Spend enough time in the controlled chaos of a pizzeria and you’ll start to notice that there’s a whole other language being used. Here’s a collection of terms you can use around the pizza oven that will make you sound like a pizza professional!
#inthepizzabusiness
When someone eats just the part of the pizza with the toppings and leaves the crust (bones) behind.
A term used in advertising to describe the stringy cheese connecting the slice to the pizza when you pull it apart. The longest recorded cheese pull was by Carlo Alberto Orecchia who pulled a 41.5 inch string of cheese from a pizza slice.
The art of adding cheese over the toppings, to the edge between the sauce and the crust, to “lock” the toppings in place.
The raised, puffed edge of the crust of the pizza. Usually fairly thick, crunchy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside.
A slice of an Old Forge rectangular pizza called a tray, not a pie. “A cut of a tray”
When you need a replacement pizza fast because something when wrong with the first one.
The front opening of a wood-fired pizza oven
The soft, webbed bread-like inner structure of the crust. Used in baking to describe the denseness of the bread and the size of the holes caused by the aeration of the dough.
Describes a slice from a perfectly cut pizza, even though one side is curved.
The blistering of the pizza corniccione that creates a black spotted pattern typical of a traditional Neapolitan pizza.
Mozzarella cheese
Cutting a pizza into squares instead of wedges.
A word that describes an entire pizza.
Italian for pizza maker.
Describes the process of passing stretched dough down the line to the other side of the kitchen.
When you pick up a slice and the toppings slide off like an avalanche.
Burning the roof of your mouth with hot pizza.
In NYC, “plain” means cheese with no toppings. Outside of New York this is called “cheese.
A coarse type of cottage cheese.
An alert given when a tourist walks in and the staff prepare for the worst.
Different types of pizza cutters. A roller is the standard pizza-slicing wheel while a rocker describes a pizza cutter with a curved blade named after the rocking action when cutting.
When the pizza crust gets soggy from too much sauce or from condensation in the box.
Stretching out balls of dough into pizza bases
Taking a slice of pizza off the tray.
When a pizza is cut into uneven sized slices.
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Additional FREE Downloads:
Belforno Wood-Fired Pizza Cookbook
Belforno Perfect Pizza Dough Recipe
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