Pizza Styles

Italy · Naples

The soft, leoparded, short-bake Neapolitan original — the ancestor style behind nearly every round pizza tradition worldwide, defined by a high, airy rim and a thin, tender centre.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

advanced

Domestic oven:

difficult

Italy · Naples

The most famous named Neapolitan topping combination — tomato, mozzarella, and basil — built on the same dough and bake as Neapolitan pizza generally, not a separate structural style.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

advanced

Domestic oven:

difficult

Italy · Naples

The older of the two canonical Neapolitan toppings — cheese-free, built on tomato, garlic, oregano, and olive oil — on the same dough and bake as Neapolitan pizza generally.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

advanced

Domestic oven:

difficult

Italy · Naples

A contemporary Naples evolution of Neapolitan pizza with an exaggerated, tall, almost hollow rim and a proportionally minimal centre.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

expert

Domestic oven:

difficult

Italy · Naples

A contemporary Naples movement keeping the traditional crust and bake but embracing gourmet, often post-bake-finished toppings well beyond the classic canon.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

advanced

Domestic oven:

difficult

Italy · Rome

Rome's distinct thin, rolled, uniformly crisp round pizza tradition — flatter and crunchier throughout than Neapolitan pizza, with no raised soft rim.

Thickness:

very thin

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

Italy · Rome

Rome's tray-baked, cut-to-order pizza, defined by a very high-hydration dough giving a remarkably light, airy, open crumb beneath a crisp exterior.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

excellent

Italy · Rome

A modern, trademarked oval flatbread using a distinct multi-flour blend, marketed with reference to ancient Rome though its direct historical continuity is not documented.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

Italy · Rome

A plain, sauce-free, cheese-free Roman tray bread seasoned only with olive oil and salt — one of the simplest members of the pizza al taglio family.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

Italy · Palermo

Palermo's thick, spongy, bread-like tray pizza, topped with a robust tomato-onion-anchovy sauce and breadcrumbs rather than a conventional mozzarella-forward top layer.

Thickness:

thick

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

Italy · Naples

A deep-fried Neapolitan dough pocket born from post-war necessity, filled with ricotta and provola and fried to a crisp, golden exterior.

Thickness:

thick

Skill:

advanced

Domestic oven:

good

Italy · Naples

A Neapolitan hybrid that fries a small dough disc first, then tops and briefly bakes it, combining a fried base with conventional pizza presentation.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

advanced

Domestic oven:

good

Italy · Naples

A baked, folded Neapolitan dough pocket filled with ricotta, mozzarella, and cured meat or vegetables — the baked counterpart to the fried panzerotto.

Thickness:

thick

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

Italy · Bari

Puglia's smaller, deep-fried answer to calzone, typically filled simply with mozzarella and tomato.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

Italy · Turin

Turin's small, individual, oiled-pan pizza, prized for its crisp, almost fried bottom and thick, soft interior in a compact personal size.

Thickness:

thick

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

Italy · Sanremo

A cheese-free, focaccia-like Ligurian bread topped with anchovy, olive, and garlic, predating both tomato's arrival in Europe and the better-known Neapolitan pizza tradition — some sources classify it as a focaccia rather than a pizza.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

Italy · Bari

Bari's potato-enriched, semolina-based tray bread — a distinctively soft, fluffy crumb topped with tomato, olives, and oregano before baking; some sources classify it as a focaccia rather than a pizza.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

Italy · Recco

An unleavened, cheese-stuffed Ligurian flatbread from Recco — two paper-thin dough sheets sandwiching soft, fresh cheese, baked very hot and briefly until blistered — EU-IGP-protected since 2012, but classified by several sources as a savoury pie rather than a true pizza.

Thickness:

very thin

Skill:

advanced

Domestic oven:

good

United States · New York City

The large, thin, foldable slice that defines American pizza in the popular imagination, built for cold fermentation, deck-oven baking, and eating by the slice.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

United States · New Haven

New Haven's charred, coal-oven-descended pizza tradition, famous for its blistered crust and the white clam pie specialty.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

advanced

Domestic oven:

workable with adaptation

United States · Detroit

Detroit's thick, airy, rectangular pan pizza, famous for its crisp fried bottom and caramelised cheese edge from brick cheese pressed against a steel pan.

Thickness:

thick

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

excellent

United States · Chicago

Chicago's very thick, deep-pan pizza with reverse-order layering — cheese first, chunky sauce on top — baked low and slow in a deep, oiled round pan.

Thickness:

deep

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

excellent

United States · Chicago

A further evolution of Chicago deep-dish that seals the filling under a second thin dough layer before topping with sauce, making it taller and more enclosed than deep-dish.

Thickness:

deep

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

excellent

United States · Chicago

Chicago's thin, cracker-crisp, square-cut tavern pizza — reportedly the city's more commonly eaten style, despite deep-dish's outsized outside reputation.

Thickness:

very thin

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

United States

A thick, square-cut, focaccia-like American pan pizza loosely descended from Sicilian sfincione but denser and structurally distinct from it today.

Thickness:

thick

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

United States · Long Island

A thin, quickly-made Long Island pan pizza imitating Italian-American home cooking, denser and thinner than its Sicilian-American cousin.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

United States

A small, thin, individual Massachusetts tavern pan pizza with a crisp edge and cheese often browned to the rim of the pan.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

United States · St. Louis

St. Louis's distinctive unleavened, cracker-thin pizza topped with regional Provel cheese and cut into small party squares.

Thickness:

very thin

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

United States

A malt-forward, strip-cut regional pizza from the Illinois-Iowa Quad Cities, generously topped with spicy, fennel-forward sausage.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

United States

An Ohio Valley regional style finished with cold, fresh vegetable toppings added after baking, sometimes called 'salad pizza' locally.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

United States · Old Forge

A tray-baked regional style specific to Old Forge, Pennsylvania, traditionally sold by the tray or half-tray rather than by the individual slice.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

United States · Trenton

Trenton, New Jersey's tomato pie tradition, with cheese applied beneath a dominant, chunky tomato sauce layer — the reverse of most pizza layering.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

United States · Philadelphia

Philadelphia's rectangular, often cheese-free tomato pie tradition, sold by the square from bakeries and traditionally eaten at room temperature.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

United States

A cheese-free Rhode Island bakery tradition, served at room temperature and cut into distinctive rectangular strips.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

United States

A Colorado specialty with a thick, braided golden crust edge served alongside honey, distinctive among American pizza traditions for this sweet pairing.

Thickness:

thick

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

United States

A 1980s California movement applying thin, Italian-influenced crusts to gourmet, seasonal, and non-traditional topping combinations, rooted in the broader New American cuisine movement.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

United States

A simple, soft, thick sheet-pan pizza tradition prioritising speed, batch quantity, and comforting familiarity — one of the easiest and most naturally domestic-oven-friendly American styles.

Thickness:

thick

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

United States · Buffalo

Western New York's heartier, square-cut regional pizza, distinguished by cup-and-char pepperoni and a noticeably sweeter tomato sauce than standard New York-style.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

United States

New England's Greek-immigrant-developed pan pizza tradition: a spongy, olive-oil-crisped crust with a tangy tomato-paste sauce and a mozzarella-cheddar cheese blend, structurally distinct from both Neapolitan and New York pizza.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

United States · Utica

Upstate New York's thick, rectangular, tomato-only pan pizza tradition — dense and focaccia-like, deliberately free of a visible cheese layer, and traditionally served at room temperature.

Thickness:

thick

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

United States · Chicago

A Chicago-original deep-fried, individually portioned pizza turnover — sauce, cheese, and meat sealed in a thin wrapper and fried rather than baked, a genuinely distinct cooking method within the catalogue.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

difficult

United States · Tampa (Ybor City)

Tampa's Sicilian-Cuban-Italian fusion tomato pie — a square, cold-served, egg-enriched, cakey-crumbed pie topped generously with tomato and oregano but sparingly with cheese, a distinct Ybor City tradition dating from at least 1912.

Thickness:

thick

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

Argentina

Buenos Aires's onion-topped, sauce-free, focaccia-descended pizza — the base style from which cheese-stuffed fugazzeta later developed.

Thickness:

thick

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

Argentina

Buenos Aires's cheese-stuffed evolution of fugazza — two layers of thick dough enclosing a generous cheese filling, topped with cooked onions.

Thickness:

thick

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

Brazil

A distinctly Brazilian pizza tradition developed from São Paulo's Italian immigrant community, known for a thinner, drier crust and a wide-ranging national topping culture well beyond the Italian canon.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

Japan

A contemporary, chain-driven Japanese pizza culture distinguished by distinctly Japanese topping conventions like mayonnaise-corn and teriyaki chicken, not a long-standing historical tradition.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

good

Canada · Windsor

Windsor, Ontario's distinctive regional pizza — shredded pepperoni and canned mushrooms chosen specifically to avoid grease and burning, on a cornmeal-blend crust with a sweet-spicy sauce.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

Sweden

A genuinely distinctive Swedish national pizza topping culture — most famously banana-curry pizza and yogurt-sauced kebabpizza — built on a deliberately neutral thin crust, not a novelty but a mainstream tradition since the 1970s.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

good

United Kingdom

A distinctly Scottish chip-shop tradition of battering and deep-frying a whole small pizza, served alongside fish and chips — genuinely documented, if divisive, rather than an internet novelty.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

difficult

Australia

A genuinely distinctive Australian national pizza topping culture, most famously the breakfast-inspired bacon-egg-barbecue-sauce 'Aussie', built on a generic thin-to-medium base rather than a distinct crust tradition.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

good

Uruguay

A Rioplatense pizza tradition sold in long, paddle-shaped 'a la pala' slices, distinguished above all by its pairing with fainá — a separate, earlier-arriving Ligurian chickpea-flour flatbread, not a pizza variant itself.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

good

Argentina

A deliberately thin, crisp, stone-baked Buenos Aires pizza tradition, positioned as the lighter counterpart to Argentina's dominant thick pizza al molde (fugazza/fugazzeta) style.

Thickness:

thin

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

South Korea

A recent, chain-driven Korean fusion pizza culture defined by thick, sometimes sweet-filled crusts, near-universal corn topping, and distinctly Korean flavour combinations like bulgogi beef.

Thickness:

thick

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

good

Argentina · Buenos Aires

The everyday pan-baked pizza of Buenos Aires: a spongy, twice-proofed, medium-thickness dough generously covered in cheese to the pan's edge, distinct from both fugazza and fugazzeta in the same city's tradition.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

intermediate

Domestic oven:

good

Philippines

A contemporary Filipino topping and flavour culture on a standard round pizza base, defined by a banana-ketchup-sweetened sauce and Filipino cured-meat toppings rather than a distinct crust tradition.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

India

A contemporary Indian topping and flavour culture on a standard round pizza base, defined by paneer tikka and tandoori-spiced toppings rather than a distinct crust tradition, popularised by international chains from the late 1980s onward.

Thickness:

medium

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

excellent

France

An Alsatian farmhouse flatbread — an exceptionally thin, cracker-like unleavened dough topped with crème fraîche, onion, and lardons and baked very briefly at very high heat — widely compared to pizza but classified by many sources as a distinct regional tart tradition.

Thickness:

very thin

Skill:

beginner

Domestic oven:

good