By admin 
There’s no shortage of pizza in this town, nor of different styles. As The Sacramento Bee reported earlier this year, you can find everything from crisp, thin Neapolitan to deep-dish, stuffed Chicago style and even a smattering of Indian fusion pies. Now, one style hailing from Detroit seems to be having a moment.
Read more Fact Check: What Lincoln council candidates say about spending on Gathering Inn suit
Detroit style gets its signature form from flare-sided dark metal pans, according to the Detroit Free Press. The blue steel pans were originally — according to legend — used for auto parts. The thick, bready crust is topped with cheese all the way to the edges, where it creates crispy bits known as frico. Toppings are added, and sauce is ladled on in parallel stripes across the top.
Until recently, Detroit-style pizza was something of an outlier in the area, with just a few places offering it, notably La Porta Restaurant in Arden Arcade, Granite Bay’s Sette Pasta House, Motorhead Pizza in Loomis and midtown beer joint Fieldwork Brewing Company, but by and large the style has flown under the radar. Now, Detroit style, or at least adjacent variations, has been popping up in new locations.
Pizza from a sushi master
This is not to say it’s entirely new. When the pandemic forced Lou Valente to close the doors at the now-defunct Southpaw Sushi, he was forced to pivot. He had already been dabbling with grandma-style pizza, which led him to try Detroit style, even investing in the specific pans. He and his wife Kristi were selling a few of them out of their Freeport Manor home on the weekends when the shutdown occurred.
“Right when COVID hit, we started selling them on Sundays, and people were all locked up, and it just turned into a six month waiting list. I don’t know if it was because the pizza was great or if it was because people were locked up. I think it was a little bit of both,” he said.
To get the lift he wants, Valente uses a 72% hydration dough that he punches down in the pan a couple of times before letting it rise for four hours. To get the crispy frico edge, he uses a blend of provolone, cheddar and mozzarella.
Valente explored going brick and mortar with his slabs, but instead opted to keep it a pop-up offering. He opened Lou’s Sushi in midtown earlier this year, which takes the brunt of his time. He still does it every few months — and will be taking preorders for this Sunday, Sept. 27 starting today. Check his Instagram for announcements.
From Italy to Detroit (sort of)
Over in East Sacramento, husband and wife team Andrew Tescher and Stacey Johnson have opened Fabulist Pizza in the former Cafe Capricho space at 3269 Folsom Blvd. A longtime chef in Sacramento, Tescher has been dabbling in pizza for years. Like Valente, he found opportunity during the pandemic, operating a pizza pop-up called Side Hustle Pizza.
In the runup to opening Fabulist, he began experimenting with Italian breads like focaccia and filone as well as pizza, specifically a twice-baked Roman style with a thin, crisp crust. Inspired by Roman pizza chef and baker Gabriele Bonci, he also tried his hand at a thicker, deep-dish pie they call the Sactown Square. It’s somewhere between a Sicilian grandma style and Detroit style.
“How is it similar to Detroit style? First of all, it’s made in Detroit-style pans, so they’re 10 by 14 blue steel pans, and the fact that we have a caramelized cheese crust, which Detroit pizzas are also renowned for,” he said.
Read more Fact Check: What Lincoln council candidates say about spending on Gathering Inn suit
In Tescher’s opinion, a common flaw with Detroit pizza is the product of the long bake time. Wet toppings added to raw dough before baking can cause the top of the dough to become gummy; it can also weigh the dough down, limiting rise.
“We stretch our house pizza dough, like focaccia, and then we bake it with a little bit of cheese around the edges, so that the edges caramelize. Then we cool it down, and we put the pizza toppings on, and we bake it again. The result is this extra crispy, cheesy goodness on the outside, with a really light and fluffy interior,” he said.
Authentic Detroit pies, with a twist
The most recent newcomer to the scene aspires to be the most authentic. Brothers Rodney Jong and Jon Chin opened Frico Pizza at 1429 Broadway in Land Park in early August. They wanted to expose Sacramento to what they felt was an underrepresented style of pizza.
“It was something that we felt was not very well known here, especially in California. I feel like it’s a pizza that people still haven’t had the experience of trying, and so we thought it would be a really cool opportunity to bring it to the West Coast,” Jong said.
Like the other pizzerias, Frico uses the traditional flared pans. Unlike the others, it uses a proprietary blend of flours imported from Italy, and for the namesake crispy edge, Frico orders the traditional brick cheese from Wisconsin. As opposed to Parmesan or mozzarella, brick cheese forms a darker, crunchier crust.
Frico’s pies are traditional, until they’re not. The typical just cheese or pepperoni toppings are on offer, but the menu has more out-of-the-box combos such as a chicken mushroom ranch, and a Hawaiian variation called the Island Remix. It features pineapple of course, as well as applewood bacon, Spam and a teriyaki aioli drizzle.
The pizzeria also stands out by having minis, pizzas baked in half-width pans.
“We wanted something smaller that people could get at lunch. But the mini kind of just took off. I think it’s because it allows people, like friends, to buy three or four of them and then share all the different flavors. Once people kind of figure out what flavor they like of ours, then they move into a regular size,” Chin said.
When the brothers opened Frico, they resorted to guerrilla marketing to get the word out, hand delivering pizzas to firehouses, veterinary clinics and other businesses, but it wasn’t long before business picked up. It’s not uncommon for them to sell out of product.
“For our dough, it’s a 48-hour fermentation process. So we get a lot of people saying, ‘How come you ran out?’ We want people to know we ferment all our dough for 48 hours before we even do anything with it. So there’s only so much refrigerator space and so you know so much time,” Chin said.
Read more Lisa Hafoka says children’s success in school is to ‘meet them where they’re at’
Frico also serves New York style pies, to appeal to multiple tastes.