Old Forge Pizza: Coal Country's Prebaked, No-Mozzarella Style

In a borough of about 8,000 people in northeastern Pennsylvania, roughly 12 pizzerias serve a style of pizza that exists essentially nowhere else. Old Forge, Pennsylvania — a former coal mining town about 10 miles south of Scranton — has the highest per-capita concentration of pizzerias of any community in the United States, and every single one makes pizza that would be unrecognizable to someone from New York, Chicago, or Naples.

No mozzarella. A sweetened, white-bread crust. Provolone and American cheese blended. Rectangular pans. A prebaked “shell” that eliminates the gel layer problem. And an origin story rooted in Prohibition-era speakeasies run by coal miners’ wives.

Old Forge pizza doesn’t look like what you think pizza looks like. That’s the point.

The Origin: Speakeasies and Coal

The story of Old Forge pizza begins in the 1930s, during Prohibition and the depths of the Depression, in a town built entirely around anthracite coal mining.

Old Forge’s population was predominantly Italian-American, and the men worked underground in the mines. While the men were in the shafts, their wives operated illegal bars — speakeasies — out of their homes and storefronts. To keep customers eating (and drinking), they made pizza using whatever ingredients were affordable and available in rural northeastern Pennsylvania.

This is the critical context for understanding why Old Forge pizza uses the ingredients it does. The women weren’t making an artistic statement or rebelling against Italian tradition. They were feeding coal miners on a tight budget with what they could get.

Mozzarella was expensive and hard to source in 1930s rural Pennsylvania. The Italian-American specialty cheese supply chain didn’t reach small mining towns the way it reached New York or Philadelphia. But American cheese was cheap, widely available, and melted easily. Provolone was an Italian-American staple that could be sourced from local Italian delis.

The crust was sweetened because white bread — the kind of enriched, slightly sweet, soft-crumbed bread that was a staple of American working-class kitchens — was the baseline for everything baked in these homes. The pizza crust evolved from bread dough, not from Italian pizza dough, and it carried the sweetness of the bread tradition with it.

The rectangular pans were what was available: standard baking pans from the hardware store, the kind used for cakes and casseroles. There was no specialty pizza equipment in a coal-country speakeasy.

What emerged from these constraints was a pizza style that was completely independent of the New York and New Haven traditions developing simultaneously on the East Coast, and even more distant from the Neapolitan tradition. Old Forge pizza was invented from first principles by women who needed to feed people affordably, and every element of the style reflects that pragmatic origin.

The Crust: Sweetened White Bread

Old Forge crust is unlike any other pizza crust in America. It’s a sweetened, enriched dough that’s closer to white sandwich bread than to any Italian pizza tradition. The dough contains sugar (sometimes a noticeable amount), oil or shortening, and sometimes milk — all hallmarks of American enriched bread dough.

The texture is soft, with a tight, uniform crumb. There’s no open, airy structure like Neapolitan or Detroit. The crumb is fine and even, like pullman bread. The bottom develops a moderate crispness from the pan, but the overall character is tender and slightly sweet.

This bread-like quality is deliberate and essential. It provides a neutral, lightly sweet platform that doesn’t compete with the distinctive cheese blend and allows the toppings to dominate the flavor profile. Italian pizza dough — with its fermentation-driven complexity, slight acidity, and chewy gluten structure — would be completely wrong for this application.

The sweetness also affects the Maillard browning during baking. The extra sugars in the dough brown faster and more deeply than lean dough, producing a golden-brown bottom and edges that are visually distinct from the pale bottoms of many pan pizzas. The sugar caramelizes slightly where the dough contacts the pan, adding another flavor dimension.

The Shell: Prebaked and Brilliant

Here’s where Old Forge pizza solves a problem that Nathan Myhrvold calls “a fundamental flaw in pizza making” — the gel layer. That white, gummy line between crust and toppings that plagues almost every topped pizza is caused by moisture from sauce and toppings condensing at the dough interface and preventing full starch gelatinization.

Old Forge pizza eliminates the gel layer entirely through prebaking. The dough is pressed into rectangular pans and baked as a bare “shell” before any toppings are added. This allows the starch to fully gelatinize and the protein structure to set completely without any interference from wet toppings.

The prebaked shell is essentially a finished bread product — fully baked, structurally sound, with no raw or under-gelatinized starch anywhere. When toppings and cheese are added and the pizza goes back in the oven for a second bake, the crust heats through without any risk of the gel layer forming.

This prebake technique is independently validated by Myhrvold’s research (he tested 120 pizzas specifically investigating the gel layer and concluded that prebaking is the only complete fix) and by Gemignani’s professional practice (he parbakes his Sicilian dough for 14 minutes before adding toppings, and notes the parbaked shell can hold for up to 10 hours — ideal for party prep).

In Old Forge, the prebaked shells are often made in the morning, stacked, and used throughout the day as orders come in. This makes service fast — add toppings and cheese to a prebaked shell, second-bake until the cheese melts and browns, cut, and serve. The operational efficiency of this system is part of why 12 pizzerias can thrive in a town of 8,000 people. Turnover is fast.

The Cheese: No Mozzarella Allowed

The most initially surprising element of Old Forge pizza is the cheese: a blend of provolone and American cheese.

No mozzarella. Not even a little. In the traditional version, mozzarella is simply not part of the formula. This is a direct legacy of the style’s speakeasy origins — mozzarella wasn’t available, and the combination that was available turned out to produce something worth keeping.

Provolone provides the Italian-American flavor anchor. It’s sharp, tangy, and has a firm texture that melts into strings and sheets rather than the soft, pillowy melt of mozzarella. Aged provolone contributes more flavor intensity; younger provolone melts more smoothly. Most Old Forge pizzerias use a medium-aged provolone that balances flavor with meltability.

American cheese provides the melt physics. American cheese is a processed cheese product designed to melt smoothly, evenly, and completely. It brings fat and emulsifying salts that create a uniform, luscious melt that coats every surface. It also adds a mild, slightly sweet, buttery flavor that complements the sweetened crust.

The blend produces a cheese layer that behaves differently from mozzarella in every way. It melts into a smoother, more uniform sheet. It doesn’t form the large bubbles or browned spots that mozzarella produces. The color when melted is more golden-yellow than the white of melted mozzarella. And the flavor is richer, tangier (from the provolone), and more complex than mozzarella alone.

For anyone raised on mozzarella-based pizza, the first bite of Old Forge pizza requires a recalibration. The cheese tastes “wrong” for about three seconds, and then it tastes interesting, and then it tastes right. The provolone-American combination is one of those things that works specifically because nobody set out to design it — it emerged from necessity and survived because people liked it.

Two Styles: Red and White

Old Forge pizzerias typically offer two versions:

Red pizza features a tomato-based sauce under the provolone-American cheese blend. The sauce varies by pizzeria but is generally a cooked, seasoned tomato sauce (not the raw Neapolitan style). The sauce application is moderate — this isn’t a sauce-heavy pizza, partly because the prebaked shell doesn’t need moisture compensation and partly because the cheese blend is the star.

White pizza skips the tomato sauce entirely and uses a blend of the provolone and American cheese with additions that vary by pizzeria — some add onions, some use garlic oil as a base, some add other Italian cheeses. White is widely considered the more distinctive of the two versions, the one that showcases the cheese blend most directly.

Both versions are sold “by the cut” — you order a specific number of rectangular pieces, not a whole pizza. This is the standard ordering system throughout Old Forge and reflects the pan-baked, rectangular format of the pizza.

Distinct from Sicilian

People unfamiliar with Old Forge pizza sometimes try to categorize it as “Sicilian-style” because it’s rectangular and pan-baked. This misses significant differences:

Crust texture. Sicilian (whether Palermo sfincione or American Sicilian) has an airy, bread-like crumb with large, irregular holes — closer to focaccia. Old Forge crust is tight, fine-crumbed, and uniform, closer to sandwich bread.

Cheese. Authentic Palermo sfincione uses caciocavallo (no mozzarella in the traditional version either, interestingly). American Sicilian uses mozzarella. Old Forge uses provolone and American.

Assembly. Sicilian toppings are typically applied to raw dough that rises and bakes with the toppings in a single bake. Old Forge uses the prebaked shell system with toppings added for a second bake.

Dough enrichment. Old Forge dough is sweetened and enriched (sugar, oil/shortening, sometimes milk). Traditional Sicilian dough is lean or lightly oiled.

Thickness. Old Forge is typically thinner than American Sicilian — more like a thick focaccia-thin than a deep Sicilian-thick.

The distinction matters because the techniques are different. If you approach Old Forge pizza with Sicilian methods (high hydration, single bake, mozzarella), you’ll end up with something that doesn’t resemble Old Forge pizza at all.

Making Old Forge Pizza at Home

The Shell

Start with an enriched dough: bread flour at 12-13% protein, 60-65% hydration, 2-3% sugar, 3-4% oil or melted shortening, 2% salt, and standard yeast amounts. This should feel like a soft, slightly tacky bread dough — not the wet, slack dough of high-hydration pizza.

Oil a rectangular baking pan (a 9x13-inch pan works for a single pizza, a half sheet pan for a larger one). Press the dough into the pan, working it into the corners over multiple press-and-rest sessions (20 minutes between each). Let it rise at room temperature until puffy — about 1-1.5 hours.

Bake the empty shell at 400-425F for 12-15 minutes until the top is lightly golden and the structure is fully set. You should be able to tap the surface and hear a hollow sound. Remove and cool.

The shells keep well — wrap tightly and refrigerate for up to 2 days, or freeze for up to 2 months.

The Cheese Blend

Use a blend of:

• 2/3 provolone (medium-aged, not sharp piccante), shredded
• 1/3 American cheese (white American from the deli counter, not individually wrapped slices — deli American has better melt and flavor)

Shred or slice the provolone. Tear or chop the American cheese into small pieces that will distribute evenly. Toss together.

Assembly and Second Bake

For red pizza: spread a thin layer of cooked tomato sauce over the prebaked shell. Top with the provolone-American blend, edge to edge.

For white pizza: brush the shell lightly with garlic oil or olive oil. Scatter thinly sliced onions if desired. Top with the cheese blend, edge to edge.

Second-bake at 425-450F for 10-12 minutes until the cheese is fully melted, lightly golden, and beginning to bubble. The prebaked shell doesn’t need long — you’re just melting cheese and warming through.

Cut into rectangles. Serve by the piece.

What to Expect

The crust will be soft and bread-like, with a golden-brown bottom from the pan contact. The cheese will be smoother and more uniform than mozzarella-based pizza, with a golden color and a tangy-rich flavor from the provolone. The overall impression is comfort food — satisfying, unpretentious, and unlike anything else in the pizza world.

Why Old Forge Pizza Matters

Old Forge pizza matters for the same reason all deeply regional food traditions matter: it’s an artifact of a specific place, time, and set of circumstances that can’t be replicated by any chain or trend.

It emerged from necessity — Italian-American women feeding coal miners during Prohibition with the ingredients they could afford. It survived because it was good. It thrived because a small, tight-knit community kept making it the same way for nearly a century. And it persists today in a town where the ratio of pizzerias to residents is unlike anywhere else in the country.

Myhrvold’s research team classified it as a distinct American pizza style — one that meets both criteria for style recognition: it affects the fundamental structure of the pizza (not just the toppings), and it’s made by multiple independent establishments.

For home pizza makers, Old Forge is a valuable addition to the repertoire because it uses completely different techniques than most styles. The prebaked shell method, the enriched dough, and the provolone-American cheese blend all teach you something about how pizza works when you change the fundamental assumptions.

The Bottom Line

Old Forge pizza is a coal-country original: sweetened white-bread crust prebaked into a shell, topped with provolone and American cheese (no mozzarella), served by the cut from rectangular pans. It emerged from 1930s speakeasies where miners’ wives made pizza with what they could afford, and it endures because the combination works.

The prebaked shell solves the gel layer problem that plagues most topped pizza. The provolone-American blend produces a melt unlike mozzarella — smoother, tangier, more golden. And the sweetened crust provides a neutral, tender platform that lets the cheese and toppings dominate.

Twelve pizzerias serving 8,000 people, all making essentially the same style, all still in business. That’s not tradition for tradition’s sake. That’s a product people want.