Think Chicago is just the land of deep dish? Well, Daniel Zemans from Serious Eats has just compiled a roundup of the various pizza styles in Chicago, and he was able to track down at least twelve different kinds (those include: deep dish, stuffed, thin crust, American Artisanal, pan, bakery, Neapolitan, coal oven, New York Style, New Haven Style, Roman Style, Flatbread). It’s one of the most exhaustive recaps of our city’s pizza scene that we’ve ever seen. It’s also less of a critics roundup of the best pizzas in the city (there is no number one pick), and more of dissection of kinds of pizza one can easily get around town. We asked him what it was like to put together such a daunting list.
The “highlight” of the list to him was finally distinguishing deep dish from stuffed crust. “Way too many people use the terms interchangeably and they really are very different.” In the article he explains that while they “do look alike,” the “crust on most stuffed pies is flaky not crumbly, they’re usually made with shortening instead of butter.” Plus the stuffed pies have a second layer of dough on top, which is “so thin that most people don’t even realize it’s there.”
There have been a lot of pizza lists over the past year, so it’s interesting to see the topic explored in a new way.
The United States of Pizza: Illinois (Chicago Edition) [Slice/Serious Eats]
