I prefer moving to a cutting board and using a pizza cutter for thinner crusts. For thicker crusts, I use a bread knife; I feel like a pizza cutter or chef’s knife compresses the crust.
However, if I had to choose just one, it would be scissors. Right out of the oven, scissors are the easiest. Especially if company are over, no one can wait even 5 minutes. I’m can cut directly in the pan, or on a cooling rack, or on a foil-lined plate. I only have one large cutting board. If I’m at someone else’s place, it’s not even a question. The only large cutting boards are glass. Knives aren’t sharp. Pizza cutters are death traps. (Two weeks ago, I tried to use one and the handle fell off. Fortunately, I wasn’t cut too bad. ) Even second-rate scissors will do the job.
For thin crust, I read an article if the pizza is just out of the oven, pizza cutter is preferred. A chef’s knife needs a wait of a few minutes before slicing.
Hmm. I suspect either 1. chopping instead of slicing or 2. knife needs to be sharpened. Or something else. It shouldn’t compress the crust. You do however raise a good point, that pizza cutters are defacto chopping the crust vice slicing.
I suspect I can’t get my knife sharp enough. I try all the time to use a chef’s knife to slice sandwich bread, but it never works right. Also, the bread knife steel is thinner and even, so it’s easier to make straight cuts.
Are you in Baltimore? My tri-stone sharpener is currently in Odenton at my SIL’s home. I have an as yet unscheduled trip to collect it. I could meet you somewhere (a park? somewhere with tables) - distancing, masks, outdoors - pick three. grin Maybe I can get a better edge for you. Send me a note if that appeals.
Yes, Baltimore. Haven’t been to Odenton in many years. We used to frequent a restaurant there named Grace Garden. We actually make it to Annapolis a few times a year, too.
We would love to meet another HO member. I’d much rather it be at a time when I could watch up close and learn, but who knows when that will be possible again. Though our schedules are very erratic, I’ll message you and see if we can figure it out.
I honestly don’t think that whether you’re compressing the crust or not is a worthwhile test for cutting pizza. It’s something that matters when you’re slicing a loaf of bread or a cake, but pizza is pizza, and there’s a reason why the lower part of it is called a pizza crust rather than a pizza loaf.
All four of the methods I can think of (using a round pizza cutter, using scissors, drawing a small knife across it, and chopping it with a large knife) would be good enough, as long as all the blades are sharp. It almost seems to me that when it comes to perfecting pizza-cutting, most people would get more benefit from perfecting the surface it’s sitting on. Almost everyone has a cutter or knife that’s good enough for pizza (though some of them may need sharpening); lots of people don’t have an extra-large cutting board that would make the job more practical and easier on their knives. The only other useful specialized pizza-cutting tool I’ve seen is a chopping knife that’s long enough to comfortably chop an extra-large pizza in half at a single stroke; most people would rightly hesitate to keep a knife that big in their kitchen, but in a pizza restaurant it certainly moves things along.
Maybe that just turned into an accidental vote for scissors?
ETA: I just remembered that my parents (though they didn’t make pizza) had a strange extra-large cutting board that got pulled out when needed - it was just a fairly big piece that had been left over when they installed their countertops. It would be a disaster in a butcher shop, but a makeshift board would certainly help if you were going to be cutting a lot of pizza and didn’t want to waste money on a Special Super Expensive Specialized Pizza Cutting Surface. (Plus you didn’t want your guests hacking holes into your counters, or beating your knives into plowshares.) Where you cut pizza is just going to get all scratched up anyway, right? Maybe the Pizza Steel will now meet its rightful companion the Pizza ScrapBoard.
My previous post wasn’t clear. By compressing the crust, I specifically meant the outer crust as in, “I like pizza, but don’t care for the crust.” Thanks to folks on this board, my knife sharpening skills have improved and I now get better results with a chef’s knife over a bread knife. The bread knife kind of grabs and distorts the outer crust whereas the chef’s knife leaves the shape intact, even if it’s slightly compressed. Been home too long.
This makes perfect sense to me. A specialized bread knife is just not very suitable for most pizza - a sharp ordinary knife is usually better. Plus the fact that a pizza-cutting knife might get mistreated, and not all bread knives are tough.
Hmmmm. The pizza scissors with integrated pizza lifter. Designed by a person who not only believes that all pizzas are the same size, every slice of pizza is wedge-shaped, and every slice is the same width, but who clearly also believes that each slice has a left edge but no right edge.
I appreciate a good gadget. No, I said I appreciate a good gadget!
When our children were pre-teen (15 years ago) we used something like this as part of our “get the kids interested in food without too much bloodshed” programme:
