Altoona-Style Pizza: Pennsylvania's American-Cheese Square Pie

Altoona-style pizza goes by a few names in its home town: Altoona Hotel pizza, Altoona Sicilian, or just Altoona pizza. Each square is called a cut, and a properly built cut hides one round of salami and one green pepper ring under its cheese. Cut it open and you can read the whole recipe in cross-section.

What’s on an Altoona pie

The build is the same everywhere it’s described, and the order matters to the people who make it. Justin Ruggiero of Family Pizza & Pub told Spotlight PA it goes sauce, then salami, then the peppers, then the cheese.

• The crust. A thick, soft Sicilian-style crust baked in a rectangular sheet pan. Steve Corklic of 29th Street Pizza Subs & More told The Takeout that his dough is fermented and baked in deep sheet trays at 450°F before the toppings go on.
• The sauce. A plain tomato sauce, spread thin. Spotlight PA’s home version simply uses pizza sauce.
• The salami. Cooked deli-style salami. Wikipedia and Uncovering PA describe it as peppercorn salami; Spotlight PA’s home recipe calls for Genoa or peppercorn.
• The peppers. Raw green bell pepper, cut into rings. They soften under the cheese as the pizza bakes.
• The cheese. Yellow processed American cheese, laid over everything. Most accounts say the original was Velveeta. Locals still argue about it, and Corklic told Spotlight PA the brand is “up for debate.”

The cheese on top is what people notice first. On most pizzas the cheese sits on the sauce and the meat goes over it. Here the cheese is the last layer, a single glossy sheet over the salami and peppers.

Where it came from

Everyone agrees the pizza started at the Altoona Hotel, in later years more a restaurant than a hotel. Nobody agrees on when. Wikipedia and Food Republic say the 1950s; Corklic told the Pittsburgh City Paper the 1960s or ’70s, which is the date Uncovering PA and Tasting Table use too. No founder or first-day record has surfaced.

The hotel burned down in January 2013. Afterwards, other restaurants around Altoona started serving their own versions in its honor, and by 2021 The Takeout, citing the Pittsburgh City Paper, counted about a dozen. Corklic refined his recipe with help from a former Altoona Hotel employee, and his sign reads “Altoona Sicilian Sold Here.”

In March 2022, Spotlight PA’s guide named three Altoona places serving it then: 29th Street Pizza Subs & More, Family Pizza & Pub, and Joe’s Pizza & 6 Pack, which also made it as a stromboli. That’s a dated list, not a current recommendation, so check a pizzeria’s current menu before you plan a trip around it.

Why American cheese

Processed American cheese is real cheese that has been ground and heated with emulsifying salts, such as sodium citrate or sodium phosphates. Those salts are written into the US standard for pasteurized process cheese, and they’re why it melts into a smooth, even sheet instead of separating into oil and curd the way an aged cheddar can. Laid over the toppings, it melts into one continuous layer that covers the salami and peppers.

The catch is that it scorches if it bakes too long. Spotlight PA’s quick home version, made with store-bought dough, parbakes the crust with no toppings and only then adds them (“the cheese will scorch otherwise”), finishing for up to five minutes, until the cheese has melted. The Takeout’s home attempt melted the cheese in one to five minutes. That’s why the home method below adds the cheese last.

The combination has its critics. Plenty of people who grew up with mozzarella find a pizza topped with yellow American cheese baffling, and plenty of people in Altoona love it anyway. It’s also a cousin of other regional pies built on processed or local cheeses, like St. Louis-style pizza with Provel and Old Forge pizza from northeastern Pennsylvania.

How to make Altoona-style pizza at home

This makes one 13 × 18-inch half-sheet pan, cut into 12 squares. The crust is the site’s Sicilian-style pan dough: the grams, schedule and two-stage 450°F bake the Pizza Planner gives for one half-sheet pan, adapted from King Arthur’s Sicilian-style pizza. In that method the plain crust bakes first, then all the toppings go on for the second stage. The Altoona change is an adaptation of that second stage: the sauce, salami and peppers go on first, and the cheese only at the end. Nobody has published tested times for that split, so the method below gives cues instead of a timer for those two steps.

Time: about 45 minutes of active work, and about 30 hours from mixing to eating, most of it with the dough in the fridge.

Ingredients

Dough (about 955 g):

• 542 g bread flour
• 399 g water
• 12 g fine salt
• 1.6 g instant yeast
• About 2 tablespoons olive oil, for the pan

Toppings:

• 250 g smooth tomato or pizza sauce. For a basic one, see how to make pizza sauce.
• 12 thin deli slices of salami, peppercorn or Genoa
• 2 green bell peppers, cut into 12 rings about ¼ inch thick
• About 20 slices of yellow American cheese, or sliced Velveeta

The cheese count is calculated: a half-sheet pan is 234 square inches, and a 3½-inch slice covers about 12, so about 20 slices cover it with a little overlap.

Method

1. Mix (day 1). Stir the flour, water, salt and yeast together until no dry flour remains. Rest 10 minutes, then knead or fold for a minute or two until the dough holds together. It will be soft and sticky.
2. First rise. Cover and leave at room temperature for about 2 hours, until it has expanded and feels airy.
3. Refrigerate. Cover tightly and refrigerate for about 24 hours.
4. Pan it (day 2, about 2½ hours before baking). Oil the half-sheet pan generously. Turn the dough into it and stretch it gently toward the corners. When it springs back, cover it, wait 10 to 15 minutes and stretch again; two or three rounds will fill the pan. Leave it covered until it is noticeably puffy and no longer springs back, about 2 hours.
5. Preheat. Heat the oven to 450°F (232°C) for 25 to 35 minutes, with a rack in the lower half of the oven.
6. Bake the plain crust. Bake the untopped crust for 10 to 12 minutes, the Planner’s first stage, until it is set.
7. Sauce, salami, peppers. Spread the sauce thinly to the edges. Lay the salami in a 3 × 4 grid, one slice where each square will be, and put a pepper ring on each slice. Bake until the edges are golden and the underside is browned when you lift a corner with a spatula.
8. Cheese, last. Cover the whole surface with the American cheese, overlapping the slices slightly. Bake just until the cheese has melted into one glossy sheet, watching it closely, and pull it before the cheese browns.
9. Rest and cut. Rest 10 minutes, then cut into 12 squares, 3 by 4, so each cut gets one salami round and one pepper ring.

If you’d rather follow the King Arthur-based sequence as published, with every topping on for the whole second stage, the Planner below gives its times. It also has a same-day schedule for the same pan.

For more on the crust itself, and how it differs from a grandma pie, see Sicilian vs. grandma pizza.

Sources

• Wikipedia, “Altoona-style pizza” (accessed October 2026): origin at the Altoona Hotel, the 1950s date, Velveeta, the square cut, and its citations to the Pittsburgh City Paper, WTAJ and the Altoona Mirror.
• Uncovering PA, article on Altoona-style pizza at 29th Street Pizza (2021, updated 2023): the 1960s–70s date, peppercorn salami, the January 2013 fire and 29th Street Pizza.
• Spotlight PA, PA Local newsletter, “A purist’s guide to Pennsylvania’s misfit pizzas” (March 25, 2022; checked October 14, 2026): topping order, cheese debate, the home method with toppings added after the parbake, and its 2022 list of where to eat it.
• Danny Palumbo, “Altoona Pizza Is Confoundingly Delicious,” The Takeout (October 5, 2023): Steve Corklic’s 450°F sheet-tray bake.
• Dennis Lee, The Takeout, article on making Altoona-style pizza at home (May 26, 2021): the home method and the one-to-five-minute cheese melt.
• Food Republic and Tasting Table: the competing 1950s and 1960s–70s origin dates, and one salami slice and one pepper ring per cut.
• US Code of Federal Regulations, 21 CFR 133.169, “Pasteurized process cheese”: emulsifying agents.
• King Arthur Baking, “Sicilian-Style Pizza” (checked October 14, 2026): the half-sheet dough and two-stage 450°F bake behind the Planner’s Sicilian-style setting.