The Corporate Delivery Pie You Secretly Love — but Better

In the 1970's I grew up with Ellio's Pizza. It was my favorite frozen pizza.

Corporate delivery pie? You're talking about pizza here. Pizza and pie are, unbelievably, two entirely different things. Go to Italy and ask for a pizza 'pie' and they'll look at you like you're nuts. I think it's maybe a weird New York thing, and you should drop it. It's just pizza. The pie comes later, for dessert.

Ugh--I have always hated Pizza Hut pizza! I love pizza, but that stuff? No. It's like bad Bisquick-home-made. No. No. No.

"Whatever it was, that first pizza love represents an important taste in your life, a benchmark. You crave it, sometimes."... Why be so absolutist, so American, let's say? I grew up with frozen Tombstones and Coke. I also grew up with awesome thin crust "Greek", and Giordano's Chicago-style, and Roman pan-style (by the etto), and Napoli 00. All by the time I was 18. Whatever. I eat it all if there's love and time put into the making.

The photos and Italian food make me hungry. I crazy about pizzas especially pizza with Italian sausage and garlic. The former Luigi Restaurant offered the best pizzas in DC. I ate there since 1950s. Where is the best pizza place in NYC? I don't mean Pizza Hut. That is Americanized pizzas.

Fascati's is still good.

Wow, now the NYT is dumbing down food? Pepperoni on a serious pizza? Pizza Hut? Dominos? Next up: ain't fast food burgers just wonderful?

The "secret" behind Pizza Hut pies, and what makes them so appealing, is that they are actually fried. The employees squirt a good amount of oil into the pan before adding the dough. The pizza bottom/sides actually fry in the oil which gets almost completely absorbed into the fried dough. That's why the bottom is co crispy.

"...the pizza he loved — passionately — was the one everyone else loved, too: personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut..." . . Everyone from Chicago knows that what he loved is a low-priced knockoff of Chicago-style pan pizza, which was first baked at Uno's on Wabash.

Made this recipe with 550 grams of my own pizza dough, which uses bread flour, instant yeast and honey, and it was spectacularly decadent. It lived up to the descriptions and hype in every respect, and reminded me of the best Chicago deep dish, and Zachary’s, a local Oakland favorite, whose specialty is a mushroom-spinach variation. I will most assuredly alternate this pie with my usual thin-crust versions. Many thanks for this welcome addition to our repertoire.

This looks like a great recipe - will give it a try. Fascati's is the best for a regular slice. Perfect crust. Plus, they're Yankees fans.

I made this recipe and it came out great. My family and I loved it. Very close to the Sicilian pies I grew up eating in New Jersey. Interesting and different addition to my pizza repertoire. I don't know of any restaurant in Arkansas making anything like this recipe.

The memory of those pizzas stayed with Falco, as the memory of childhood pizza stays with every American... I grew up on neighborhood Chicago pizza and still drool for one more taste of it. But then so does Czarnina, a Polish soup made of duck blood.

Thanks for all the great stories! As often happens, the comments are the gravy on the dough. My grandmother made pickled peaches, which don't go with pizza - maybe next time. I just had breakfast, but I'm hungry. Shout out to Vace's white pizza in Bethesda, MD, Andrew Cleveland Park, DC. I've been going there since the late 70's when the floor was dented wood, and it's the same great simple pizza. The best pizza I ever had was in Rome, in a small trattoria: dough, a tiny bit of cheese, thinly sliced new potatoes, sprinkled with Rosemary. Crisp, soft, crackling, aromatic, earthy and herbal, just fantastic.

What is a "corporate delivery pizza"?

Arturo's on Houston Street. Avino's (sp?) in New Dorp.

I've said for years that Emmy Squared, which is outrageously successful, so-called 'Detroit-style' pizza in NYC, is really just Pizza Hut pan pizza made with better cheese. It's tasty, but it's rather more indulgent than I prefer.

His great-grandmother’s pizza: “lots of sauce, bread crumbs and olive oil, onions and green olives, very little cheese.” I guess he didn’t like her pizza so much after all: “This recipe, he told me in 2018, pays homage to that buttery, high-lofted pie, with a crisp bottom crust, a slightly sweet sauce and an enormous amount of cheese.”

My Neapolitan grandmother’s “Sicilian” style pizza. Lots of good dough with some tomato, herbs, garlic and salt and pepper, and a sprinkling of locatelli cheese. And - Old Forge white pizza from Brutico’s!

My two favorite food groups are pizza and burgers. My first pizza love was Anna's on Rutland Road, near E. 95th Street in East Flatbush. Two slices and a coke: 40 cents. Re "corporate" pizza: I've tried Dominos, Pizza Hut, Little Caesar's, Papa Johns. They all stink. Period. I like Sicilian pizza, but anything made by the aforementioned joints...FEH!!

Uhh, that picture. Now I'm hungry.

Sounds lovely! I'd be more likely to actually make this pizza, however, if the quantities in the dough recipe were given in something other than grams. This is America: Cups, that's how we measure stuff. It's how my all my measuring tools are calibrated. Even ounces would be easier to manage.

When I was in high school, an Italian friend of mine invited some of us over to his mother's house for pizza, and so help me, I remember it to this day. She only made it once a year, because of the effort, but oh, do I ever appreciate what she did. The sauce simmered for several days (with appropriate refreshing)j and the dough was rolled (pounded?) out on a surface made from a large dining room table pushed next to a kitchen table. It was a huge, thin wheel of high-gluten flour perhaps 4 feet in diameter. Once a very thin layer of the sauce was spooned over the dough, she began rolling it up from one side until she had an enormous roll with perhaps 5-6 layers of sauce/dough. Finally, she curved the dough into a large doughnut shape, connected the ends, and lugged the thing over to the oven. Each of us was given a large glass of water and a monstrous piece of the resulting pizza. One bite, and I immediately understood the glass of water: Wow, was that thing spicy hot! But I have never before or since had anything as delicious, and I've had 76 years to try!

I have been making pizza like this for years, thinking I was not doing it correctly, but now I am making my pizza by first making the dough, and then browning it on one side on the stove top, and the flipping it, and putting on my ingredients, covering it until everything is ready. For some reason, the crust tastes more like what you might get at a pizza place.

Sicilian grandma pizza from Texas - loving the idea ! Can't wait to try a more heart-healthy twist with whole wheat pizza crust, just the skim mozzarella, and grilled chicken instead of pepperoni; age forces compromises.

My grandmother would make pizza with bread dough in a frying pan on top of the stove with herbs anchovies, lots of olive oil and a little tomatoes. Fast and delicious with a glass of wine. Dip the crust in the wine afterward. Memorable. Even the Baronessa are it.

Yum!

Best job I ever had was working in a pizza place - and I was mainly delivery (before they had stupid uniforms and illuminated signs). Everyone was always glad to see you.

This should be an article about how to make his great-grandmother's Sicilian pizzas, to be perfectly frank

A friend's Italian mother would bake pizza in a cast iron skillet coated with olive oil to get a crispy bottom crust.

I grew up in Astoria, N.Y. during the late fifties, early sixties. My mother, an Italian immigrant, worked in bakeries most of her life, and was working in one near the junior high school I was going to. In those days, pizza was not available everywhere. There wasn't a pizzeria on every block. It seemed the first places to get pizza were bakeries, I guess because they already had the ovens to make them. At the bakery where mom worked, they broke through an outer wall on the street side, and started selling pizza. Of course, this became my favorite school lunch. It wasn't long before mom began making pizza at home in our oven. I'm not sure how many other people did this, but mom would tell me to bring my neighborhood pals in for lunch, and she would serve us homemade pizza pie. Those pies were the standard for me.

I have made pizza in a cast iron pan for awhile now and it can be very good. The dough tends to be crispy on the bottom and doughy on the inside. Use quality ingredients and it will taste good. The problem I had was trying to use the pan to make Naples style pizza which is at a very high temperature. I would cook the pizza on the stove top and then put it into the broiler to melt the cheese. However, when I use oil(olive oil) it would smoke off because of the high heat. Next time I will try it in the oven.

Don’t listen to the naysayers. I have been experimenting with cast iron pizzas as a way to replicate Chicago deep dish pizza. Watch the thickness of your crust but you can bake a pretty good facsimile. Try mozzarella and drained spinach with another crust on top for a stuffed pizza. Pat Bruno, a Chicago Suntimes columnist wrote a book about deep dish pizza that’s still available online. I just adapted his recipes to the cast iron skillet and it works like a charm.

Judging from the lead photo, the crust is way too thick. The concoction looks more like a quiche or Spanish tortilla than a pizza. Mr Falco's childhood muse is showing.

I remember enjoying personal pan pizzas too. However, not because they were actually good. There was never any shortage of amazing pizza where I grew up. There were too many varieties to really pick a favorite. I generally prefer tavern or brick oven these days but you could pick an independent place for every day of the week if you wanted. They all had their own qualities and charms. We rarely went to Pizza Hut as a result. The thing I liked about Pizza Hut though was the "personal" part of the personal pan pizza. If I got my own pie, I didn't have to fight with siblings over which toppings to get. The pizza itself wasn't really great. Mass-produced pizza has it's place but let's not romanticize the reality. Getting your own toppings though; priceless. To this day, I relish those moments when I don't have to argue with anyone about getting mushrooms on my pizza.

This story made me laugh & get a tiny bit sad for a time long gone. I want to tell you a story about my grandmother. On Sunday evening (Italians ate their "dinner" at noon in those days with all children & grandchildren regardless of age or what sport was on TV) she would whip up pounds of fresh made dough. She would then take out various cuts of salami, cappicola, ham, pepperoni, anchovies, olives etc, and make pizzas. Some had tomato gravy (it ain't sauce among real big city Italian Americans-it's gravy) some were white. some had two layers of crust, a top & a bottom. Some had nothing but olive oil & garlic. The left over dough was fried in oil & sprinkled with either salt or sugar. And we ate. And ate. And what she made never got her a title or an article in a newspaper. But I guarantee you that the simplicity for that woman's recipe for using up last week's lunch meat, washed down with grandpop's home made wine (about 18% alcohol content) could beat any fancy pizza guru in a taste contest. It's pizza for heaven's sake. It's what Italian poor folk ate to supplement their diet long before the American GIs came home from Naples after WW2 raving about the "pizza pie" they ate & kick starting the phenomena of this peasant dish becoming America's favorite fast food & the gourmet's lavish experimental dish. Well I have to go now-the dough is starting to rise and the grandkids are coming over. And they don't like Pizza Hut, Domino's or Little Caesar's.