Despite the frequent mention of New York Style pizza, there are several variations of this particular style. This might make it quite challenging to get your ideal New York Style pizza. This comprehensive guide contains all the information you want about New York Style Pizza.
What is New York Style Pizza?
You’ve undoubtedly tasted pizza in New York if you’ve ever been there. If you haven’t had the pizza, you should really consider eating New York Style pizza since it is excellent.
Although pizza will always be considered a component of Italian cuisine, it has changed significantly since its inception there. There aren’t many parallels between classic Italian pizza and New York-style pizza, as you’ll notice if you compare the two.
There are various wide varieties of New York Style pizza, as we’ve already said. These pizza varieties do have certain commonalities, despite their diversity. For instance, they all typically have a thin, hand-thrown crust and are intended to be broad and bulky. Typically, the pizza dough is highly crisp and breakable. However, the pizza’s foundation is bendable and simple to turn over to eat.
On your New York-style pizza, you can obtain a variety of toppings, although the majority of establishments will serve cheese or plain pizza as their main offerings. While some businesses offer pizzas by the pie, it is far more typical for establishments to sell pizza by the slice in New York. But what varieties exist in New York pizza? Let’s look at it.
Popular New York Style Pizzas
NY Style Pizza
Let’s start by looking at “NY Style Pizza.” There is just one significant difference between this kind of New York Pizza and the one we shall examine momentarily, and that is how it is prepared. Pizzas are typically prepared in a hearth or pizza oven using coal as the fire source. This contributes to the crisp texture and smokey taste of pizza. However, NY Style pizza is not cooked over coal. Instead, gas ovens are used.
Pizza is cooked over coal at a lot of authentic Italian restaurants because it gives the food a tonne of added flavour. As a result, many New York-style pizzas will employ a coal oven whenever possible. This, however, may not always be available depending on where the restaurant is located. The NY Style of pizza was developed as a result of restaurants and shops starting to cook their pizzas on gas ovens.
This kind of New York Pizza has rapidly gained popularity in recent years as more and more eateries choose to avoid using coal ovens. NY Style pizza doesn’t taste as delicious as the original varieties of pizza since this has just been done for convenience’s sake.
But there is one advantage to the invention of New York style pizza, and that is accessibility. Due to the fact that cooking pizza in a gas oven is simpler than cooking it in a coal oven, eateries can create more pizza more rapidly. The invention of this kind of pizza also marked a significant turning point for New York Style pizza since it made pizza more readily accessible, portable, and affordable.
There is nothing not to love about NY-style pizza. It has a generous amount of cheese, a soft bottom and a crispy crust.
Sicilian Pizza
Sicilian pizza won’t ever be served in the traditional circular form, unlike NY-style pizza. You will get a square piece of pizza when you purchase it by the slice since Sicilian pizza is famed for always being created in a rectangle form. Pizza in square form might seem strange at first, and you might question why someone would alter the traditional round shape of a pizza.
Due to the manner it is baked, Sicilian pizza is usually prepared in a rectangular form. Because they are baked in an oven, most pizzas have a circular form. However, Sicilian pizza is really pan-cooked, thus it can only be created in a rectangular shape.
However, Sicilian pizza differs from traditional New York-style pizza in more ways than only form. It has a crust that is often up to an inch thick, and it is also much thicker.
The Sicilian pizza, as its name implies, originated in Sicily and is currently popular in the centre of New York City. This pizza was initially made in bakeries rather than pizzerias in Sicily. This may account for why there is such a form difference between the two.
The Sicilian pizza that is served in New York is substantially different from the Sicilian pizza that is served in Sicily. Onions, breadcrumbs, and anchovies are among the toppings used on this pizza in Sicily. However, Sicilian pizza with simply tomato sauce and cheese as its toppings is more common in New York.
Neapolitan-American Pizza
We were referring to Neapolitan-American pizza when we said that NY Style pizza is comparable to another form of New York-style pizza. This particular kind of New York Style pizza is the original. It is because of this variety that pizza became so well-known in New York in the first place.
Pizza has a long history in New York, dating back to the early 1900s when Italian Gennaro Lombardi started selling it at his shop. He used a family recipe that had been handed down through the centuries to make the pizza he sold, and it is this recipe that served as the foundation for Neapolitan-American pizza.
The classic Neapolitan pizza seen in Italy and Neapolitan-American pizza are quite similar. Both pizzas are made with a very thin crust, plenty of tomato sauce on the bottom, and plenty of mozzarella cheese on top.
Nevertheless, despite their obvious similarities, these pizzas vary from one another more than they are alike. The three main distinctions are size, texture, and cooking methods.
Neapolitan pizzas are not chopped into pieces in Italy since they are meant to be consumed by one person. Instead, you will need to cut your pizza using a knife and fork. However, Neapolitan-American pizzas are much bigger, with a diameter of around 16 inches, allowing them to be consumed by others.
While Neapolitan-American pizzas were baked in a coal-fired oven to maintain the crust’s crispness as opposed to the traditional Neapolitan pizzas’ use of wood. Neapolitan-American pizzas are well-known because of their cooking method.
As we previously said, fewer establishments now really provide authentic Neapolitan-American pizzas. This is mostly due to the difficulty finding and managing coal-fired ovens, which are not the most common kind of oven. As a result, compared to the traditional Neapolitan-American pizza that New Yorkers used to love, the NY Style Pizza is now far more popular.
Conclusion
This has been a comprehensive guide to the many New York pizza types. We have covered all you need to know about pizza, from classic New York style to various types available in NYC.
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