We have all heard of New York style or Chicago style pizza, but have you heard of Colorado style pizza? If not look no further because it’s right here in Fort Collins. While some may argue our style is very similar to Chicago style, just with a ton of toppings, I disagree and believe this is our own style.
New York City Style
To begin lets talk about the other styles of pizza out there, like the New York Style. This type is know to many as thin crust, typically sold by the slice and is often baked in a wood fire oven. This type of pizza is the easy grab and go pizza that will always be there. It’s not over doing it with toppings, or the amount of crust. It’s a basic pizza that we all know and love. The culture of this pizza is also very trial and error. With the crust being so thin it’s often burned on the bottom giving it the smoky favor, but finding that ratio between brunt and smokey is not easy. While it may sound like every pizza place is New York style they aren’t. New York Style pizza is in New York City. If its outside of the city then you know it’s just pretending to be New York Style, according to Nick DeMarinis from Queens.
Chicago Style
Next lets look at Chicago style pizza. This Is known as the deep dish style where the dough is smacked into the pan until it’s at the lip of the dish. After that the dough is greased with corn or vegetable oil, and then they add the sauce and cheese. This pizza is typically served as a whole pie, meaning you don’t buy it by the slice like in New York, but that’s just the tip of the pizza-berg. There style also branches off to stuffed pizza and their pan pizza. What all of these pizza’s have in common though, is the dough is so deep into the pan that it almost resembles a pie. Since the crust is so thick and deep they are basically have to build it backwards. It starts with putting the dough in first, then the cheese, meat toppings, vegetables and lastly the sauce and more cheese.
Colorado Style
Now that we have seen the two other major styles of pizza, lets see how they compare to the pizza we have here in Colorado, specifically Fort Collins. To start the image above is taken at Beau Jo’s pizza in downtown Fort Collins where they claim to have/ invented, Colorado style pizza. This style may look very similar to the Chicago style but I can tell you it’s very different. Lets start with one of the most diffing features for different styles of pizza, and that’s the crust. The crust above is very thick, but just because it’s thick it’s not deep dish. As I said above deep dish has the dough pressed again the pan until its all the way to the lip and almost folding over. When here at Beau Jo’s and other places throughout Colorado, we have a modified deep dish version. This modified version has a bit more care and thought into their crust. How they do it is by braiding their crust and dipping it in honey. This style is done no better then by Beau Jo’s. Along with this different type of crust we are also no stranger to different kinds of toppings. In Colorado we will put almost everything on pizza, from jalapenos to cream cheese, nothing is out of our limits. Yes even pineapples.
All that being said that is in no way Chicago style. Chicago style and Colorado style may both have deep dish, but here in Colorado we braid our crust and most importantly we dip it in honey giving it that soft flavor. With all of these facts pointing to Colorado having their own style, its odd that people still don’t believe it.
According to serious eats, many people who have been the Beau Jo’s believe that it’s just a slightly different version of Chicago style. The main point that these people are making is that, having honey on the pizza shouldn't make it into a different style. They have also argued that the toppings we put on are just add on’s that anyone can do, which is false. Colorado is one of the only places that has cream cheese on their pizza. While these things alone don’t make it its own style, having them all together makes it Colorado style pizza.