Vital Information wrote:I find that the ultra-crisp pizza cited above like Candlelite to be a) not exactly typical of Chicago pizza

I agree with most of what VI said above, though surprisingly I've not visited any of the pizza places he mentions. I call special attention to the line quoted, though, because it seems there has been a bit of shift in how forum users define "Chicago-style" thin crust, or as LAZ prefers, flat pizza.

Now in terms of flat pizza (i.e., not stuffed or deep dish), there is a huge variety of styles available here, of widely varying quality, varying thickness of crusts, square cuts, pie cuts, etc. You can probably at least find something that approximates what you're looking for.

The hallmark of "Chicago-style" thin crust, insofar as it is an actual style--and I become less persuaded of this fact over time--I have thought to be a "short" crust, identified by the introduction of a significant amount of fat into the flour.

After ordering pizzas over the course of a year from various delivery spots in my former neighborhood (including Chicago's, La Roma, La Villa, Nancy's, Pete's on Western, the old Riggio's Cafe Pranzo, and several more I can't remember), the pies all seemed quite similar, none with a cracker thin crust, all of a pretty middling quality, all, of course, cut in squares. These similarities led me to conclude that the genus of pie I kept encountering must be Chicago-style thin crust.

The thinner styles of Vito & Nick's, Marie's (though Marie's is thin, it is usually too greasy to achieve cracker crispness), and Candlelite seem to be a different species to me. I would hardly describe them as representative of Chicago thin. It is interesting to me that there seems to have been a shift in how people are defining Chicago-style flat pizza.

Perhaps a related question is, how much is a style defined by what it is vs. what it aspires to be? Do you define from the top down, i.e., is La Villa a poor imitation of the Vito & Nick's ideal, like some sad sack New Yorker aping Totonno's? I wouldn't make this argument, but I'd be interested in entertaining it if someone else would.

As for a pizza headcase might enjoy, give Brick's a try. I haven't been there in a couple years, but I liked it pretty well at the time. I'm actually in need of an update, if I continue to toss this out as a recommendation. It doesn't strike me as Chicago-style thin by any definition, and if nothing else, they have a pretty nice beer list.

Cheers,

Aaron

Aaron Deacon wrote:

Vital Information wrote:I find that the ultra-crisp pizza cited above like Candlelite to be a) not exactly typical of Chicago pizza

After ordering pizzas over the course of a year from various delivery spots in my former neighborhood (including Chicago's, La Roma, La Villa, Nancy's, Pete's on Western, the old Riggio's Cafe Pranzo, and several more I can't remember), the pies all seemed quite similar, none with a cracker thin crust, all of a pretty middling quality, all, of course, cut in squares. These similarities led me to conclude that the genus of pie I kept encountering must be Chicago-style thin crust.

I have been guilty of using the term Chicago-style thin many times, so I'll chime in.

I have always considered this to mean a thin, square-cut pizza that does not have particularly "floppy" edges--maybe not always cracker-thin, but usually cooked to a hardness or crunchiness . I would consider "cracker-thin" to be a particular variation on this style. I would also consider the pizza from most of the places that you mentioned above to fit within my defnition of "Chicago-style thin crust".

Now, obviously this type of pizza is not representative of all Chicago pizzas. But, I contend that it is a "style" nonetheless, defined simply by the wide availability here. Pick a pizza place at random in this city, and 9 times out of 10, their thin crust will fit my description. To me, that defines a style.

Another part of the definition for me is based on when I was living in Washington DC, where the pizza is either Papa John's or gourmet. A pizza place opened near Dupont Circle, owned by a French-trained chef who learned to make pizza in Chicago before moving with his wife to DC. All he made were (excellent) thin-crust pizzas that fit my definition closely. His pizza became pretty popular in the neighborhood and consistently were referred to as a Chicago-style thin. Now, this doesn't make him or my old neighborhood right, but it drove home the point for me that I definitely wasn't alone.

There was one other thing that my parents taught me as a very young boy about Chicago style pizza in general. There was one time that I asked for pepperoni pizza, (the Pizza Hut commercials made it look so good), and my father said to me, "That's what they put on their pizzas in NY. In Chicago, we eat sausage." Since I was barely up to his knee and consistently intimidated by him, that ended the discussion. Yet, I have always come to beleive that the "default" meat on a pizza for a Chicagoan is sausage, while elsewhere around the country, it's pepperoni. To this day, I don't like pepperoni on my pizza. I find the cured pepperoni flavor of to be way too dominant.

I tend to agree with Aaron. Chicago-style thin is a greasy, usually very short dough. In my experience it's about 1/4-1/3" thick at the edges. Often rolled out by machine.

I would actually put marie's more in this camp than others, partly because the crust is thicker and greasier and softer than the cracker crust at places like Candlelite.

I think the very thin, very crackery crust at Candlelite et al is a wholly distinct style, since the crust tastes nothing like "normal" chicago short crusts.

eatchicago wrote:I have always considered this to mean a thin, square-cut pizza that does not have particularly "floppy" edges--maybe not always cracker-thin, but usually cooked to a hardness or crunchiness . I would consider "cracker-thin" to be a particular variation on this style. I would also consider the pizza from most of the places that you mentioned above to fit within my defnition of "Chicago-style thin crust".

eatchicago,

I think we pretty much agree that this is how "Chicago-style thin crust" is most generally used. To better sum up two points of interest to me:

1) I'm seeing more people define it as "cracker-thin", and more strikingly, that the cracker thin versions are the standard bearers among the staunchest advocates of the style. This advocacy leads me to question the esteem in which the non-cracker-thin Chicago style is held, a genre of which I have been mostly critical here.

2) Growing up not on the East Coast, I've regularly encountered pizzas that would fit the more general definition of "Chicago-style thin crust", and never had I witnessed it (so far as I can recall) referred to as such. In this context I wonder (like Antonius and chicken vesuvio) what particular innovation characterizes this whole genre of pizzas as "Chicago-style," that is, is this really a style that began in Chicago and spread throughout, at least, the greater Midwest? Or is it a style that developed throughout the Midwest that Chicagoans, as residents of the Midwest's largest city, have adopted as their own? And even perhaps, how widely is "Chicago-style thin crust" even a term that is commonly used in this town outside such food-obsessed or pizza-obsessed communities as this?

Finally, I do intuitively agree with sausage as a typical Chicago topping (JeffB has some good stuff on this, I think), and oddly, while I rarely to never ordered sausage pizzas before arriving here, I nearly always choose sausage when ordering from a place here for the first time.

One other point that just occurred to me...

It is interesting to consider regional chains, e.g., Imo's in St. Louis, Mazzio's in Tulsa, Godfather's in Omaha (though this has spread more than some others), La Rosa's in Cincinnati, et al.

All these chains, as far as I know, cut slices rather than squares. Are there any regional chains that cut squares? I believe there are a couple Dayton-area chains that do, but "Dayton-style" leads to some other questions that I'm not really prepared to comment on.

I also find it interesting that "regional chains" here hardly dominate the market and are first and foremost known for their Chicago-style deep dish or stuffed pizzas.

Aaron, I think you make some good points. What I wonder (challenge?) is why there has to be a "Chicago style" of thin pizza. Is it not enough to have good pizza in Chicago? By way of comparison, look at LA and deli's. By most accounts, LA has a thriving and prosperous deli scene. Some (who've even eaten it) say that Langer's is the best pastrami in the USA. Yet, does anyone talk of a "LA deli". No, it's just deli's in LA.

Do we need a Chicago style of thin? Obviously, to a New Yawker, there is a big difference between Chicago thin, and there are many pizzas here that are different from New York pizza by way of being thinner, going done to micro-thin ala Candlelite. Yet, there are also pizzas here that are quite thick and bready like "New York" style. Why not just find good pizza in Chicago instead of finding a label for some pizza in Chicago

Vital Information wrote:Do we need a Chicago style of thin? Obviously, to a New Yawker, there is a big difference between Chicago thin, and there are many pizzas here that are different from New York pizza by way of being thinner, going done to micro-thin ala Candlelite.

Funny, earlier this week I stopped into a new pizza place in my neighborhood that advertised "Chicago thin crust pizza" and found, what I would describe, as New York style pizza.

{insert picture here when I figure out how to get pictures out of my new phone}

The crust was very, thin, thinner than Santullo's. No shortening or oil in the crust. Baked at a high temperature as to make the edges puff up, but allowing the pizza to still be foldable. Thin layer of sauce; thin layer of cheese. Like hearing a voice you recognize from your childhood, I knew this pizza did not come from here.

"So why do you call your pizza 'Chicago style thin crust?'" I asked him. He hemmed and hawed about it not being deep dish. I confronted him with it not having a cracker crust, and not being cut in squares. He broke down and confessed, that it really isn't Chicago style. He admitted to baking his pies at a much higher temperature than most pizzas in Chicago, and even having to having a new brick oven. "So why don't you tell people that you have a brick oven?" He didn't think they'd care.

So to headcase and the rest of you, you don't have to give up pizza by moving to Chicago, there is other pizza out there.

Mona Lisa Pizza
228 W Chicago Ave
312-787-5777
CTA: Brown Line@Chicago

And... was the pizza good? Better than other ny-style slices in Chicago?

Rich4 wrote:

Vital Information wrote:Do we need a Chicago style of thin? Obviously, to a New Yawker, there is a big difference between Chicago thin, and there are many pizzas here that are different from New York pizza by way of being thinner, going done to micro-thin ala Candlelite.

Funny, earlier this week I stopped into a new pizza place in my neighborhood that advertised "Chicago thin crust pizza" and found, what I would describe, as New York style pizza...

Antonius wrote:The short dough crust (that has virtually no edge and is often baked to cracker-like crispness) is, meseems, the typically and peculiarly Chicago style. That other kinds of crusts are commonly available in a city of this size is neither surprising nor evidence against the idea that the crisp, thin, flakey crust produced with shortened dough is something traditionally typical of (so say many of my native born informants) and in some real sense peculiar to (so say all who know something about pizza) Chicago.

Perhaps there were always many places around town that serve a sort of industrial slightly greasy bread dough thin-crust pizza, alongside places that specialised in the interesting (for some, in the euphemistic sense) cracker-like, extra-thin, edgeless pastry dough. I wonder, though, whether the industrial greasy bread dough sorts of places are more common now as they compete with the chains and seek the favour of people who grew up eating the odious products of Pizza Gut, Demon-o's and Chuck-n-Wheeze.

The above quote is something I said to myself yesterday in reaction to part of this thread but then decided not to rrepeat in public, having grown somewhat weary of the pizza wars... But in light of Rich4's post, I think it appropriate and important to note that 'Chicago thin-crust' a) does exist; b) isn't served at all places in Chicago; and c) might eventually have its existence threatened as a result of patterns of population movement and the warping of pizza tastes of the general world population by the chains.

Or something like that...

But it is perhaps encouraging to hear of the opening of the sort of place described by Rich4, though the mis-labelling of the pizza style is not helpful.

Antonius

Yes, I thought the pizza was excellent, and typical of a NY-style pizzeria that sells pizza by the slice.

I liked it better than Santullo's - the crust is more evenly thin, and they didn't put too much cheese on it.

They seem to get it; more ingredients does not make a pizza better.

As has been noted here many times, the biggest distinction between Chicago's flat pizza style and flat pizza in other places is the crust. It's not a huge distinction, and you can get pizza with that kind of crust elsewhere, too, so it's not uniquely Chicago. I ate pizza like that in Detroit, for example, although it's not the predominate Detroit style. For that matter, Little Caesar's default pizza isn't all that different (or it didn't used to be -- it's been years since I was forced to "pizza pizza").

Eatchicago has it right: It's the crisp crustiness that's distinctive. (Sausage vs. pepperoni is valid too.) Unlike spongy East Coast-style pizza, you can't fold it -- it'll crack. Yet another likely reason why it's cut into small pieces rather than big wedges.

I note that the same dough is used at most pizzerias for their deep-dish and stuffed styles, as well as their flat pizzas. I've always assumed that the crust recipe was developed to hold up to that thick layer of cheese.

Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo opened their deep-dish pizza parlor in 1943. Like many of those who spread pizza throughout the rest of the country, Sewell was a returning WWII serviceman. If there was pizza in Chicago before that, it's lost to history and seems to have had little influence on the subsequent development of pizza here.

The chicago-style thin crust, with the very short dough, that I grew up in is NOT a crust that cracks if you'll bend it. It folds just fine.

There are some places that have a cracker crust, but the most widespread examples of chicago thin (giordano's thin, edwardo's thin, and almost all other places) will fold/bend pretty readily. On some the very edge of the crust will crack, but the crustless inner pieces always fold and the crust pieces usually do to a fair extent as well.

gleam wrote:The chicago-style thin crust, with the very short dough, that I grew up in is NOT a crust that cracks if you'll bend it. It folds just fine.

There are some places that have a cracker crust, but the most widespread examples of chicago thin (giordano's thin, edwardo's thin, and almost all other places) will fold/bend pretty readily. On some the very edge of the crust will crack, but the crustless inner pieces always fold and the crust pieces usually do to a fair extent as well.

Well, I have to admit that I only ever eat thin-crust pizza from Giordano's or Edwardo's when somebody else has bought it, because if I'm buying, we get stuffed pizza. (Edwardo's remains my standard for stuffed pizza; although it no longer achieves the heights it did at the erstwhile Rogers Park pizzeria with the basil under grow-lights, it's still great pizza.) But it seems to me that this style only folds after it's sat awhile. If you typically get carryout or delivery, the crust softens up before you eat it. But fresh out of the oven, eaten at the restaurant, it cracks.

East Coast pizza, in my admittedly limited experience, can be rolled up like a burrito even fresh out of the oven, and the crust has a more breadlike consistency than the typical crust here, which is somewhere between pastry and cracker.

Continuing my run around Chicago last week I had a chance to stop at Bacci's Pizza and grab their special 'Slice and a liter pop' for $5.

A huge slice, which I am sure is a favorite of the college students in the area, which I ask to be cut into bite sized pieces (since we were driving).

Not the best by far but not bad at all. The crust, not thin, was a touch bready, good sausage and a generous layer of cheese on top.

I am sure my teenage boys will enjoy it next time we are in the hood.

Bacci Pizza
2248 W. Taylor St.
Chicago, IL