THE BLACK HAND FORUM

PolackTony wrote: ↑Sun Apr 25, 2021 10:11 am

Frank wrote: ↑Sun Apr 25, 2021 9:42 am Some pizza places deep dish is Pan Pizza, which is another version of Pizza. Burts and Pequad are pan style pizzas. Pan, stuffed and Chicago style deep dish are all made and cooked in a deep dish. These styles kind of burst on the scene all at once in the Chicago Suburbs in around 1973. Some of the food critics and even pizza restaurants use the term deep dish for all 3 of these styles. So you could want to order what is commonly called chicago style deep dish like what is served at Unos and Malnatis and at certain places it will be a different style, called pan pizza. The line between Stuffed and Chicago style deep dish is really blurry and are often lumped together. I had just been looking this up recently. Giordanos stuffed pizza is technically a different style than say Malnatis or Uno, but is lumped in as a Chicago style stuffed deep dish.

Needless to say, the nuances were lost on me for much of my life, as I rarely ever ate any of these variants of deep dish growing up in Chicago. Pizza by default was Chicago-style thin crust; deep dish/stuffed/etc was like its own category of food.

Frank wrote: ↑Sun Apr 25, 2021 9:42 am Some pizza places deep dish is Pan Pizza, which is another version of Pizza. Burts and Pequad are pan style pizzas. Pan, stuffed and Chicago style deep dish are all made and cooked in a deep dish. These styles kind of burst on the scene all at once in the Chicago Suburbs in around 1973. Some of the food critics and even pizza restaurants use the term deep dish for all 3 of these styles. So you could want to order what is commonly called chicago style deep dish like what is served at Unos and Malnatis and at certain places it will be a different style, called pan pizza. The line between Stuffed and Chicago style deep dish is really blurry and are often lumped together. I had just been looking this up recently. Giordanos stuffed pizza is technically a different style than say Malnatis or Uno, but is lumped in as a Chicago style stuffed deep dish.

Antiliar wrote: ↑Sat Apr 24, 2021 2:50 pm

Etna wrote: ↑Sat Apr 24, 2021 11:19 am I always thought the deep dish/sicilian pizza was basically an Americanized sfincione

Interesting article about the origin of sfincione. Originated in Bagheria and tomatoes weren't added until after World War II when prices dropped. Tomatoes, first grown in South and Central America, were small, golden yellow, and considered ornamentals. They were thought to be poisonous and weren't considered food in Italy (apparently) until the late 1600s. Even then, tomatoes weren't commonly eaten. At any rate, it looks like the sfincione with tomatoes developed too late to be the ancestor of deep dish pizza.
https://www.lacucinaitaliana.com/italia ... efresh_ce=

Antiliar wrote: ↑Sat Apr 24, 2021 2:50 pm

Etna wrote: ↑Sat Apr 24, 2021 11:19 am I always thought the deep dish/sicilian pizza was basically an Americanized sfincione

Interesting article about the origin of sfincione. Originated in Bagheria and tomatoes weren't added until after World War II when prices dropped. Tomatoes, first grown in South and Central America, were small, golden yellow, and considered ornamentals. They were thought to be poisonous and weren't considered food in Italy (apparently) until the late 1600s. Even then, tomatoes weren't commonly eaten. At any rate, it looks like the sfincione with tomatoes developed too late to be the ancestor of deep dish pizza.
https://www.lacucinaitaliana.com/italia ... efresh_ce=

From the September 21, 2016 edition of the Chicago Tribune, Rocco Palese invented the Chicago stuffed pizza when he worked at Guy's Pizza with his wife around 1971. The first ad for stuffed pizza was for Guy's Pizza in March 1974. According to Annunziata (Nancy), his widow, Rocco invented it on his own, apparently experimenting like many cooks do. She said it was nothing like what they used to eat in Italy. So basically, it was invented in the USA by an Italian immigrant using his creative ingenuity.

Etna wrote: ↑Sat Apr 24, 2021 11:19 am I always thought the deep dish/sicilian pizza was basically an Americanized sfincione

PolackTony wrote: ↑Sat Apr 24, 2021 1:05 pm

Frank wrote: ↑Sat Apr 24, 2021 12:37 pm

Antiliar wrote: ↑Sat Apr 24, 2021 11:16 am I looked up "deep dish pizza" on Newspapers.com and the earliest entry goes to 1955. It was a combination pizza and hamburger casserole. Most of the next entries are for deep dish tuna pizza. Tuna? Appears to have started in the South. Ike Sewell, founder of Pizzeria Uno, claimed he invented Chicago-style deep dish in 1945. The chef who worked there Adolph "Rudy" Malnati, claimed to be the actual inventor. Whatever the case, it appears to be an American invention. Stuffed pizza seems very similar.

My Mom who was half Italian had relatives that were first or second generation Italians. At Easter they made, what they called Pizza, and it was a Stuffed Pizza. This would have been pre Giordanos. Sauce was not on top of pizza, but was served on the side. The first time I seen it, I was kind of puzzled. Up until then I was only familier with Chicago Cut thin crust. These people were still very Italian and if they called it pizza thats good enough for me. It tasted fantastic, as all her cooking was. I believe it had ricotta and mozzarella for cheesebut dont know for a fact. Sausage too.

Yes, that’s clearly a variety of scarcedda/scarcella, Lucano/Pugliese stuffed Easter pizza. Rocco Palese I’m sure saw the already growing popularity of deep dish and decided to tweak his mother’s scarcedda recipe accordingly (eg putting sauce on top).

Traditional recipes that I’ve seen for scarcedda have it filled with a mixture of ricotta (or other cheese), soppressata (or other meat), tomatoes, and often eggs.

Frank wrote: ↑Sat Apr 24, 2021 12:37 pm

Antiliar wrote: ↑Sat Apr 24, 2021 11:16 am I looked up "deep dish pizza" on Newspapers.com and the earliest entry goes to 1955. It was a combination pizza and hamburger casserole. Most of the next entries are for deep dish tuna pizza. Tuna? Appears to have started in the South. Ike Sewell, founder of Pizzeria Uno, claimed he invented Chicago-style deep dish in 1945. The chef who worked there Adolph "Rudy" Malnati, claimed to be the actual inventor. Whatever the case, it appears to be an American invention. Stuffed pizza seems very similar.

My Mom who was half Italian had relatives that were first or second generation Italians. At Easter they made, what they called Pizza, and it was a Stuffed Pizza. This would have been pre Giordanos. Sauce was not on top of pizza, but was served on the side. The first time I seen it, I was kind of puzzled. Up until then I was only familier with Chicago Cut thin crust. These people were still very Italian and if they called it pizza thats good enough for me. It tasted fantastic, as all her cooking was. I believe it had ricotta and mozzarella for cheesebut dont know for a fact. Sausage too.

Etna wrote: ↑Sat Apr 24, 2021 11:19 am I always thought the deep dish/sicilian pizza was basically an Americanized sfincione

Antiliar wrote: ↑Sat Apr 24, 2021 11:16 am I looked up "deep dish pizza" on Newspapers.com and the earliest entry goes to 1955. It was a combination pizza and hamburger casserole. Most of the next entries are for deep dish tuna pizza. Tuna? Appears to have started in the South. Ike Sewell, founder of Pizzeria Uno, claimed he invented Chicago-style deep dish in 1945. The chef who worked there Adolph "Rudy" Malnati, claimed to be the actual inventor. Whatever the case, it appears to be an American invention. Stuffed pizza seems very similar.

PolackTony wrote: ↑Fri Apr 23, 2021 8:15 pm Bear with me people, as I wasn’t sure if I should post this in the “General” or “Mafia” forum lol.

Chicago received a major contingent of immigrants from the Basilicata and Puglia regions. These migration links began in the late 19th century and continue to this day. While Chicago has received many settlers from Metropolitan Bari, many also arrived in the Windy City from dirt poor and isolated comunes in the rugged mountains of the interior of the Italian south. These contingents of contadini , and their modern descendants, naturally brought their recipes with them, leaving a lasting mark on Chicago’s food culture. I strongly believe that the typical Chicago thin crust style is derived from “pizza a la Barese/Pugliese” (rolled out with a pin into a thin sheet unlike the hand-tossed Neapolitan-style pizza that caught on in NYC).

A more recent contribution is the distinctive Chicago “stuffed pizza” — with a second layer of dough over the cheese and meat — popularized mainly by the Giordano’s chain. This style was first developed by Lucani immigrants Rocco and Annunziata Palese in the early 1970s, who developed the recipe from older family recipes for scarcedda/scarcella, a variety of rustic “pizza” in the form of a layered pie stuffed with meat, cheese, tomatoes, and eggs served for Easter in Basilicata and Puglia. The Boglio brothers, northern Italian immigrants from Torino, probably ripped off the recipe from the Paleses and founded the Giordano’s chain (it’s been alleged that one of the Boglio worked for the Paleses before starting Giordano’s)

Apparently part of why the Paleses were not able to compete with the much more successful Boglios was that three of the Palese locations were bombed in the early 1980s. Being Chicago, the press naturally suspected that these bombings were mob related. The Outfit of course long had major interests in restaurants, food processing and distribution, and hospitality. Incidentally, the more famous (at least to outsiders) Chicago “deep dish” style pizza also had close Outfit connections, with the influential Gino’s East pizzeria founded by Outfit associates Fred Bartoli and George LoVerde (the latter brother of made Chicago member Frank “Butch” LoVerde).

In 1984, disgruntled former Palese franchisee Biaggio Cirrincione was convicted for the bombings. Given the MO, I still wonder if there was more to the story then a simple business dispute. Cirrincione was likely a Sicilian immigrant, and of course there seems to have been a notable influx of Sicilian OC operatives in Chicago and Rockford in the 1970s and ‘80s, so I wonder also if Cirrincione had any connections.

Anyone ever come across any info on this?

https://www.chicagotribune.com/dining/c ... story.html