St. Louis Style Pizza: Provel, Cracker Crust, and the Square Cut

St. Louis pizza is easy to recognize: a crust thin enough to snap, cheese that melts into a smooth, gooey layer rather than strings, and a round pie cut into a grid of small squares. Most of the argument is about the cheese.

What makes it St. Louis-style

• The crust. Very thin and crisp. Imo’s, the best-known St. Louis chain, describes its “famous foundation” as “thin, crispy and crunchy.” Modernist Pizza reports St. Louis pizza described as “like a communion wafer.” Recipes differ on what makes it rise, if anything: the 1947 newspaper account Feast magazine quotes describes Melrose’s crust as “a rich yeast dough,” while the Cook’s Country recipe below uses baking powder and no yeast.
• To the edge. Imo’s says the toppings go on “edge-to-edge,” with Provel on top.
• Provel. The defining ingredient, covered below.
• The cut. A round pie cut into small squares, often called a party or tavern cut. Imo’s says squares are “just how we slice our pizza in St. Louis.”
• The sauce. Descriptions vary: Feast calls it oregano-seasoned, and Cook’s Country describes a thick, sweet sauce.

What Provel is

Provel is a processed cheese. The front of the Imo’s-branded package reads “Pasteurized processed cheddar, Swiss & smoked provolone,” and its ingredient list includes cultured pasteurized milk and part-skim milk, water, sodium phosphate, salt and milkfat, with smoke flavor among the minor ingredients (checked October 14, 2026). Imo’s describes the result as a “smoky blend” that melts at a low temperature “without being stringy.”

The name is a trademark. The US Patent and Trademark Office record for PROVEL shows an application for “cheese” filed on June 20, 1947, by the J.S. Hoffman Company, first used that April, and registered on October 10, 1950. The registration is still live and was last renewed in 2021; its current owner is Lactalis Heritage Dairy, Inc., of Chicago (checked October 14, 2026). Feast reports that Hoffman’s first application was turned down because the name was too close to another cheese, “Provole.”

Imo’s says Provel was “originally invented in St. Louis” in 1947 and acknowledges its origins are “debated.” What connects a Chicago trademark to St. Louis is distribution: Imo’s history says Costa Grocery “held the only rights to distribute Provel® cheese in St. Louis” and that Ed Imo bought the business. Modernist Pizza calls Provel “a locally made cheese product based on white cheddar, Swiss, and provolone.”

Imo’s sells Provel shredded and sliced, and Cook’s Country built its recipe around a stand-in because Provel was hard to find elsewhere.

Where it came from

The details are disputed, and the sources say so.

• Before the style. Modernist Pizza found regular pizza in St. Louis from the late 1930s, at Colucci’s Italian restaurant.
• Melrose, 1945. Modernist Pizza calls Melrose “what appears to be the first pizzeria in St. Louis.” Feast places it in the low-ceilinged basement of 204 N. Sarah St. and says its owner, Amedeo Fiore, was a tenor who sang with the Muny and with the Metropolitan Opera when it came to town. Fiore advertised “the original Neapolitan” pizza, and an April 1947 St. Louis Post-Dispatch photograph shows him cutting a thin pizza into small squares with scissors.
• Provolone first. The same 1947 article describes a “layer of sliced provolone.” Modernist Pizza’s authors think it doubtful that the reporter mistook Provel for provolone, and conclude Provel was “a latecomer to the style.”
• Who brought in Provel. Modernist Pizza lists three pizzerias that newspapers have credited: Parente’s, which opened in the 1940s; Luigi’s, opened in 1953; and Farotto’s, opened in 1956 or 1957. Feast names Luigi’s as the first pizzeria “to really use Provel.”
• Imo’s. Imo’s says Ed and Margie Imo opened their first parlor in 1964, at Thurman and Shaw, and that the chef they hired used Provel in place of mozzarella.

Is it a distinct style?

Modernist Pizza lists St. Louis-style with Chicago deep-dish, Detroit-style and Quad Cities as styles long known only in one area. But it also finds the same thin, sauced-to-the-edge, square-cut pizza across the Midwest, from Chicago to Minneapolis and Columbus, with each region claiming it as its own, and says that broader bar or tavern pizza was too inconsistent to meet its criteria for a distinct style. Its authors point out that the 1947 photograph shows Fiore cutting squares in a pizzeria, not a bar, which complicates the usual tavern-snack origin story.

What St. Louis adds is Provel. For the Chicago version, see Chicago deep dish and tavern; for the bar-pie tradition, see bar pizza; and for how these regional styles fit together, the Pizza Style Atlas.

Making it at home

This follows the St. Louis-Style Pizza published by Cook’s Country (America’s Test Kitchen; February/March 2010 issue, checked October 14, 2026). It makes two 12-inch pizzas. The crust uses baking powder and cornstarch rather than yeast, so it’s ready in about an hour. Cook’s Country says the cornstarch helps the crust crisp in a home oven and keeps it tender.

Dough (hydration about 52%, calculated)

Sauce

• 1 (8-ounce) can tomato sauce
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano

Cheese

• 2 cups shredded white American cheese
• ½ cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
• 3 drops liquid smoke

The cheese blend is Cook’s Country’s stand-in for Provel. If you can buy Provel, it’s the obvious swap; the recipe doesn’t give an amount for it.

Method

1. Sauce and cheese. Whisk the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl. Toss the cheeses with the liquid smoke in another bowl.
2. Dough. Combine the flour, cornstarch, sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir in the water and oil until the dough begins to hold together, then knead it 3 or 4 times on a lightly floured counter. (Cook’s Country says the dough can be wrapped and refrigerated for up to 2 days.)
3. Heat the oven. Put a baking stone, or an upside-down rimmed baking sheet, on the lower-middle rack and heat the oven to 475°F (245°C).
4. Shape. Divide the dough in half. Press each piece into a small circle on flour-dusted parchment rated for 475°F, then roll and stretch it into a 12-inch circle, turning the parchment as you go.
5. Top. Spread half the sauce and half the cheese over each pizza.
6. Bake. Slide one pizza, on its parchment, onto the hot stone. Bake 9 to 12 minutes, until the underside is golden brown and the cheese is fully melted. Repeat with the second.
7. Cut. Cool a few minutes, then cut into 2-inch squares.

The hydration is calculated from Cook’s Country’s 283 g of flour and about 148 g of water; the other dough ingredients are given by volume, as in the recipe.

A party-cut pizza is meant for sharing. If you’re feeding a group, the Pizza Calculator can help with the count.

Sources

• Cook’s Country / America’s Test Kitchen, “St. Louis-Style Pizza”, February/March 2010 issue (web date March 1, 2012). Checked October 14, 2026.
• US Patent and Trademark Office, TSDR record for PROVEL, serial no. 71524538, registration no. 531607. Checked October 14, 2026.
• Imo’s Pizza: Shredded Provel cheese (package and ingredient label), What is St. Louis-style pizza? and Our history. Checked October 14, 2026.
• Nancy Stiles, “Hip to Be Square: Slicing Into the History of St. Louis-Style Pizza”, Feast, September 22, 2017, updated July 19, 2022. Checked October 14, 2026.
• Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, Modernist Pizza (2021), volume 1: pages 65–66 (pizza in St. Louis, Melrose, Provel’s origins) and pages 105–106 and 247 (Melrose, the party cut, Imo’s, bar and tavern pizza across the Midwest).