Perhaps one of the best things about pizza around the United States is that you can get a different, unique pizza style anywhere you go. A New York-style pie has large slices and a semi-thin, foldable crust. Chicago-style is a deep dish, ultra-thick crust variation where the sauce is often placed on top, but the city also features a lesser-known tavern style, too. And in the Ohio Valley region, pizza toppings are added cold — meaning they aren’t baked along with the pizza, as a standard pizza recipe usually suggests. And we don’t just mean the pepperoni — the cheese is added after, as well!
The Ohio Valley encompasses a handful of cities in the eastern part of the United States: Columbus, Cincinnati, and Dayton in Ohio; plus Lexington and Louisville in Kentucky. Areas of Indiana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia are included, too. And when it comes to their pizza, some would suggest it’s an unconventional method. But since the pizza is so hot when it comes out of the oven, the cheese still melts for the most part, but it won’t have the extra-stretchy melted consistency you might expect.
The Reason That Toppings Are Added Post-Baking
The history behind the pizza style isn’t as intriguing as it seems. No, it wasn’t meant to be a new, innovative way to serve pizza. Rather, it was to prevent the toppings from burning. “I think the cheese is added after baking because the pans are so huge,” Anna DiCarlo, whose family is credited with inventing the style in the 1940s, told PMQ Pizza Magazine. “To cook that style, it’s a 15- to 20-minute bake, and the cheese would burn in that time, so they put the cheese on when it came out of the oven.” In fact, she thinks that the technique wasn’t even made intentionally.
Over the last 70 years, more and more pizza shops in the Ohio Valley have popped up serving the DiCarlo family’s style, which is why it has become synonymous with pizza in the region. Uncooked toppings, especially pepperoni, add a chewy texture to the pizza that pairs nicely with its crispy crust, creating a bold contrast that has helped the pizza remain popular. Store-bought pepperoni is safe to use because it’s not raw, but make sure you’re only adding other pre-cooked toppings to the pizza once it comes out of the oven to avoid risk of illness…