HEMI PIZZAAsk what makes Detroit-style pizza taste like Detroit-style pizza and most people say “the pan.” The pan matters — but the real answer is the cheese. And the cheese is Wisconsin brick.
So what actually is brick cheese?
Brick cheese is an American original, invented in Wisconsin in 1877 by cheesemaker John Jossi. The name comes from the bricks that were traditionally used to press the whey out of it (and from its brick-like shape). It’s a semi-soft, cow’s-milk cheese that sits somewhere between a mild young cheddar and a pungent aged Limburger, depending on how long it’s aged.
Why it’s perfect for Detroit-style
Brick cheese has a specific combination of traits that no other cheese quite matches for this job:
- High moisture and high butterfat — it melts into a rich, creamy, stretchy layer instead of tightening up.
- A lower melting point — it flows into the corners of the pan and coats the dough evenly.
- It browns beautifully without breaking — pushed against hot steel, it caramelizes into crispy frico edges instead of turning into a greasy puddle the way lower-quality cheese can.
- A mild, buttery, faintly tangy flavor — bold enough to stand up to toppings, clean enough not to fight them.
Those legendary crispy cheese corners? That’s brick cheese doing what mozzarella alone can’t.
Brick cheese vs. mozzarella
Regular low-moisture mozzarella is built for stretch and cheese-pull — great on a New York slice, but on its own it can go rubbery and oily at the high heat and long edge-contact Detroit-style demands. Many of the best Detroit pizzerias blend brick with a premium mozzarella: the brick delivers the melt and the caramelized crust, the mozzarella adds stretch and body. You get the best of both.
How HEMI uses it
At HEMI Pizza, Wisconsin brick is the backbone of nearly every pie — from The HEMI Original (brick plus three more cheeses under racing stripes of sauce) to the White Pizza (all brick, garlic olive oil, Mediterranean oregano). It’s blended with top-tier Grande cheese so every corner comes out crispy, never greasy.
Curious how that fits into the bigger picture? Read the history of Detroit-style pizza, or go deeper on the premium ingredients behind every HEMI pie.