Cal City Style or Quad City Style

[politon]

I made my first QC-style pie in February. I added barley malt syrup to my basic dough formulation and adjusted it accordingly. This ball was ~369g and noticeably darker than Harris' dough.

[Garvey]

PMQ traces QC-style back to Cal City (!) in an interesting Jan 2019 article:
http://www.pmq.com/January-2019/Quad-Cities-Style-Pizza-Tinkering-With-Tradition/

Turns out, the guys who made QC pizza first in the late 50s had first worked at John's Pizza in Calumet City, where the style was invented in 1943.

QED 

[jimk]

PMQ traces QC-style back to Cal City (!) in an interesting Jan 2019 article:
http://www.pmq.com/January-2019/Quad-Cities-Style-Pizza-Tinkering-With-Tradition/

Turns out, the guys who made QC pizza first in the late 50s had first worked at John's Pizza in Calumet City, where the style was invented in 1943.

QED 

Did John's come up with those long strip slices like a lot of QC places have?

[Garvey]

Yes.

[ZekeTheCat]

The original John's Pizza  of Cal City is still in the family and still  in business but now just across  the state line in Munster Indiana. Here's their interesting  history :

http://theoriginaljohns.com/history.html

I've had both Johns Pizza and Harris Pizza in the quad cities in the last tear or so.
Harris was OK but I definitely prefer John's - still like the Calumet region/ NW Indiana pizza of my childhood and HS days back in the 50's and 60's. - love  their homemade fennel sausage topping.

[IEatPizzaByThePie]

I thought they just used malt (for the extra browning and sweetness) but that mentions molasses, as well...

[Nate]

I noticed that too, malt and molasses. I put molasses in my formulation and others have used malt. Looks like it's both.

Here's a PMQ Video on making the pizza:

https://www.pmq.com/the-pizza-kitchen-quad-cities-style-pizza/

[politon]

This article in Food and Wine confirms that Harris uses a custom molasses and malt blend:
https://www.foodandwine.com/travel/quad-cities-pizza

[Nate]

Cool. Thanks for linking the article.