What’s not to love about pizza? Oven-baked bread covered with creamy tomato sauce and topped with fresh mozzarella cheese. Just thinking about it, makes my stomach grumble. This food is a hit with most Americans, and rightly so. You can pretty much put anything you want on a pizza and eat it however you choose. Meat, vegetables, seafood; it all belongs on a pizza. In America, there are many regional forms of pizza, and I’ll eat them all.

New-York-style pizza comes to mind first. The slices are usually pretty large and thin, and some people actually fold the slice in half and then eat it. You can most often find this style of pizza in the Northeastern states. And it’s my favorite. But living in Chicago, I don’t usually publicize my preference for our rival’s style.

Chicago-style deep-dish pizza contains a very thick, doughy crust that is formed up the sides of a deep-dish pan. What makes this style special is that the order of some ingredients is reversed. From the bottom up, it’s crust, cheese, filling and then sauce. Stuffed pizza usually has two layers of crust with the sauce on top. Now don’t get me wrong, any pizza is good pizza to me. But this style is definitely a little messy, and it wouldn’t be my choice for a first date.

Other lesser known American pizza styles are:

California-style pizza usually contains non-traditional ingredients, usually whatever produce item is freshest. The crust is very thin, flimsy almost.

Neapolitan pizza has a thin and crisp crust covered by basil and mozzarella and is often cooked in a brick oven.

Greek pizza uses oil instead of pizza sauce, and it’s commonly topped with traditional Greek ingredients, like feta, olives and spinach.

Here are a few yummy pizza recipes that I enjoy:

Pizza alla Napoletana
Pizza Rustica
Pizza Romano
White Pizza

What’s your favorite style of pizza? Let us know! Send your recipes here!

Tags: america, basil, bread, california, chicago, cooking, crust, deep dish, dough, feta, filling, food, greek, mozarella, neopolitan, new york, olive oil, olives, pizza, pizza recipe, pizza recipes, recipes, sauce, spinach, stuffed pizza, thin crust, tomato sauce

Posted by Sophia, 1:08 PM

This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 1:08 pm and is filed under basil, cheese, chicago, comfort food, cooking, fast food, food, greek food, herbs, meat, new york, pizza, recipes, seafood, tomato, vegetables. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.