My only exposure to square pizza was that bizarre pizza-like substance that’s the staple of high school cafeterias everywhere. Cooked in sheetpans the size of plywood panels and only vaguely identifiable as pizza with it’s sweet neon sauce, plasticy cheese that melts yet doesn’t flow and ground hamburger disguised as “sausage”. It’s to pizza what Spaghetti O’s are to pasta.
Yes I enjoy that in a bizarre nostalgic way when I stumble upon it as some super cheap buffet, but you’d have to be a lunatic to prefer square pizza to round as a rule.
Excellent point, Omniscient. My associations with square pizza are all pretty negative. My associations with circle pizzas range from nasty to sublime, but they’re clustered in the “pretty damn good” range.
Moebius Strip pizza, so there are goodies on the one side.
Actually, thickness and toppings are much more important than shape. One of the first pizzas I had was in a bakery which was square, and pizzas in Champaign Illinois were square, but round is just as good. Interior pieces without crust are compensated for by corner pieces with extra crust.
When I was a kid, pizza was a homemade dish made with a Bisquik crust topped with tomato paste, mozzarella (pronounced moots-arella), and ground beef, shaped to fill a rectangular baking sheet. The slices were square but large (no internal pieces). Yes, I grew up in Leave-It-To-Beaver Land, why do you ask?
My memory of square pizza is the cold, bready, naked tomato pizzas we always had at parties when I was a kid. They looked like this but without the cheese. They were too sweet, and too bready. I have bad memories of square pizzas.
I really don’t care what shape I get, as long as it’s thin crust, and I get some of the crispy outer crust.
As I said, I have no preference. When I visit my mother in Pennsylvania, I get Old Forge square pizza, I also like Sicilian pizza which is square. I also like round pizza.
Al Forno is okay for RI, where most of the pizza sucks. To get the really good stuff you have to go to New York or Philadelphia. Sicilian style pizza there is square, and that’s it’s natural form. But for regular pizza, it should be round, or roundish if it’s made in a real brick oven.
This post inspired me to try making some homemade Detroit pizza for dinner today. Unfortunately, I don’t have any measuring stick for the style, but the recipe and pictures on post #199 of this off-board thread has inspired me to give it a shot.
Secret option D., sometimes square, sometimes round, depends on my mood that day.
Someone said Jet’s square is a lot better than their round, but I have to say, their round isn’t exactly dogshit to begin with. You really can’t go wrong either way with Jet’s.
(Anyone who doesn’t know, Jet’s is a regional chain, there are tons of stores all over Michigan, not sure where else they extend)
They commercially sell square pizza? In real restuarants?
My middle-school caf made these horrible square-cut “pizzas”. In fairness, they probably wouldn’t have come out any better round. But that’s what I associate with square pizza.
To me, the Detroit-style squares are better than any other regional style. If you’re ever in Michigan, order one from Jet’s, Shield’s, Buddy’s…they’re “Detroit style” or “Sicilian style” or just called “square.” It’s a thick crust (no where near as thick as Chicago, but a bit thicker than a traditional hand-tossed), crispy on the outside, soft on the top, and the sauce is on top of the cheese (most of the time). The crust is often a little buttery or oily, but not gross.
Not only that, but some people prefer crust and others do not. With the square pizza, you get both. You get the outer crust and the ‘corner’ for the crust aficionado, but you also get the inner sanctum of crust-less pieces. Those are a gold mine… Yum.
