Enter any Italian bakery in Rhode Island and also you’ll instantly catch a whiff of heat bread and marinara. A reddish glow from the show case beckons you nearer to the counter: Not fairly pizza, not fairly focaccia, Rhode Island pizza strips exist someplace in a doughy area between.
After I first moved to the Ocean State a decade in the past, I used to be admittedly unaware of the saucy slices’ cultural significance. It wasn’t till I fell for a girl whose household served them at each operate that I turned a full-hearted champion for pizza strips. Since we moved to New York, no journey again to Windfall is full with out visiting Sal’s Bakery, the place my accomplice’s household has been loyal prospects for 3 generations.
Typically known as celebration pizza or bakery pizza, these sparsely topped strips are synonymous with the realm’s Italian American bakeries, the place the identical dough used for Italian loaves is stretched into an olive oil-slicked sheet pan and coated with a thick layer of purple sauce. After baking, the pie is left to chill, then reduce into rectangles to be purchased, bought, and eaten at room temperature, generally with a faint dusting of grated parm. Pizza strips sometimes are available flat white bins and are doled out at informal group gatherings like birthday events, Little League video games, and household seashore days as the proper transportable snack.
Whereas the pizza strip’s origin story is a bit hazy, there are a number of theories. “A part of the attract is the thriller surrounding them,” says Eric Palmieri, fourth-era baker and proprietor of D. Palmieri’s Bakery in Johnston. As he tells it, pizza strips “have been one thing made within the residence again in Italy, earlier than the mass Italian migration to Rhode Island.” In the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when 1000’s of Italians landed in Windfall, they reimagined meals from residence utilizing reasonably priced pantry staples—canned tomatoes and bread being central.
Harking back to Roman pizza al taglio or Sicilian sfincione (and much like Italian American tomato pies from Philadelphia and Utica, New York), pizza strips are a filling snack that travels properly and stays contemporary for hours. They’ve all the time been reasonably priced, too: Donald DePetrillo, proprietor of the Unique Italian Bakery in Johnston, says, “Within the late Nineteen Sixties, a sheet of purple strips value a number of {dollars}. That was a deal.” These days, the strips are nonetheless a reasonable snack; for about $1.50, yow will discover individually wrapped ones in bakeries and supermarkets in addition to comfort shops and gasoline stations.
However why so little cheese? The reply additionally lies in a little bit of a grey space: Palmieri factors out that, with out cheese, baked items keep contemporary at room temperature for an extended time period. Early bakeries missing refrigeration might waste much less product on the finish of the day. At LaSalle Bakery in Windfall, proprietor Michael Manni says they used so as to add a dusting of grated parmesan to their strips some 20-odd years in the past, however a gripe from the native well being division turned him off of it. “It’s the identical cheese that sits out all day in a shaker at a pizza parlor,” Manni grumbles, “however we did what we have been advised, and our prospects saved coming again.”
Most vital, although, is the dough. Manni’s model, like many Italian bread recipes, makes use of a preferment often called a biga. “It’s all concerning the gradual fermentation,” he explains, which generally takes 12 to 16 hours. “The lengthy rise, the resting time—all of it builds taste and provides you the chewy texture that you really want.” The sauce at LaSalle is a typical tomato base, seasoned with garlic, dried oregano, basil, and parsley—a definitive Italian American taste profile.
The strips’ humble attract could also be arduous to elucidate, however the native devotion to them is profound: You’d be arduous‑pressed to discover a household gathering in Rhode Island with out a big white field splayed open and friends’ palms choosing at squares of sauce-laden dough. A flavor-packed celebration staple, pizza strips owe their ongoing legacy to the few remaining bakers nonetheless working throughout the state. “Pizza strips give us all a way of place,” Palmieri says, “grounding us in methods we in all probability don’t even absolutely perceive.”
