Grandma Pizza Recipe

The Grandma pizza is my favorite pizza to make and once you see how easy it is, it will become yours as well. Created at Umberto’s of New Hyde Park in Nassau County, Long Island, this amazing pizza can now be found in most of the New York metro area. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the technique and ingredients needed to create the perfect Grandma pizza is below.

It is a fairly thin sheet-pan pizza that’s baked in a pan that has been heavily coated with olive oil. This creates the perfect environment to fry the bottom of the pizza giving Grandma pizza that unmistakable crunch!

It’s almost always drizzled with a heavy dose of garlic-infused olive oil and finished with some Sicilian oregano and Pecorino Romano cheese.

Pizza Pie Recipe

The Grandma pie was created on Long Island at Umberto’s of New Hyde Park. Its popularity soared in the 2000s and onward in the New York metro area.

Fun fact: Umberto’s would often make special deliveries for the New York Giants and Yankees. I’m sure the Mets and Jets like it too. 😉

Though the Grandma pie isn’t quite as well known as a traditional New York pizza or a New York Sicilian, it’s still very well known amongst New Yorkers.

Bon Appetit's Homemade Pizza Grandma Style • C H E W I N G T H E F A T

Some of the more popular places amongst the hipster crowd will create their own names for the style, but basically, it’s a thin sheet pan pizza.

Note: Mass measurements will always be more accurate than volume measurements. For doughs and bread, this is a good thing, because it provides absolute consistency. I only use mass measurements for baking/dough recipes and always stick to standard cups, tablespoons, etc. when “cooking”. But, I also provide the volume (standard U.S. customary) measurements here and in the recipe card below.

Note: Baker’s percentages will allow you to scale the dough amount up or down depending on how much you need. To use baker’s percentages you simply divide the amount of flour in a recipe by 100 and then multiply that number by the percentages listed above.

Sourdough Mozzarella Grandma Pizza Pie

That is how to make the real-deal, New York Grandma pizza. It is the easiest of the 3 types of New York pizza – the hardest part is waiting for the dough to cold ferment, but it is worth it!

Many pizza shops use heavy steel pans for their Sicilian and Grandma pies. They are cooking their pies in a deck oven which browns the bottom quicker. Most home cooks can’t replicate this, though if you have a baking or pizza steel as large as your pan you could try.

If you were to attempt to make this Grandma pizza in a thick steel or cast iron pan in your home oven, the bottom wouldn’t get brown enough in time.

Spicy Kale And Ricotta Grandma Pie

For this reason, I recommend using an aluminum pan on the bottom of your oven. If anything, you’ll have to worry more about the bottom burning. An aluminum pan is thin and will crisp the bottom of the pizza very quickly on the lowest level of the oven.

A dark aluminum pan like the one seen throughout my pictures works amazingly well. It’s a LloydPans 16 x 12″ Grandma pan.

I cook all of my pizzas in a standard 20-year-old GE oven. I have not tested this pizza using a convection oven, so you may need to adjust the cooking time, oven temperature levels, and of course pan placement.

Grandma Style Pan Pizza 2.0 — Sauce Sandwich

As mentioned above in the detailed steps you should check the bottom of the pizza after 12 minutes of cooking. If the bottom is very blond, finish cooking it on the bottom rack for the remaining 8 minutes.

If you’re having problems with browning, you could pour 3 more tablespoons of olive oil under the pizza. Grandma pizza uses a lot of olive oil!

Inevitably, the temperature of all ovens fluctuates. Your oven is not my oven, and so on. You may need to play around with the placement and temperatures a bit, but I’m confident that with these instructions you’ll be able to make a Grandma pizza that looks just like mine.

Crispy New York Style Grandma Pizza With Pepperoni In Your Home Oven

I’ve shown the process here and on YouTube, (for more pizza check out the 20 pizza videos on my channel) using hand mixing.

Why? Because I like to show without special equipment. But if you want to use your mixer all you have to do is:

If you’ve enjoyed this Grandma pizza recipe or any recipe on this site, we want to know so tell us in the comments below.

Homemade Sicilian Pizza Recipe

And if you love podcasts, watch the Sip and Feast podcast episode 5 where I discuss more about my New York pizza-making journey.

Calories: 424 kcal | Carbohydrates: 37.5 g | Protein: 14.4 g | Fat: 24.3 g | Saturated Fat: 8.3 g | Cholesterol: 36 mg | Sodium: 734 mg | Potassium: 77 mg | Fiber: 1.6 g | Sugar: 2.2 g | Calcium: 263 mg | Iron: 2 mg

Posted by bankkong639

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