The Square Pizza Born in Auto-Parts Pans

Detroit’s famous square pizza got its crispy, cheesy edges from deep steel pans first used around the auto industry.

In 1946, a man named Gus Guerra ran a neighborhood bar called Buddy’s Rendezvous at Six Mile and Conant on Detroit’s east side. Looking for something new on the menu, he turned to his wife Anna, who borrowed a dough recipe from her Sicilian mother. The real secret, though, was the pan. Guerra used deep, rectangular blue-steel trays — the kind local factories used to hold small parts and drips. Baked in those heavy pans, the dough came out airy and light inside with a fried, crunchy bottom, and the cheese caramelized into crispy lace right against the edges.

That’s Detroit-style pizza: square, deep, topped with Wisconsin brick cheese spread all the way to the corners, with stripes of sauce ladled on top — almost an upside-down pie. The corner pieces, with two crunchy edges, are the prize. Buddy’s calls itself the birthplace of the style, and food historians generally agree the square Detroit pie traces back to that 1946 kitchen.

For decades it was a local secret Detroiters just called “Sicilian.” Only in the 2010s did “Detroit-style” explode across the country — you can now find it everywhere from Austin to New York.