Food Fridays: Converting Pizza Squares and Triangles

What’s the best way to cut up a pizza? Do you like radial slices that form triangles, or grid slices that form squares?

Whatever way you choose, you can finally convert between the two methods using a simple approximation:

1 triangle slice = about 2 square slices

The rule is derived from the following picture, where you can see how 1/2 pizza equals either 4 triangle slices or 8 square slices (a 1:2 ratio):

pizza_cut_two_ways.png

Personally, I like squares over triangles. It started because some of the better pizza places did it this way, so I considered it a superior technique. Square slices also afford “crust-choice” as some pieces are heavy on crust and others have no crust at all.



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  • http://www.mawsoft.com/blog RohoMech

    While I agree with the square pieces giving people crust / non-crust prefs (its always irritating to see people throw away 2-3 pieces of crust!), the center pieces usually fall apart, making them nearly impossible to eat.

    Also, I’ve yet to see a Chicago-style pizza cut up this way…so phooey on you and your “better” pizza places (though, NY-style pizza is *never* cut in squares, so perhaps that’s true)

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com/blog Presh Talwalkar

    @RohoMech: True, rectangle slices won’t work for Chicago-style pizza.

  • Joe P

    I like squares better because Little Italian does it that way. And it doesn’t matter anyway for chicago style because most people I know eat it with a fork and knife.

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com/blog Presh Talwalkar

    @Joe P: Giordano’s, Gino’s East, and Nancy’s all do squares too.

  • Erik

    Squares for Chicago-style deep dish? I think after i see that, I will finally be able to say, “Now I’ve seen everything.” Otherwise, I agree with Joe on the utensil treatment.

    Going back to the original discussion, you should talk about how going from a medium to a large or larger will affect the amount consumed per radial slice.

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com/blog Presh Talwalkar

    @Erik: Good suggestion on the size increase.

    The total area is (radius)^2 * pi, so a one-eight slice is (radius)^2 * pi / 8.

    Pizza sizes usually refer to the diameter, so we divide by two to get the radius.

    Here are some areas of radial slices:

    Small (10″): 3.125 pi
    Medium (12″): 4.5 pi
    Large (14″): 6.125 pi
    X-Large (16″): 8 pi

    There are two effects of increasing the pizza size, both probably not good for your health.

    First, the slice size increases proportionally to the square of the radius, so the slice size increases more and more as the pizza gets larger.

    Second, the bigger slices have proportionally more cheese than crust.

    All right, I’m done with pizza talk for now. I’m getting hungry…

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