Grandma’s Pizza

[Nickyp0tsandpans]

How do you make grandmas pizza and what is the main difference between Sicilian?

[Papa T]

They are basically the same, and both are based on a focaccia bread dough. I made one yesterday. I've been making pizza at home for years, but this was my first ever grandma/Sicilian type. You can read the post on here in that section. Link to it is below.

https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=67413.new#new

How do you make grandmas pizza and what is the main difference between Sicilian?

[hammettjr]

If by "basically the same" you meant very different,  then I agree!

Copied below is a post of mine from a while back with some of the differences.

And here is a link to a thread that I'm sure will be worth the read. I don't remember the details of the thread, but I've linked directly to what looks like a Grandma.
https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=40636.msg623864#msg623864

I'll take another stab at this. There aren't precise definitions for the styles of pizza in NY, but there are norms. Key differences:

Thickness: Sicilian is significantly thicker than grandma, maybe 3x the thickness

Topping order: Sicilian is dough/sauce/cheese, while Grandma is dough/cheese/sauce on top. (Though "upside down" Sicilian does exist.)

Sauce: Sicilian is a rich sauce. It can be pre-cooked, have heavier seasoning and be thicker. Grandma sauce is more simple, from whole peeled tomato likely left chunky.

Sauce amount: Sicilian dough is covered in sauce like a normal pie, Grandma has sauce dolloped on top of the cheese.

Other seasoning: Grandma is often garlicy and generally is topped with fresh basil and grated cheese (although Umberto's where they claim to have invented the Grandma pie doesn't use fresh basil).

Pics below of what I believe to be a typical Sicilian and a typical Grandma slice (though without the basil). And a video of a Grandma pie being topped.


https://youtu.be/krB3WpV660M

[escrib]

Grandma pizza is just another name for sheet pizza and it comes in all sorts of varieties.  It is cooked in rectangular sheet pans, and because it is cooked in such pans, it's height is about the same height as the rim on a typical baking sheet.  That's about the only thing that defines it.  The person who invented grandmas pizza is the grandma who first decided to stretch some dough to fit a sheet pan and throw some sauce and cheese on it.

[Pizza-Face]

Interestingly enough, long before the round pizzas became mainstream, the Greeks made square pan pizzas. Could have been a Grandmother that started that too.