If you have ever bought a Detroit-style pizza kit, watched a Buddy’s video, or tried to make Detroit at home and ended up with a pizza that was technically correct but missing something, the something is almost always the cheese. Specifically, it is Wisconsin brick cheese, and specifically, it is brick cheese blended with mozzarella in a way no Pinterest recipe ever bothers to explain. Here is what brick cheese actually is, why it is the right answer for this style, the two real brands you can buy, and what to use when you cannot find it.

TL;DR

  • Wisconsin brick cheese is the traditional cheese for authentic Detroit-style pizza. Semi-soft, high-fat, mild, smear-ripened, invented in Wisconsin in 1877 by John Jossi.
  • Use it blended 50/50 with low-moisture mozzarella by weight. The brick provides buttery flavor and the lacy caramelized frico edge that climbs the pan walls. The mozzarella provides the melt and the stretch.
  • Two real brands to buy: Widmer’s Cheese Cellars (small-batch, cellar-aged, more flavor) and Great Lakes Cheese (mass-produced, mild, what most pizzerias actually use).
  • Where to buy: Widmer’s direct, Wisconsin Cheese Mart ($10 for 13 oz), Detroit Style Pizza Co. ($41 for 6-pound Great Lakes loaf), Amazon ($47.95 for Widmer’s 2.25-pound half loaf).
  • Real substitutes: white Muenster (closest), Monterey Jack (easiest to find), white American (best for frico edges). Cheddar, provolone, and supermarket “brick” are not substitutes.
  • Mild vs aged: use mild for standard Detroit pizza. Aged brick (6+ weeks, pungent, washed-rind) is for specialty pies or cheese boards, not your weekly pepperoni Detroit.
  • What to skip: factory “brick-style” supermarket cheese, pre-shredded “Detroit pizza” cheese blends, anything labeled brick that is rectangular but tastes like mild cheddar.

The quick answer (in 30 seconds)

The traditional cheese for authentic Detroit-style pizza is Wisconsin brick cheese, a semi-soft, high-fat, mild cheese invented in Wisconsin in 1877 and most commonly blended 50/50 with low-moisture mozzarella. The brick provides the buttery flavor and the lacy caramelized frico edge against the steel pan; the mozzarella provides the melt and stretch. White Muenster or Monterey Jack are the legitimate substitutes when brick is unavailable.

That is the answer. The rest of this article is the why behind it, the brand comparison nobody else writes, the substitute hierarchy when you cannot find brick, and the sourcing reality for 2026.

What Wisconsin brick cheese actually is

Wisconsin brick cheese is one of the few cheeses that is genuinely American. Not American-style. Not a knockoff of a European cheese. An invention.

John Jossi and the 1877 brick

Brick cheese was invented in 1877 by John Jossi, a Swiss-born American cheesemaker who emigrated to the United States with his family at age 12 and ended up running a Limburger factory in Richwood, Wisconsin, at age 14. After spending a few years in upstate New York working in a larger Limburger plant, he came back to Wisconsin in 1877 with an idea: a cheese made with a drier curd than Limburger, lower bacterial counts on the rind, and a milder flavor that would actually sell to the broader American market.

The name comes from the production method. Jossi pressed the curd into a brick shape using literal bricks stacked on top of the cheese to weight it down. The bricks compressed the curd, expelled whey, and produced a denser, drier wheel than Limburger ever was. Jossi taught the recipe to a dozen other Wisconsin dairies over the next several decades, and Kraft eventually acquired the recipe. Today, only a small percentage of the cheese sold under the “brick” label is the real, traditionally made version.

Why brick is more like Limburger than cheddar

This is the part most American eaters get wrong. Brick is a washed-rind, smear-ripened cheese, the same family as Limburger, Munster, Taleggio, Époisses. The rind is washed during aging with a brine that encourages the growth of Brevibacterium linens, the bacteria that gives smear-ripened cheeses their characteristic earthy, slightly funky aroma.

In real cellar-aged brick, the rind develops a sticky orange surface and a pungent smell that is genuinely close to Limburger. Most modern brick is aged briefly (4 to 6 weeks) which keeps the B. linens development light and the flavor mild. The Widmer’s Mild Brick that most people buy for Detroit pizza is essentially a young, lightly smear-ripened brick that has not had time to develop the full barnyard character.

The “factory insta-cheese” version you find in supermarkets, where it is rubbed with orange food coloring to fake a washed rind, is not brick in any meaningful sense. It is mild yellow loaf cheese with a brick-shaped pretension.

The smear-ripened rind (and what to do with it on pizza)

Real brick cheese comes with a thin natural rind from the smear-ripening process. On a young mild brick this rind is barely noticeable. On an aged brick it can be substantial and aromatic.

For pizza: trim the rind if you bought aged brick, leave it if you bought mild. The rind on mild Widmer’s or Great Lakes is thin enough that it disappears into the bake. The rind on a 6-week aged brick will introduce funkier flavors into a Detroit pie that competes with the sauce-on-top architecture. Save the aged rind for a cheese plate.

Why brick cheese is the right answer for Detroit pizza

Detroit-style pizza has three architectural choices that demand a specific cheese. The dough is high-hydration and crispy-bottomed (see our Detroit-style pizza recipe for the full method). The cheese is spread edge-to-edge so it caramelizes against the steel pan walls and produces the lacy crisp “frico” border that is the whole point of the style. The sauce goes on top of the cheese, in racing stripes, not under it.

This architecture only works if the cheese has three specific properties.

The fat-and-moisture chemistry behind the frico edge

The frico edge is what separates Detroit pizza from a basic sheet-pan pizza. It is the caramelized, semi-fried cheese that climbs the side of the steel pan and forms a brittle, golden, almost bacon-textured border around the pizza.

To get a real frico edge, the cheese has to:

  • Have enough fat to fry without splitting. Below roughly 28 percent milkfat, the cheese will burn before it caramelizes. Brick cheese runs roughly 30 to 32 percent milkfat. Low-moisture mozzarella alone is closer to 22 to 25 percent. This is the single biggest reason mozz-only Detroit pizzas come out without a real frico.
  • Have enough moisture to spread but not pool. Fresh mozzarella (50 to 60 percent moisture) is way too wet; it floods the pan and produces a soggy bottom. Low-moisture mozzarella (45 to 50 percent) is in the right range. Brick cheese (about 42 to 45 percent moisture) is slightly drier and works perfectly.
  • Have a mild enough flavor not to compete with the sauce-on-top architecture. Detroit pizza already has the sauce as the loudest flavor note. The cheese needs to be present and rich without taking over. Mild brick is buttery and slightly nutty. Aged brick is too aggressive for this role. Sharp cheddar is wildly wrong.

The brick-and-mozzarella blend works because each cheese covers what the other lacks. Brick brings the fat and the flavor; mozzarella brings the melt and the structural pull.

Why mozzarella alone gets it wrong

Mozzarella-only Detroit pizzas are common at home because mozzarella is what most people have. They are not bad. They are just not Detroit. The crust will brown. The cheese will melt. But the corners will not have that brittle caramelized frico edge, and the flavor will read as “pizza” instead of “Detroit.”

This is what Detroit Style Pizza Co.’s own blog means when they say “Brick cheese complements the mozzarella and helps lend our recipes their authentic Detroit Style Pizza flavor.” That is corporate-speak for “the brick is doing the heavy lifting and the mozzarella is the support cast.”

The brick + mozzarella ratio that works

Standard pizzeria practice is roughly 50/50 by weight, spread edge to edge. For a single 10x14 inch Detroit pan, that is 280 grams (about 10 oz) of cheese total: 140 grams brick, 140 grams low-moisture mozzarella. You can push it to 60/40 brick if you want more frico character, or 60/40 mozzarella if you want more stretch and less funk. Below 40 percent brick the frico effect diminishes meaningfully. Above 60 percent brick the pizza starts to taste heavy.

The two real brick cheese brands: Widmer’s vs Great Lakes

There are two brands of Wisconsin brick cheese that actually matter. Almost everything else under a “brick” label in a supermarket is the factory insta-cheese version Joe Widmer warns about.

Widmer’s Cheese Cellars (the traditional small-batch option)

Widmer’s Cheese Cellars is a fourth-generation family cheesemaker in Theresa, Wisconsin (population 1,300, an hour northwest of Milwaukee). They are the closest thing to a direct lineage from John Jossi’s original recipe. They still age their brick in cellars on actual wooden boards.

Widmer’s makes brick at three aging tiers:

  • Mild brick (4-week aging). The default. Buttery, slightly tangy, no aggressive rind character. This is what you want for Detroit pizza.
  • Medium brick (6-week aging). A noticeable step up in funk. Starting to show the washed-rind character. Works on Detroit if you want a more sophisticated pie; better on a sandwich.
  • Aged brick (2+ months). Full Limburger-adjacent territory. Pungent, sticky-rinded, polarizing. Use on a cheese plate, not on a pepperoni Detroit pie.

Widmer’s is the small-producer pick: more flavor, more story, more support for a family business that has been doing this for over a century. It is also more expensive per pound.

Great Lakes Cheese (the pizzeria-supply option)

Great Lakes Cheese, founded in 1958 in Hiram, Ohio (Ohio, not Wisconsin, despite the brand name we are discussing), is the mass-produced brick cheese that most actual Detroit-area pizzerias use. It is what Detroit Style Pizza Co. sells in 6-pound loaves at $41.00, shipped for pizzeria-volume buyers and serious home cooks who want to make Detroit pizza weekly.

Great Lakes brick is consistent, mild, pale yellow, semi-soft. It is the cheese behind a lot of the Detroit-pizza you have actually eaten at Buddy’s, Cloverleaf, or any of the dozens of Detroit-style pizzerias that have opened nationally in the last decade. It is not as nuanced as cellar-aged Widmer’s, but it bakes predictably and produces the right frico effect every time.

Mild vs aged: which to use for Detroit pizza

Carol Deptolla’s 2021 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel piece on the Wisconsin brick resurgence quotes Joe Widmer himself noting that interest in aged brick is growing. That is a real trend among home cooks who have made enough mild-brick Detroit pies that they want to push the flavor.

Our take: mild brick for the default Detroit pie, especially if you are pairing with pepperoni (already strong flavor) or basic sausage. Medium brick if you want to experiment on a less-loud topping mix (mushroom-and-fontina, simple cheese-and-sauce, the white Detroit with garlic and herbs). Aged brick essentially never on a pizza that also has aggressive toppings; the cheese will fight everything else. Save the aged for the cheese plate or a grilled cheese sandwich where it has the spotlight.

Where to buy Wisconsin brick cheese in 2026

Food52 noted in 2017 that brick cheese was “surprisingly difficult to find” outside the Midwest. That has changed substantially. As of May 2026, every option below ships nationally.

Direct from Widmer’s

widmerscheese.com is the manufacturer-direct option. They ship the full range (mild, medium, aged, smoked), they have flat-rate shipping with a free-shipping threshold over $150, and ordering direct supports the small producer. Their 14-ounce vacuum-packed mild brick is the standard buy. The 2.25-pound half loaf is the better unit price.

Wisconsin Cheese Mart

Wisconsin Cheese Mart resells Widmer’s nationally at competitive prices, starting at $10.00 for a 13-ounce piece. Their shipping is reliable (1 to 3 business days standard) and they offer volume discounts (10% off 4+, 15% off 8+). This is the easiest non-Amazon option for one-off buyers.

Detroit Style Pizza Co. (for Great Lakes brick)

detroitstylepizza.com is the only direct online source for Great Lakes brick at a reasonable price. The 6-pound loaf at $41.00 (under $7 per pound, far cheaper than retail Widmer’s per pound) is the pizzeria-volume option. They only ship cheese on Mondays. Order Sunday before midnight to ship the next day.

Amazon

Widmer’s 2.25-pound half loaf on Amazon is $47.95 with Prime shipping. The fallback option for Prime members who need it fast. Per ounce it is the most expensive of the four, but it ships in two days.

Local supermarkets

Whole Foods stocks brick cheese in some Midwest stores but rarely outside the region. Kroger and Costco are hit-or-miss; call ahead. Wegmans has it in their Mid-Atlantic stores in cheese-cave-style cases. Most regular supermarkets do not carry real brick. If yours sells something labeled “brick” that is bright yellow and sliced into rectangles next to the cheddar, it is almost certainly the factory version. Skip.

If you cannot find brick cheese: the substitute hierarchy

You will not always have brick. Here is what to reach for, in priority order, when brick is unavailable.

White Muenster (the closest match)

This is the consensus pick across Detroit Style Pizza Co. and most serious Detroit-pizza writers, and it is correct. White Muenster (note: not the orange-rinded grocery-store Muenster, which is often heavily smoked or colored) is also a smear-ripened, semi-soft, washed-rind cheese in the same family as brick. The flavor is close, the moisture content is close, the fat content is close. Use it in a 50/50 blend with low-moisture mozzarella the same way you would use brick.

This is the substitute. If your supermarket carries white Muenster (Boar’s Head makes a widely available version, as does Sargento), use it without apology. The pizza will be 90 to 95 percent of the way to a real brick-cheese Detroit pie.

Monterey Jack (the easiest substitute)

Monterey Jack is the second-best widely available option and the easiest to find at any American supermarket. It is not smear-ripened (so it lacks the washed-rind nuance) but it has roughly the right moisture and fat content, melts predictably, and is mild enough not to fight the sauce.

Use Monterey Jack in a 50/50 blend with low-moisture mozzarella. The pizza will be slightly less complex in flavor than a brick or Muenster version, but the texture and frico edge will be very close to right.

White American (the frico-edge specialist)

This is a less-common recommendation that deserves more attention. White American cheese (the deli kind, not Kraft singles, but the real deli-counter sliced American) has an unusually high fat content (35 to 40 percent) and an emulsifying salt content that makes it melt without splitting better than almost any other cheese. The frico edge you get from white American is arguably better than what you get from brick, just less authentic in flavor.

If your goal is maximum frico drama and you do not have brick or Muenster, blend white American 50/50 with low-moisture mozzarella. The result is closer to a smash-burger-cheeseburger Detroit pie than a traditional one, but it is delicious and the frico edges are spectacular.

What to skip

  • Sharp cheddar of any color: flavor is wrong, fat profile produces oil pooling, will fight the sauce.
  • Provolone: smoke notes and tang clash with the buttery profile Detroit wants.
  • Pre-shredded “Detroit pizza” cheese blends: typically 80 percent mozzarella with token brick and a heavy dose of anti-caking starch that interferes with melting.
  • Supermarket “brick” cheese that costs less than $5 a pound: factory insta-brick, not the real thing, mild yellow flavorless loaf in a brick shape.
  • Fresh mozzarella: way too wet, will flood the pan.
  • Smoked anything: the smoke fights the sauce-on-top brightness.
  • Velveeta: stop.

How to prep, shred, and build the cheese layer

A few details that matter for the actual pizza build.

Cube vs shred

Detroit pizzerias traditionally cube the brick, not shred it. Cubes (about 1/4 to 1/2 inch) hold more shape during the bake and produce visible, distinct chunks of melted cheese with crisp edges. Shredded brick disappears into a uniform melt; cubed brick keeps some structural texture.

Shred the mozzarella. Cube the brick. Combine them in a bowl before spreading on the dough.

Trim the rind if you bought aged

For mild young brick (Widmer’s mild, Great Lakes), the rind is thin enough to leave on. For medium or aged brick, slice off the rind before cubing. The rind on aged brick has a sticky orange smear-bacteria coating that will introduce sharp barnyard notes into the bake.

Edge-to-edge: how much cheese per pan

For a single 10x14 inch Detroit pan, use approximately:

  • 140 grams (5 oz) cubed brick cheese
  • 140 grams (5 oz) shredded low-moisture mozzarella

Total 280 grams (10 oz). Spread the blend edge to edge, including over the corners and pushing slightly up the pan walls. The cheese that touches the pan walls is what becomes frico.

This ratio matches what most Detroit pizzerias actually use, scaled down to one home pan. You can adjust within a 40/60 to 60/40 brick/mozz range without breaking the style.

What we would skip

The recurring mistakes that produce a “Detroit-ish” pizza instead of a real Detroit pizza:

Mozzarella-only

The most common mistake at home. The pizza will look right and taste fine but will not have a real frico edge or the buttery flavor profile that defines the style. If you cannot get brick, use a substitute (Muenster, Monterey Jack, white American), not mozzarella alone.

Pre-shredded blends labeled “Detroit pizza cheese”

A handful of brands sell pre-shredded blends marketed as Detroit-style. Almost all are 80+ percent mozzarella with token amounts of brick and a starch anti-caking agent that prevents proper melting. Buy your brick and your mozz separately.

Putting the sauce under the cheese

This is the New York / Neapolitan architecture and it is wrong for Detroit. Sauce goes on top of the cheese, in two or three racing stripes, after the bake or in the last 90 seconds. Sauce under the cheese steams the bottom of the cheese layer and prevents the frico from forming. See our Detroit-style pizza recipe for the build sequence.

Using a too-shallow pan

Detroit pans are 2-1/4 to 2-1/2 inches deep for a reason: the cheese needs that wall height to climb and caramelize. A cookie sheet or a shallow brownie pan will give you no frico no matter how good your cheese is. The cheese has to touch a vertical hot wall to make the lacy crisp edge.

Buying brick cheese and then “saving it for later”

Brick cheese is a fresh cheese with a short shelf life. Mild Widmer’s is best within 4 to 6 weeks of receiving it, kept tightly wrapped in the refrigerator. Aged brick keeps longer but the flavor profile shifts more aggressively the longer you hold it. Order what you will use in a month, not what you will hoard for a year.

Frequently asked questions

What cheese is best for Detroit-style pizza?

The traditional cheese for authentic Detroit-style pizza is Wisconsin brick cheese, a semi-soft, high-fat, mild cheese invented in Wisconsin in 1877 and most commonly blended 50/50 with low-moisture mozzarella. The brick provides the buttery flavor and the lacy caramelized frico edge against the steel pan; the mozzarella provides the melt and stretch. White Muenster or Monterey Jack are the legitimate substitutes when brick is unavailable.

What kind of brick cheese for Detroit pizza?

Use mild Wisconsin brick cheese, typically Widmer’s Cheese Cellars or Great Lakes Cheese. Both are smear-ripened, semi-soft, and mild enough to complement the sauce-on-top architecture of Detroit-style without overwhelming it. Aged brick (rind-washed past 6 weeks) develops a pungent, Limburger-adjacent flavor that is excellent on a sophisticated topping mix but wrong for a standard pepperoni Detroit pie. Save the aged for an experiment.

What kind of cheese is Wisconsin brick cheese?

Wisconsin brick cheese is a semi-soft, high-fat, mild American cheese invented in 1877 by Swiss-born cheesemaker John Jossi. It is closer to Limburger than to cheddar in its smear-ripening process, but with a drier curd and lower bacterial counts that produce a milder flavor. The cheese is formed into brick shapes using literal bricks for pressing, which is where the name comes from. Most modern brick cheese is mild; traditional cellar-aged brick has a more pungent washed-rind character.

What do you use Wisconsin brick cheese for?

Detroit-style pizza is the dominant use, but Wisconsin brick cheese is also good on burgers, in grilled-cheese sandwiches (it melts beautifully), on charcuterie boards (the aged version), and in casseroles where you want a buttery semi-soft melt without a sharp flavor profile. The mild young brick is the all-rounder; aged brick is a specialty item that competes with Munster or Taleggio on a cheese plate.

Who sells Wisconsin brick cheese?

Widmer’s Cheese Cellars sells it direct from their Theresa, Wisconsin facility (widmerscheese.com). Wisconsin Cheese Mart resells Widmer’s nationally with reliable shipping. Detroit Style Pizza Co. sells Great Lakes brick cheese in 6-pound loaves intended for serious home cooks and pizzerias. Amazon carries Widmer’s in 2.25-pound half loaves with Prime shipping. Whole Foods and some Kroger stores stock brick cheese regionally; call ahead because availability varies.

Can I make Detroit pizza without brick cheese?

Yes, but use a real substitute, not mozzarella alone. White Muenster (the closest match), Monterey Jack (the easiest to find), or white American (best for frico edges) all produce a Detroit pie that gets 85 to 95 percent of the way to the real thing. Mozzarella alone gets you to about 65 percent: the structure is right, the flavor and the frico edge are wrong. The substitute matters more than people think.

This article covers the cheese; the rest of the Detroit pizza system lives across the Detroit-style pizza recipe (dough, sauce, pan, build sequence) and our pizza sauce recipe (the Neapolitan no-cook vs American cooked decision applies to Detroit too; you want the cooked side). For the bigger picture on how Detroit fits among regional styles, see New York style pizza crust for the contrast. If you are debating whether to invest in baking gear, our pizza stone vs steel guide notes that Detroit specifically does not need either; a Lloyd Pan is the only specialty equipment that matters.

What this earns you

You now have the cheese answer the SERP buries under product pages. Mild brick from Widmer’s or Great Lakes, blended 50/50 with low-moisture mozzarella, cubed not shredded, spread edge to edge in a real 10x14 Detroit pan. If you cannot find brick, white Muenster is the substitute. The frico edge is the whole point of the style, and the cheese is the only variable that determines whether you get it. Spend the $10 to $48 on real brick once, follow our Detroit-style pizza recipe, and the pizza that comes out of your oven will be the one you have been chasing.