Pizza Variations Part Two

**New York-style pizza is a style originally developed in New York City by immigrants from Naples, Italy where pizza was created. It is often sold in generously sized, thin, and flexible slices. It is traditionally hand-tossed, moderately topped with southern Italian-style Marinara sauce, and liberally covered with cheese essentially amounting to a much larger version of the Neapolitan style. The slices are sometimes eaten folded in half, as its size and flexibility may otherwise make it unwieldy to eat by hand. This style of pizza tends to dominate the Northeastern states and is particularly popular in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Jumbo slices are particularly popular in Washington, D.C.. **Old Forge-style pizza is a variety of pizza from Old Forge, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania. It is square-shaped and typically has a thick crust. The sauce often has onions in it and is sometimes a bit sweetened. It also often has unorthodox cheese mixes including cheeses such as American and Cheddar. **Quad City-style pizza originates from the Quad Cities and is a thin crusted dough that incorporates a “spice mix” that is heavy on malt, which lends a toasted, nutty flavor. The smooth, thin sauce contains both red chili flakes and ground cayenne, and is more spicy than sweet. The sausage is a thick blanket of lean, fennel-flecked Italian sausage that is ground twice and spread from edge to edge. **Sicilian pizza in the United States is typically a square pie with a thick crust. It is derived from Sfinciuni, a thick crust variety from Sicily, and was introduced in the US by early Sicilian immigrants. Sicilian-style pizza is popular in Italian-American enclaves in the Northeast, Metro Detroit, and Portland, Oregon. **St. Louis-style pizza is a variant of thin-crust pizza popular around St. Louis and southern Illinois notable for its use of distinctive Provel cheese instead of (or, rarely, in addition to) mozzarella. Its crust is thin enough to become very crunchy in the oven, sometimes being compared to a cracker, and toppings are usually sliced instead of diced. Even though round, St. Louis-style pies are always cut into small squares. **Tomato pie, in several areas around the Northeast, especially Philadelphia and Utica, New York, refers to a square-cut thick-crust pizza topped with chunky tomato sauce and sprinkled with pecorino romano cheese, very similar to Sicilian sfinciuni. **Trenton tomato pie or New Jersey tomato pie is a type of circular thin-crust pizza named after Trenton, New Jersey. In this style of pizza, the mozzarella and toppings are placed on the crust first, with tomato sauce on top. Joe's Tomato Pie (now defunct), which opened in 1910, was the first restaurant to serve Trenton-style tomato pie. Papa's Tomato Pies, whose proprietor learned the trade at Joe's, was opened two years later in 1912. The Trenton region is home to the two oldest New Jersey tomato pie restaurants in the United States, Papa's and De Lorenzo's. **Upside-down pizza, made with tomato sauce on top of the cheese. Putting the cheese on the bottom prevents the tomato sauce from making the crust soggy.