Is it pizza?

Where focaccia ends and pizza begins

Is focaccia a kind of pizza, or a separate bread?

The two overlap so heavily in Italy that several dishes are called both, depending on the town. The most workable distinction is not thickness but whether the dough is a bread dressed after or before baking, and even that fails for focaccia di Recco and pizza bianca romana.

PizzaHQ presents both sides and takes no side. Whether a topped flatbread tradition belongs in the pizza category at all — a question about classification, not quality.

The documented positions

Conventional Italian usage
Focaccia is a bread — dimpled, oiled, risen, and eaten as bread — while pizza is a dressed base eaten as a dish. Focaccia is normally salted and oiled, not sauced.
Reasoning: The two occupy different places in an Italian meal and are bought in different shops: focaccia from a forno or panificio, pizza from a pizzeria.
Generally accepted
- Accademia Italiana della Cucina — regional Italian food documentation — Accademia Italiana della Cucina
Regional practice that contradicts the rule
Focaccia barese is tray-baked with tomato and olive; focaccia di Recco is an unleavened cheese-filled sheet; Roman pizza bianca is an oiled, unsauced bread sold in a bakery. Each breaks the tidy rule in a different direction.
Reasoning: The Italian names follow local tradition rather than a national taxonomy, so any single dividing line will misclassify several long-established dishes.
Strongly supported
- History of Focaccia Barese: from Phoenician Origins to Modern Tradition — focacciabarese.it
- The Most Sensational Focaccia You've (Probably) Never Tasted — La Cucina Italiana