- From fresh California-style pies to the slices of New York, you can find a variety of pizza styles across the US.
- Each type demonstrates how different ingredients and resources can be used to create unique and delicious dishes.
- Calzones, strombolis and panzarottis are all delicious pizza-like creations that are worth looking out.
- Visit Insider’s Home & Kitchen Reference library for more stories.
You’re likely to find at least one pizza place in any American town. Depending on where you live, the type of pizza may be very different.
Pizza is often referred to as street food. It was created from a Neapolitan-Italian focaccia, which originated with Neapolitan immigrants who settled in the Northeast. The ingredients and tools needed for pizza-making in America are different than those in Italy.
“It’s a poor person’s food, so you use whatever’s available, which means that it changes all the time,” says Scott Wiener, founder of Scott’s Pizza Tours. What’s the short version? The region where pizza was made is what it adapts to. Although the list is not exhaustive, it will give you a good idea of some of the best regional pizzas that you can find in the US.
Each type of pizza distinguishes itself by the crust — like the crispiness of a New York-style pie versus the thick and pillowy appearance of a Sicilian. To set themselves apart, some pizzas may include California-style toppings or St. Louis-style cheese.
Neapolitan
Heralded by Wiener as the “origin of pizza,” Neapolitan is “the simplest, lightest, and softest of all pizzas.” It’s baked in a wood-fired oven for about two minutes to create a supple pie that looks blistered along the crust. The pie is topped sparsely with uncooked tomato and pockets containing mozzarella.
New York-style
“The creation of New York-style was really this necessary modification of Neapolitan pizza,” says Wiener. “The fact that the flour in America was higher in protein made for a stretchier, larger, chewier pizza. The fact that our dairy product was more about cows than it was about buffalo like in Naples changed the cheese.”
Wiener says there are two types of New York-style Pizza: The New York-style Pizza and the New York Slice. The New York-style pizza refers to a whole pizza. New York-style pizzas are made using a brick oven, either gas or wood. They have a more dry texture than Neapolitan pizzas and feature large areas of char at the base.
The New York slice is a familiar one. The slice is a mid-day or midnight snack made from a 20-inch square pie. It is baked in a deck oven and served on a greased paper plate. We can then cut it in half for quick consumption.
Sicilian
Sicilian pizza is a “relative” of the Sicilian sfincione — a focaccia topped with tomato, onion, garlic, anchovy, caciocavallo cheese, and breadcrumbs. Because of its similarity to pizza, it was often lumped into American neighborhoods of Neapolitan pizzerias. Sicilian pizzas can be made by rolling the dough in a rectangle pan and allowing it proof. This results in a light, puffy pizza.
Grandma pizza
Grandma’s pizza is a denser and thinner variation of Sicilian pizza. Named after the Italian grandmothers who used a sheet pan to make these pies, the dough is placed in the pan. However, unlike Sicilian, it’s not allowed to rise. It is topped immediately with chunky tomato sauce, garlic, and baked in the oven.
Detroit-style
Another subset of Sicilian pizza, Detroit-style was born in the ovens of the Detroit bar Buddy’s in the mid 1940s, when the owner would make his mother-in-law’s Sicilian pizza recipe in thick blue steel pans originally used by the auto industry to store and clean tools.
These pans were much taller than the typical Sicilian pizza plate. And so when the dough — which is also made with more water — rises and bakes, it doesn’t crest the top. This traps the Detroit-style brick cheese that is specifically made for pizza. “A distinct characteristic of Detroit style is that the cheese burns on the edges. So when you take it out of the pan, there’s that burnt caramelized cheese-edged crust,” Wiener.
New Haven-style
Originally made similarly to New York-style pizza in coal fired ovens, New Haven-style possesses a dense and crunchy crust topped with pecorino but no mozzarella. “If you were to order a regular pizza in New Haven, it doesn’t come with mozzarella. You’d have to ask for pizza with mozzarella,” Wiener.
California-style
Whereas other pizzas differentiate themselves by their crust styles, California-style pizza does so through its toppings like avocados, artichoke hearts, or whatever other vegetable or garnish you might find at your typical West Coast farmers market.
Wiener states that it is all about fresh produce. There are no rules. “With California, it’s way more about keeping things local [with the produce],” Wiener says. “You put arugula on a New York slice, it just doesn’t feel right. California? Bring on the arugula.”
Chicago deep-dish
Perhaps the furthest deviation from pizza’s Italian origins, just looking at a deep-dish-style pizza — with its bright red sauce and molten cheese dripping over an immense bed toppings — might leave you simultaneously overwhelmed and eager to dig in. “Deep-dish pizza — you eat it when you’re not planning on moving,” Wiener.
Wiener says the luxuriously satisfying deep-dish-style was invented in the 1940s to combat the Chicago winter. Although it’s thicker than Sicilian or Detroit-style pizzas, deep-dish pizzas are rich in cheese and toppings. The dough is high-in oil and low in protein. It develops a putty-like texture after baking which allows it to support the enormous weight of tomato and other toppings.
St. Louis-style
St. Louis-style pizza is a variation on Midwestern tavern-style pizza — thin crusted, round, and cut into squares allegedly to make for easier serving as a finger food.
Wiener believes the thin Midwest-style originated because of the availability low-protein flours in the region. The thin crust is satisfyingly crunchy once you bite into it. St. Louis-style pizza is almost exactly the same, except, instead of mozzarella, it uses a specific dairy product called Provel (a combination of provolone, cheddar, and swiss), which was common in the area in the 1970s when the style emerged at Imo’s Pizzeria.
Roman-style
“The exact history of it is kind of murky, but it seems to be more of a modern variation [of pizza],” says Wiener, who attributes Roman-style’s origins in the ’80s or ’90s.
Otherwise known as “pizza al taglio,” which means “by the cut,” Roman pizza is a sliced pizza cut into squares. It is similar to Sicilian, but lighter and fluffier. Also, it often has decadent toppings. Gabriele Bonci’s Pizzarium, Italy, popularized the style a decade ago. They used thicker dough and more water to create a crust that had a large, bubbly cross section. “It’s a style a lot of people are getting into these days,” Wiener says.
Unconventional pizza creations
While you can never go wrong with a pie, a few inverted and sauceless interpretations of pizza have also arisen over the years for us to chew on.
- Envision your pizza but rolled up and that’s stromboli — dough is stretched and filled with cheese, meats, and other ingredients before baking.
- Where a stromboli is a rolled pizza, a calzone is a folded pizza. Calzones are made by rolling out the dough in the shape of pizza and placing cheese and toppings on one half. The other half is then folded over and fried or baked.
- A pizza turnover of sorts, panzarottis are similar to calzones but folded over, fried, and sized for one person to walk and nibble on.
What pizza looks like around the world
Insider’s takeaway
There’s no set way to make pizza, which makes it a versatile and adaptable dish. The regional interpretations of pizza are influenced by the specific geography of the area. This has led to many different types of pizza around the world and across the country.