The Real Reason You Should Order Your Pizza Uncut
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There's nothing quite like a takeout pizza. They're customizable, comforting, and above all, easy. After all, you don't even have to leave the couch, and getting pizza delivered straight to the comforts of your own home is tough to beat. It can be a treat for the weekend or a reward for working through a hard Monday.
But there's a simple way that will make your delivery pizza experience even more enjoyable. When you order your pizza, ask them not to cut it for you. Why? Because if the pizza is cut long before it gets to you, the oils and juices from the cheese, tomato sauce and toppings will seep into the cracks and cause the crust to get soggy (via WRIF). This is especially noticeable when it comes to thin crust pizza, because even the slightest bit of moisture can cause it to lose its crunch and taste like a gross mess.
A second reason to order your pizza uncut
Ordering your pizza uncut has another benefit as well — it keeps the cheese and toppings from falling off the slice when you pick it up. Pizza lovers theorize that this is because the pizza is typically being cut right when it comes out of the oven when the cheese is still molten hot (via Lifehacker). As a result, things are liable to ooze and slide around.
Slice it yourself when it arrives, and you can judge for yourself how different it is. The cheese sets up as it cools down, which allows the toppings to stay where they're supposed to be — firmly entrenched on top of each slice, and not listing to the sides or sliding into the cracks. Everyone usually has a pizza cutter in the back of some drawer in the kitchen and they're incredibly easy (and fun) to use. It's less work for the pizza place too, and so it's a win-win.
If you want to give it a try the next time you order a pie, you can use Domino's app which has added an uncut pizza option button (via 97x). Or if you're stuck in your ways (or can't find a pizza cutter) and don't want to try something new, it's not going to drastically affect your pizza experience because no matter which way you cut it, having delivery pizza is hard to beat.
Choosing your slice size
There is another huge benefit to cutting your own pie, though. One other issue is that it seems unlikely that the folks responsible for cutting your pizza at the restaurant are doing so with a measuring tape, which often results in some rather uneven slices — and if the pizzeria is busy, the employee who is cutting your pizza might be in a hurry, which can impact your slice size.
Cutting your own pizza also allows you to determine the appropriate width of each slice. It ensures that you're not left with one of those comically small pieces that aren't even wide enough to hold an entire piece of pepperoni, or a horror show mashup of tiny pieces paired with gigantic, oddly-shaped ones.
Of course, the flip side of that is that there are some people who prefer not to wrangle with a New York-sized slice. Given the backlash associated with using a knife and fork to consume a piece of pizza no matter how hot or large it might be (seriously, it may have even derailed a presidential campaign, via Politico) it could be advantageous to be the master of your own domain when it comes to choosing slice size.
Picking a proper pizza cutter
An interesting pizza cutter would be a good gift for the pizza lover in your life. While everyone is likely familiar with the silicon-handled OXO-branded pizza cutter (via Amazon), there are a huge variety of cutters out there. For example, a particularly interesting option is a hand-held cutter, which fits right in the palm of the hand and allows for easy control (via BuzzFeed). Given its compact size, it's also quite easy to store.
And did you ever think of using scissors to slice up a pizza? While garden variety kitchen shears are probably not the best tool, a company called Dreamfarm makes what are called "Scizza Scissors" which enable the user to slice up their pie without having to worry about dragging toppings along if their wheel decides to stick. While this may seem like a trailblazing method to cut up a pizza, consider that it's the way pizzas are cut in Italy and it suddenly seems less eccentric.