Where’s the Cheese?

Travel around the United States, and you’ll notice that pizza changes. New York has its big, thin slices that you can fold in half. Chicago is famous for deep-dish pizza. Detroit has thick, rectangular pizzas with crispy cheese baked around the edges, originally cooked in steel trays used to hold parts in automobile factories. Rhode Island has something a little different.

I discovered it one fall evening after a professional meeting in Providence. Everyone had gathered for snacks, and I was starving. When my host, Gina, told me there was pizza, I was delighted.

Then she handed me a rectangular strip of thick bread topped edge to edge with a layer of tomato sauce. I looked at it. There was no pepperoni. No stretchy layer of melted cheese. It wasn’t even warm.

“This is the pizza?”

“That’s a pizza strip,” Gina said. “Try it.”

The bread was chewy, with a little crunch at the edge. The sauce was thick and rich with tomatoes and herbs. I took another bite. I must say, it was among the best pizza I had ever eaten. But I had questions.

Gina explained that pizza strips come from Rhode Island’s Italian-American bakery tradition. Bakers spread bread dough into large rectangular pans and cover it with seasoned tomato sauce. After baking, they let it cool and cut it into strips. The bread is similar to focaccia, and the sauce gets far more attention than it would beneath a thick blanket of mozzarella.

Adaptation of “Weekday Morning in the Italian District, Federal Hill, Providence, Rhode Island, 1979” by Michael Edward Bell. Public domain.

“So you don’t heat it up?” I asked.

“No,” Gina said. “Pizza strips are served at room temperature.”

That suited me. I was already halfway through mine.

“But why leave off the cheese?”

“Well, there’s a story behind the missing cheese,” Gina said.

In the early 1900s, local bakeries used leftover bread dough to make pizzas and left them on the counter for customers to buy. According to the story passed down in Rhode Island bakeries, health inspectors objected to cheese sitting out without refrigeration. Rather than refrigerate the pizza, some bakers simply stopped adding the cheese.

“So they kept the pizza and lost the cheese,” I said.

“And you don’t seem to be missing it.”

I wasn’t.

“Where would I go to get more?”

“Start with an Italian bakery,” Gina said. “Ask for pizza strips. You might also hear them called bakery pizza or party pizza.”

I wondered whether I could order a pizza strip with toppings.

“Could I get pepperoni on one?”

“Not on these.”

“Mushrooms?”

“No.”

“Sausage?”

She shook her head.

“What about mozzarella?”

“Just bread and sauce,” she said. “Maybe a very small amount of grated Romano or Parmesan. That’s a traditional red strip.”

Adaptation of “Box o’ Strips” by David Iannotti. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Rhode Islanders eat plenty of other kinds of pizza, with melted cheese and all sorts of toppings. Pizza strips are something different. You buy them from local bakeries, carry them home in boxes, and eat them at room temperature. They show up at birthday parties, ball games, meetings, beach trips, and family gatherings. In Rhode Island, a box of pizza strips can be as ordinary as a pitcher of sweet tea in the South.

Around us, people kept talking and helping themselves to the food. I grabbed another strip before they were gone.

Before leaving Rhode Island for the drive home, I stopped at a local bakery. Inside were those now-familiar red rectangles, ready to go.

“One pizza strip for the road,” I said. “Hold the pepperoni.”

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