Name: Vodka Sauce Grandma Pizza Recipe
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 2 h 50 min
Yield: 1 pizza
Cuisine: New York Italian
Ingredients: coarse sea salt; freshly ground black pepper; Italian herbs, , fresh or dried; hot pepper flakes; finely grated Parmesan cheese, , about 4 tablespoons; 1 cup vodka sauce; 1 cup ricotta cheese; 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella, (from a block--not pre-shredded); 16-20 slices Genoa salami; 4-5 pepperoncini, , thinly sliced and squeezed so they're not too wet; 5-6 Tablespoons olive oil; 8.5 oz (1 cup, 1 Tablespoon) cold water; 2 teaspoons fine sea salt; 2 Tablespoons sugar; 2 teaspoons active dry yeast; 1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil; 14.8 oz (3 1/2 cups) bread flour (I used half King Arthur bread flour and half 00 flour)

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I am not sure that this is the “for real” school pizza recipe I grew up eating, but I can tell you this Grandma Pizza recipe with vodka sauce (or drunken grandma pizza!) for the pizza sauce is absolutely out of this world delicious!

Read on to learn some history about Grandma pizza–where it originated and what sets it apart from other types of pizza. This is a long one, so feel free to use the Table of Contents below the first photo to jump straight down to the recipe.

I also have a couple of recipes for vodka sauce on the site, should you want to make your own: a traditional vodka sauce and a short cut creamy vodka sauce.

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What You'll Find in This Post Click to view ToC

Fast Food Cafeteria

There were two cafeterias in our high school. One was the meat and vegetable “standard” high school cafeteria of the early 1980’s, complete with plump, mostly pleasant, hairnetted lunch ladies serving up homemade green beans and corn bread, meatloaf and chicken.

The other was the fast food cafeteria. Burgers and dogs and pizza, oh my. All with a side of fries with nary an actual vegetable in sight, unless you counted the fries and the ketchup.

Guess which cafeteria I ate in?

If you guessed the traditional cafeteria, you are wrong. I wanted nothing to do with the vegetables, and pizza and fries for lunch every day for two hundred school days a year sounded like heaven to me. I used to tear off a tiny corner of my ketchup pack and paint a stripe down the center of each of my limp fries. I was odd that way. Or meticulous, depending on how you look at it.

Even when I taught school as recently as ten years ago, I was a huge but secret fan of the school pizza. The only thing about it that was Italian was the name.

I think it’s pretty much just a cheeseburger in pizza form: ground beef, cheddar and fake mozzarella on a foldable crust, but there’s just something about it. Something near and dear to my fast food cafeteria-loving heart about school pizza.

Once I left education though, I never pined for school pizza. I honestly never really even thought about school pizza until last week.

overhead shot of a large rectangular grandma pizza on a baking sheet

Grandmother’s Pizza

We recently went to our favorite local Italian restaurant, and I ordered the tortellacci: meal-filled tortellini on steroids swimming in vodka sauce.

I decided there and then that I’d save as much of that luscious salmon-hued sauce as I could so I could make another dish with the leftovers. When our server stopped by to ask if we needed boxes, I explained my plan.

He told me that they have a pizza they sell on weekends called the “Grandmother’s Pizza” that uses vodka sauce instead of pizza sauce along with ricotta cheese.

I didn’t hear anything else he said because I had lapsed into a fugue state dreaming of using vodka sauce on pizza.

Grandma Pizza: A History Lesson

Having just found out about drunken grandma pizza, I hied myself over to The Google to ask it about it, and I found quite a few references to it, including this article about grandma pizza from Bon Appetit from October of 2014, What’s a Grandma Pie? And Where Can You Find One?

From that article, I learned that the grandma pizza recipe most likely got its start on Long Island and that it’s very difficult to find it outside the region. How, then, did our local Italian place end up serving it? Easy.

La Piazza is owned by a New York Italian family. Next time I go back, I’ll ask them if they’re also from Long Island. I bet the answer will be yes.

c;lose up view of a baked pizza with cheese and vodka sauce — *The beautiful topography of a drunken grandma pizza*

I also found this great article by Food Dude Extraordinaire David Rosengarten from August of 2013 that traces the history of grandma pizza and its movement from Long Island and out into The City over the last fifteen or so years: Za-Za-Zoom: The “Grandma Pizza” Forges Ahead in New York.

Here’s a quote from the article that made me well up:

“Yeah, we make Grandma Pizza,” he told me. “But not all the time. Sometimes the spirit of my dad walks in, and we make it.” –Stephen Vanacore, owner of Mimi’s on 84th St.

baked grandma pizza recipe made with vodka sauce and topped with cheese and pepperoncini on a baking sheet

What Makes a Grandma Pie a Grandma Pie?

The basic rules seem to be:

thinner than a Sicilian pizza but made in a pan liberally spread with olive oil
not a ton of toppings
usually a fresh, uncooked or quickly cooked sauce

My version of vodka sauce pizza “Grandma Pie” hits two of those three criteria since the sauce is cooked for a pretty long time. Still, the overall impression is lighter since the crust is thin but crispy on the bottom (thanks to the oil) and still a little chewy on the top and it doesn’t have a ton of toppings.

Pizza a Taglio

When I posted a photo of the pizza I made on instagram, my friend Viviane from Chocolate Chilli Mango commented that I had made “pizza a taglio,” or pizza by the slice, the kind that one might purchase as a street food snack while strolling along the streets of Italy.

She said that Grandma pizza, or “Nonna’s Pizza” must be an American thing, because as an Italian, she had never heard of it.

It could be that Italian grandmothers who came to the US, and specifically to New York, pioneered this uniquely Italian American hybrid pie, Sicilian but with a faster rise. Maybe we’ll never know, and that’s fine, because wherever it came from, this style of pie is delicious.

The crust has a whole different feel to it than pizza baked on a hot stone because the bottom of the crust essentially fries in the olive oil. Instead of getting some char on it like a stone-baked pizza, the grandma pie’s crust is a gorgeous, crisp golden brown.

2 rectangular slices of pizza, one upside down to show the golden brown bottom crust — *You can tell that I should have done a bit better job at popping the bubbles when the crust rose up off the pan. Still, most of the crust is the gorgeous, golden brown I was looking for.*

Is Grandma Pizza the Same as School Pizza?

What’s the connection between vodka sauce grandma pie–or any grandma pie, really–and school pizza?

There may be no real connection.

The only similarities might be that they are both baked in sheet pans and are cut into rectangles. But I like to think what happened was that a few Italian grandmothers got jobs in school cafeterias, and the rest is history.

Why not whip up a few rounds of dough and be ready to make vodka sauce grandma’s pizza (or homemade school pizza, for that matter) whenever you want?

The great thing is that you can use your favorite pizza dough recipe. Just make sure that once you stretch and top the dough that you only let it rise for maybe fifteen minutes, or maybe not at all before baking.

Make Drunken Grandma Pizza

I think you will really appreciate the deliciousness of this Grandma pizza recipe. Especially when made with vodka sauce, because who doesn’t like the name “drunken Grandma pizza?!”

Use whatever toppings you like, or make yours exactly the way I made mine. Just make one, and enjoy!

close up of a slice of pizza with a bite taken out of it

I really hope you love this vodka sauce pizza, you guys! If you make it, please share a photo with me, either in the PCO Facebook Group or on instagram by tagging @onlinepastrychef and using hashtag #pcorecipe. Thanks, and enjoy!

NOTE: The book, (affiliate link) Perfect Pan Pizzas, just came out. While this recipe is not from the book, I can highly recommend Peter Reinhart as an expert in all things bread, so do pick up a copy if you love pan pizza!