which also dishes Detroit-style Coney dogs and corned-beef Reubens — Tocco’s pie closely mirrors his childhood favorite. Dough proofed for 24 hours is first stretched into blue steel pans, then smothered in a blend of brick cheese and Grande whole-milk mozzarella, then fired on his $15,000 split-belt oven. But there is one caveat: Red sauce goes on top only by request. “By default, we put it underneath,” Tocco admits. “New Yorkers are accustomed to their sauce on the bottom, and New Yorkers are a ton of my clientele. Business keeps exploding because people want alternatives to handtossed round.”
Death by Pizza
32 SE Second Ave., Delray Beach (pick-up at Two Fat Cookies window); DeathByPizzaDelray.com
When Koby Wexler’s pizza pop-up launched last September, ordering a pie was not unlike waiting behind velvet ropes at an exclusive club. Customers who got served Death By Pizza’s tantalizing rectangles (and death metal-reminiscent logo) on Instagram first had to prepay online, then wait all week for Wexler’s “pizza drops” the following Wednesday or Sunday. That is, if your fingers were lightning-fast: Most pizza drops sold out within a minute of going on sale, Wexler says. “We’re running three businesses out of the same storefront and [online presales] was the only way not to tie up our phone lines all day,” says Wexler, 30, who bakes 240 Detroit pies per drop out of his family’s Two Fat Cookies bakery near Atlantic Avenue. “The pandemic is the key player in this pop-up.” Bored during lockdowns last year, Wexler entertained himself by making Detroit pies for employees. “They were like, ‘This is amazing. How can we do this here?’ “he recalls. Wexler’s pie is really a twist on traditional Detroit-style: The foundation of his pizza crust is sourdough, created with a 9-month-old starter he feeds daily. “Our pizza is all naturally leavened, and makes the pizza easier to digest with all the active bacteria,” Wexler says. Creations ($20-$26) include the Bozo (Bolognese sauce, ricotta, basil and cheese) and the plain The Enemy (mozzarella-brick cheese blend, San Marzano tomato sauce). How does it taste? Answer: Crunchy exterior and spongy interior with blistered cheese. But be forewarned: If you’re expecting airier crust, order plain instead of one of Wexler’s four-topping specialty pies, which makes slices denser.
Motor City Pizza & Coney
1538 SW Eighth St., Boynton Beach; 561-7363000, MotorCityPizza-Coney.com
Owner Bisar Gorani is not a native Detroiter — far from it — but the pandemic made him believe in the power of Detroit pie. While two of his PieZano’s pizzerias in Boca and Pompano Beach died six months ago, Motor City Pizza, by contrast, jumped 400 percent in sales with takeout and delivery. “My luck was bad but this pizza saved me. Delivery apps were a huge help,” says the Kosovo-born businessman, who bought the pizzeria from two native Detroiters in 2017. “Plus, I have more traffic than I can handle from the medical marijuana dispensary nearby.” Take note: Gorani’s pies do diverge from Detroit-style. His dough blend, imported from Kosovo, imparts a deeper crunch, and he uses whole-milk cheese instead of brick cheese. Pizzas are baked in cast-iron pans instead of blue steel. “It’s my recipe,” Gorani says. “I wanted to use bread from Kosovo because it reminds me of home. Which is funny because Detroiters tell me this pizza reminds them of home, too.”