Quad Cities Style Pizza: Malt, Molasses, and the Strip Cut

Most American pizza styles are named for one city. This one is named for a cluster of them on both banks of the Mississippi. Modernist Pizza’s team hadn’t heard of it until their book was well underway, then made the trip and found the pizzerias “doing several unique things”: a different dough, toppings made and applied differently, and a different cut.

Where the Quad Cities are

The region straddles the Iowa–Illinois border. Modernist Pizza lists the cities as Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa and Moline, Rock Island and East Moline in Illinois, which, the authors note, is five; Bettendorf was the late addition, as its population grew. PMQ Pizza Magazine puts it the same way: “five (yes, five)” cities along the river.

The pizzerias are spread across both states. Frank’s is in Silvis, Illinois; Harris Pizza lists locations in Rock Island, Bettendorf and Davenport. So the style belongs to the region as a whole; the Pizza Style Atlas shows it with one pin for the area.

What makes it Quad Cities-style

These are the features Modernist Pizza and PMQ report, with the variations they found:

• Malt in the dough, and often molasses. Modernist Pizza says the dough “typically contains malt syrup and molasses.” Dean Creech of Uncle Bill’s told PMQ that the malt and molasses add a bit of sweetness, crunch and color. Not every shop does it: Phil Bacino of Original John’s, a pizzeria in Calumet City, Illinois, linked to the style’s origins, told PMQ it used to use malt and molasses but doesn’t anymore, and the published recipe below, from Roots Handmade Pizza in Chicago, uses malt syrup and no molasses.
• A seasoned sauce. Modernist Pizza says it typically includes cayenne or red chili flakes. PMQ describes it as thick with “a bit of a bite,” though Bacino said Original John’s sauce was never spicy.
• Twice-ground sausage. For sausage pizza, fennel-laced pork sausage is cooked, cooled, run through a grinder, then cooked again on the pizza, according to Modernist Pizza, and spread in a thick layer. Bacino described forming the sausage into loaves and cooking out the grease before grinding it into crumbles.
• Cheese on top. The cheese goes over the other toppings. PMQ’s description: “enough Midwestern mozzarella cheese on top of the toppings to ensure ‘gooeyness.’”
• The strip cut. Instead of wedges, the pizza is cut once down the middle and then across in a series of parallel cuts, leaving long strips. Traditionalists use shears; Modernist Pizza describes a hinged cutter; and PMQ found most shops have moved to knives and rocker cutters. Frank’s cuts small pizzas into triangles and large ones into strips.

Many menus also carry a taco pizza, which Modernist Pizza describes as topped after baking with lettuce, cold shredded cheese and crumbled taco-seasoned chips.

Who started it

There’s no settled answer, and the main candidates are on both sides of the river.

• Frank’s Pizzeria, Silvis, Illinois, 1955. Modernist Pizza says Frank Serra opened it in 1955, and KWQC reported in March 2025 that it has served “Quad City style pizza” since 1955.
• Harris Pizza, 1960. Modernist Pizza says Leonard and Mary Harris opened it in 1960 and that their daughter, Kathleen Mosley, took over in the 1990s; the company’s site says “Since 1960.” Modernist Pizza also reports Mosley telling the Quad-City Times that her mother created the original recipe before pizza was popular in the region: “She had probably never seen a pizza before.” PMQ says many locals credit Harris as the originator.
• The Maniscalco brothers. PMQ reports that Tony and Frank Maniscalco came separately from Calumet City, Illinois, in the early 1950s; that Tony had worked at Original John’s there, which opened in 1943 and made a very similar pizza; and that he made pizza at the Paddock Club before opening his own places in Moline, Rock Island and Davenport. Local legend, PMQ says, has Tony teaching Frank’s original owner and a Tony’s employee teaching Harris. Modernist Pizza heard a version too: some locals hold that it was invented elsewhere in Illinois in the 1940s by two Italian brothers who later moved to the Quad Cities.

Frank’s opened five years before Harris, as both sources note, but as Modernist Pizza says, opening dates aren’t proof of what was on each menu.

The case against it

The style has critics. Modernist Pizza’s authors found the malt flavor “undetectable” in most of the pizzas they tried in the Quad Cities, though they enjoyed it at Roots in Chicago, and they found the strip cut and the cheese layer made the pizza hard to eat. They quote a former Quad Cities resident, Peter Rugg, who called his childhood pizza “legendarily terrible.” They also allow that it’s up to the people who love it: “they may like it the way it is, which is just fine.” Treat that as one well-informed opinion rather than a verdict.

Making it at home

This follows the Quad Cities-style pizza The Washington Post published in 2016, adapted from Roots Handmade Pizza in Chicago and tested by Kristen Hartke. It makes two 12-inch pizzas. The grams are converted from the recipe’s ounces.

Dough

The malt syrup is about 17% of the flour weight, and the added water about 52% (both calculated). The syrup carries some water of its own, so 52% isn’t the dough’s total moisture. The Post notes that malt syrup is sold at natural foods stores.

Toppings

• 1 tablespoon fennel seed
• 2 cups cooked, finely crumbled Italian sausage
• 2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes
• 1¼ cups no-salt-added tomato sauce
• 510 g (18 oz) shredded mozzarella

Method

1. Mix. Combine the warm water and yeast in a stand mixer bowl and let sit 10 minutes. Add the malt syrup, flour, salt, pepper, oregano, paprika and ice water. Mix with the dough hook on low for about 2 minutes, then on medium for a few minutes more, until smooth and elastic.
2. Rest cold. Divide the dough in half, wrap each piece and refrigerate for 24 to 48 hours. Let it come to room temperature, 2 to 3 hours, before shaping.
3. Heat the oven. Put a baking stone on the lowest rack (or an upside-down baking sheet) and heat the oven to 450°F (230°C).
4. Shape. Roll each ball on its own 12-inch square of parchment, rated for 450°F, into a 12-inch round. Fold the edge over about ½ inch and crimp it to form a lip.
5. Season the toppings. Stir the fennel seed into the sausage and the pepper flakes into the tomato sauce.
6. Build. Spread half the sauce over each round, scatter the sausage over the sauce and cover evenly with the mozzarella.
7. Bake one pizza at a time, on its parchment, for up to 15 minutes, until the top is golden brown and bubbling.
8. Cut. Rest a few minutes, then use kitchen shears to cut crosswise into strips about 1½ inches wide, then cut down the center so the long strips are halved.

The Post’s recipe uses cooked, crumbled sausage. Quad Cities pizzerias go a step further, grinding the cooked sausage again for the fine texture described above.

Modernist Pizza describes the crust as “a medium crust reminiscent of a New York pizza.” If you’d rather start from a New York-style dough, the Planner can plan it, though it doesn’t add malt.

Sources

• Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, Modernist Pizza (2021), volume 1: pages 115–116 (Quad Cities pizza, the strip cut, Peter Rugg’s essay), page 243 (Roots Handmade Pizza, Chicago) and page 248 (the Quad Cities, Frank’s and Harris, key features of the style).
• Liz Barrett Foster, “How a Five-City Region in Two States Produced One Game-Changing Pizza Style”, PMQ Pizza Magazine, January/February 2019, reposted September 9, 2024. Checked October 14, 2026.
• The Washington Post, “Quad Cities-Style Pizza,” February 23, 2016, adapted from Roots Handmade Pizza and tested by Kristen Hartke. Recipe page, with the Internet Archive’s September 16, 2018 copy as a fallback. Checked October 14, 2026.
• Kate Kopatich, “Owner of Frank’s Pizza dies, family shares”, KWQC, March 12, 2025. Checked October 14, 2026.
• Harris Pizza, Our story. Checked October 14, 2026.