New York Style Pizza: The Big Foldable Slice, Explained

What is New York style pizza?

A New York slice is defined by four things: size, structure, cheese and bake. The pie is big, 18 inches at most slice shops and never smaller than 16, which is why one slice is a meal. The crust is thin in the middle but not cracker-thin; it has enough chew and strength to be folded lengthwise without cracking, with a slim rim that blisters but stays soft. The cheese is low-moisture mozzarella, aged and often whole-milk, which melts into a smooth sheet with the brown spots and light slick of orange oil that are part of the look. And it is baked in a gas deck oven at 550 to 600°F for 12 to 15 minutes, long enough to crisp the bottom and brown the cheese, which is a slower, cooler bake than Neapolitan pizza gets.

The result is a pizza built for selling by the slice. It reheats well, holds its shape on a paper plate, and tastes right at any temperature from oven-hot to lukewarm. If you have ever bought a slice through a window and folded it on the sidewalk, you have had the real thing.

New York style pizza dough spec

This is the card we use for every style in the atlas, so you can compare New York to Neapolitan or Detroit line by line. Open any number in the dough calculator to scale it.

• Flour: high-gluten bread flour, 12.7 to 14.2 percent protein (All Trumps, King Arthur Sir Lancelot or a strong bread flour)
• Hydration: 60 to 65 percent
• Oil: 2 to 3 percent olive or vegetable oil
• Sugar: 1 to 2 percent (browning at a deck-oven temperature, not sweetness)
• Salt: 2 to 2.5 percent
• Yeast: 0.3 to 0.5 percent instant, for a cold ferment
• Ferment: 24 to 72 hours in the refrigerator, balled
• Ball weight: 560 to 620 grams for an 18-inch pie; about 380 grams for a 14-inch home pie
• Shape: hand-stretched round, thin center, slim rim, no rolling pin
• Sauce: uncooked or briefly cooked crushed tomatoes with salt, oregano and a pinch of sugar
• Cheese: aged low-moisture mozzarella, whole-milk or part-skim, shredded, about 225 grams per 18 inches
• Bake: 550 to 600°F deck oven, 12 to 15 minutes; home oven 550°F on a steel, 6 to 9 minutes
• Cut: 8 slices, triangular, folded to eat
• Origin: New York City, early 1900s, from Neapolitan immigrant bakers

Where New York pizza came from

New York pizza descends directly from Naples, but it changed the moment it arrived. Gennaro Lombardi's grocery on Spring Street in Manhattan was licensed to sell pizza in 1905 and is generally credited as the first pizzeria in the United States. Lombardi baked in a coal-fired oven, not the wood oven of Naples, because coal was what New York had. Coal burns hotter and drier than wood and produces a crisper, more charred crust, which became the first New York signature. Pizzaioli who trained under Lombardi opened the places that still define the old guard: Totonno's in Coney Island in 1924, John's of Bleecker Street in 1929 and Patsy's in East Harlem in 1933.

The slice is a later invention. After the Second World War, gas-fired deck ovens such as the Bakers Pride models made in the Bronx spread through the city because they were cheaper and legal to install where coal ovens were not. Gas decks run cooler than coal, around 550 to 600°F, and a cooler, longer bake produced a sturdier crust that could be baked ahead, held, sold one slice at a time and reheated on the deck. By the 1960s the slice shop was the dominant form, and the pie had grown to 18 inches because a bigger pie meant bigger slices and more of them per oven load. The price of a slice tracked the price of a subway ride for decades, an observation New Yorkers call the Pizza Principle.

The modern New York pizza scene includes a coal-oven revival, the Neapolitan wave of the 2000s and the dollar slice, but the gas-deck, 18-inch, fold-it-in-half slice is the style this page is about.

What makes a New York style pizza crust different

Three ingredients separate New York dough from Neapolitan dough: strong flour, oil and sugar. Neapolitan dough is flour, water, salt and yeast baked in 60 to 90 seconds at 900°F. New York dough has to survive a 12 to 15 minute bake at 550°F and still come out tender, and that is what the extras are for.

High-gluten flour gives the crust its chew and the strength to be stretched to 18 inches without tearing, then folded without snapping. Oil shortens the gluten slightly so the crumb stays tender through the long bake and the bottom fries lightly against the deck. Sugar feeds the yeast during a long cold ferment and, more importantly, browns the crust at a temperature too low to char it the way a wood oven does. A cold ferment of one to three days develops the flavor that a quick same-day dough cannot reach. Our general guide to pizza dough recipes covers how these levers work across styles; the recipe below is the New York setting of each one.

New York vs Neapolitan pizza

The practical difference for a home cook is the oven. Neapolitan needs 850°F and a dedicated pizza oven. New York style needs 550°F and a baking steel, which is why it is the style we recommend for a standard kitchen oven. See our pizza steel vs stone comparison for why the steel matters at this temperature.

New York vs Brooklyn style, New Haven and the New York square

Brooklyn style pizza is a chain-menu term, not a style with a history. It describes a thinner, crisper, cornmeal-dusted crust cut into six wide slices; our Brooklyn style pizza page explains where the name came from. New Haven style pizza, or apizza, is the coal-oven cousin from Connecticut: oblong, charred, chewy, with grated pecorino instead of mozzarella unless you ask. The New York square, sold at the same counter as the round slice, is a Sicilian pizza baked in an oiled pan with a thick, airy crumb; it is a different dough and a different page. Hand tossed pizza is the chain-menu name for a crust in the New York family that has been softened for a conveyor oven.

The New York water myth

Many New Yorkers believe the city's soft Catskill water is the reason the pizza cannot be reproduced elsewhere. Water chemistry does affect dough a little, since very hard water tightens gluten and very soft water loosens it, but the effect is small next to flour protein, hydration, fermentation time and oven heat. Blind bake tests run by food writers using shipped New York water against local tap water have found differences that tasters could not reliably pick out. If your New York pizza does not taste like New York pizza, the oven and the flour are the first things to check, not the tap.

The sauce and the cheese

New York sauce is simple on purpose. Good canned crushed tomatoes, salt, dried oregano and a pinch of sugar, either uncooked or simmered for ten minutes, spread thin enough that the crust still shows through in places. The five-minute no-cook sauce on our pizza sauce page is a New York sauce. Too much sauce, or a sweet, herb-heavy sauce, is the fastest way to make a pie taste like a chain.

The cheese does more work here than in any other style. Fresh mozzarella releases water and floods a long bake; New York slices use aged low-moisture mozzarella, shredded, because it melts evenly, browns in spots and releases the small amount of oil that gives a slice its sheen. Whole-milk is richer and browns faster, part-skim is drier and holds up better on a slice that will be reheated. Most New York shops use one or the other from a handful of commercial brands. Our best cheese for pizza guide covers what to buy and why pre-shredded bags melt badly.

How to bake New York style pizza in a home oven

The gap between a home oven and a slice-shop deck is heat from below, and a baking steel closes most of it. Steel conducts heat far faster than stone, so a 550°F steel crisps the bottom in the seven or eight minutes before the cheese burns. Put the steel on an upper-middle rack rather than the bottom so the top gets radiant heat from the roof of the oven, preheat for at least 45 minutes, and launch the pizza with semolina on the peel. Bake one pie at a time and give the steel five minutes between pies to recover.

If you only have a stone, bake on the lowest rack and expect 10 to 12 minutes and a slightly softer bottom. If you have neither, a heavy inverted sheet pan preheated the same way is better than a cold pan. Our guide to pizza ovens covers the next step up: an outdoor oven turned down to 600°F makes a near-perfect New York pie.

Reheating a New York slice

Day-old New York pizza is a feature, not a flaw, and the style was built to be reheated. The best method is a dry skillet over medium heat with a lid for the last minute, which re-crisps the bottom while the cheese softens; a 400°F oven on a steel or stone for 5 minutes is a close second. The microwave turns the crust to rubber. Our how to reheat pizza guide has timings for every method, and our how long is pizza good for page covers how long a slice is safe in the fridge.

Common mistakes with New York style pizza

The first mistake is weak flour. All-purpose flour makes a crust that tears at 14 inches and bakes up soft rather than chewy; use bread flour at minimum. The second is skipping the cold ferment; a same-day New York dough tastes flat and bakes pale. The third is an oven that is not hot enough or a steel that is not hot enough, which produces a bottom that bends instead of cracking at the fold. The fourth is fresh mozzarella, which turns the center into soup over a long bake. And the fifth is a rolling pin, which crushes the rim and turns a New York pie into a cracker. Stretch by hand; it takes three tries to learn and you never forget it.