Sicilian Pizza vs. Grandma Pizza: What's the Difference?

Sicilian and grandma pizza look alike: a sheet pan, an oiled, crisp bottom, squares instead of wedges. The difference is mostly in how much the dough rises before it bakes, which decides whether you get a soft, bready slab or a thinner, flatter square. The Pizza Planner has a Sicilian preset but not a grandma one.

Why the names blur

Modernist Pizza went looking for the thick, fluffy “New York Sicilian” that pizza guides describe, with a crust at least ¾ to 1 inch thick and an open crumb, and mostly couldn’t find it. More than half the pizzas on one “best Sicilian” list weren’t called Sicilian by the pizzerias that made them; they were “square” or “Grandma-style.” The authors concluded that New York pizzerias treat the three names as the same thing, and they call both Sicilian and grandma pseudo-styles rather than distinct styles.

The history is clearer than the usage:

• Grandma pizza was invented in the 1980s at King Umberto’s on Long Island, according to Modernist Pizza, and the original is thin, not thick. The name has since spread to square pan pizzas of all kinds. Ken Forkish lumps the family together as American pan pizza, “aka the square slice, aka Grandma pizza,” and notes that its crust is not as thick as an American Sicilian, which he says is almost as thick as most focaccia.
• “Sicilian” isn’t what Sicilians eat. Modernist Pizza points out that pizzerias in Sicily mostly make Neapolitan-style pizza. The likely ancestor is sfincione, a soft, thick focaccia from Palermo with a topping baked on, sold by bakeries and street vendors and often eaten at room temperature. The book also found an early American recipe called Pizza Siciliana, a home pan pizza in Maria Lo Pinto’s 1948 cookbook The Art of Italian Cooking, which may have helped the name stick.

Sfincione, briefly. Giallo Zafferano’s Palermo-style recipe is one version, and it uses both caciocavallo and pecorino: cubed caciocavallo, grated pecorino and anchovies go on the dough first, then a slow-cooked onion and tomato sauce, then oregano and toasted breadcrumbs. King Arthur’s Sicilian recipe below uses the same onion, anchovy and cheese-under-sauce combination, on a mozzarella pizza.

Side by side

These are the two home recipes on this page. The Sicilian is King Arthur Baking’s, which the Planner also uses; the grandma pie is Ken Forkish’s.

Two things stand out. The grandma pie isn’t made with much less dough: 888 g against 955 g, about 7% less (calculated). Its thinner crust comes largely from the much shorter rise in the pan. And sauce on top isn’t a reliable dividing line: King Arthur’s Sicilian puts its sauce over the cheese, Forkish’s grandma pie puts the cheese over the sauce, and Forkish notes that many grandma pies do it the other way round. He likes it both ways.

Why both are baked twice

Look at a slice of thick pan pizza from the side and you’ll often see a pale, gummy line where the dough meets the sauce. Modernist Pizza calls it the gel layer: the wet topping keeps the top of the dough too cool to finish baking. In an experiment with 120 pizzas, the authors found that the only way to eliminate it completely is to prebake the dough. Most of the square slices they tried in New York were marred by it, and their fix for a light, fluffy thick pizza was to bake the crust before saucing it.

That’s why both recipes here bake the crust first, and why King Arthur bakes its Sicilian crust completely plain. Forkish’s grandma parbake carries a thin film of sauce, which caramelizes into the crust, and he bakes it until the dough is fully baked and the bottom is crisp. Forkish’s parbaked grandma crust can also wait: he notes the second bake can be right away or hours later, which makes it easy to time for a crowd.

Make Sicilian-style pizza

This is King Arthur Baking’s Sicilian-Style Pizza, and the Planner’s Sicilian method. Time: about 30 minutes of active work, 25 to 32 minutes in the oven, and about 5 hours in all on the same day.

Ingredients (one 13 × 18-inch pizza)

King Arthur lists the yeast as 2 teaspoons; 6 g is its usual 3 g per teaspoon, and it’s the Planner’s same-day amount. If you can’t find high-gluten flour, use the strongest bread flour you can get.

Topping

• Olive oil, for the pan
• 14 g olive oil, for the onions
• 227 g thinly sliced sweet yellow onion
• 227 g tomato sauce
• 3 anchovy fillets, finely chopped (optional)
• 340 g mozzarella, grated
• Dried herbs or fresh herbs, and olive oil, to finish

Method

1. Mix. Mix and knead the flour, salt, yeast and water into a very soft, smooth dough, by hand or in a mixer, adding only as much of the water as you need.
2. First rise. Cover and let rise for 1 hour. Use it straight away, or refrigerate it for up to 24 hours for more flavor.
3. Oil the pan. Lightly oil the bottom and sides of a 13 × 18-inch half-sheet pan.
4. Stretch. Put the dough in the pan and stretch it toward the edges. When it shrinks back, rest it uncovered for 10 to 15 minutes and stretch again. Repeat 2 or 3 times, until it fills the pan.
5. Rise in the pan. Let it rise for 1 to 2 hours, until noticeably puffy. Chilled dough takes longer.
6. Onions. Meanwhile, cook the onions in the 14 g olive oil over medium-low heat for 15 to 20 minutes, until soft and lightly golden, then stir them into the tomato sauce.
7. Preheat. Near the end of the rise, heat the oven to 450°F (232°C) with a rack just below the middle; the Planner allows 25 to 35 minutes. Forkish recommends baking pan pizzas lower than hearth pizzas so the bottom gets enough heat to crisp.
8. Bake plain. Bake the plain crust for 10 to 12 minutes, until it is just beginning to brown.
9. Top. Top with the anchovies, if using, then the mozzarella, then the onion-tomato sauce.
10. Finish. Bake 15 to 20 minutes more, until the edges are golden and the sauce is bubbling.
11. Rest and cut. Let it cool for about 10 minutes, finish with herbs and a drizzle of olive oil, and cut into 12 to 16 pieces.

Make a grandma pie

Forkish’s version uses his Saturday Pan Pizza Dough and a two-stage bake at 550°F. Grandma isn’t a Planner style, so use his numbers.

Dough (888 g): 500 g white bread flour or 00 flour, 375 g water at 90 to 95°F, 11 g fine sea salt and 2 g instant yeast. Plus 75 g olive oil (60 g for the pan, 15 g for the top) and 200 g smooth tomato sauce for the parbake.

Topping: 150 g tomato sauce, 50 g grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano, 150 g grated low-moisture mozzarella, 125 g thinly sliced fresh mozzarella, 30 g olive oil and 10 to 12 basil leaves to finish.

1. Mix. Dissolve the salt and yeast in the water, add the flour, and mix by hand for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Rest 20 minutes, knead briefly until smooth and put it in an oiled tub.
2. Rise. Leave covered at room temperature (70 to 74°F) for 4 hours, until doubled.
3. Preheat. Put a steel or stone on a rack just below the middle and preheat to 550°F (290°C). Forkish allows 45 minutes; a steel may need up to an hour.
4. Pan it. Spread the 60 g of oil over the pan, including the inside of the rim. Lay in the dough, drizzle the remaining 15 g of oil on top and spread it toward the edges until it resists. Rest 10 minutes, spread it to the edges, then rest about 30 minutes.
5. Parbake. Spread the 200 g of sauce to within ¼ inch of the edges and bake about 15 minutes, until the edges are very lightly golden, the sauce has caramelized around the edge and the bottom is light golden and crisp.
6. Top. Right away or hours later, reheat the oven to 550°F and switch to the broiler 5 minutes before baking. Forkish bakes this stage with the steel or stone on the middle rack; if yours is already in the oven lower down, leave it there rather than moving it while hot. Spread the 150 g of sauce over the crust, then the grated hard cheese, the grated mozzarella and the sliced mozzarella.
7. Finish. Turn the broiler off, set the pan on the steel or stone and bake at 550°F for 10 minutes. Then broil for about 2 minutes, checking after 1, until the cheese has melted and the crust has a few spots of dark brown. Finish with the olive oil and basil, and cut into squares.

Check that your oven allows its broiler to be used this way.

Which one to make

Make Sicilian if you want a thick, soft, bready square with a crisp bottom, the sort you can make ahead for a crowd. Most of the time goes into letting the dough rise in the pan.

Make grandma if you’d rather have a thinner, flatter square and a dough you can mix at noon and bake that evening.

Both are good first pizzas. Forkish suggests cautious beginners start with pan pizzas because they’re simpler and less error-prone than hearth pizzas: no stretching to a circle and no launching off a peel. For a taller pan pizza with a caramelized cheese edge, see Detroit-style pizza; for a thinner, lighter one, Roman pizza al taglio.

Sources

• King Arthur Baking, Sicilian-Style Pizza: formula, pan, rises, two-stage 450°F bake, topping order and rest. Checked October 14, 2026.
• Ken Forkish, The Elements of Pizza (2016): chapter 2, “American Pan Pizzas, aka the Square Slice, aka Grandma Pizza”; chapter 5 (starting with pan pizzas); chapter 6, “Saturday Pan Pizza Dough” (formula, schedule, pan, parbake, rack position); chapter 7, “Grandma Pie” and “Simple Tomato Pie” (toppings, second bake, cheese and sauce order).
• Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, Modernist Pizza (2021), volume 1: page 96 (sfincione), pages 101–103 (the New York Sicilian, Grandma-style pizza and King Umberto’s, Maria Lo Pinto’s Pizza Siciliana, prebaking), page 216 (Sicilian and grandma as pseudo-styles) and pages 370–371 (the gel layer).
• Giallo Zafferano, Palermitan Sfincione: toppings and layering of its Palermo-style recipe, including both caciocavallo and pecorino. Checked October 14, 2026.
• Dough loads and percentages are calculated.