By Rick Hynum
Is pepperoni pizza boring? Perish the thought. For many, it’s the perfect pie. But Christy Alia of @RealCleverFood on Instagram has found a way to improve on perfection: Pincho-style pizza.
Alia recently invented the Pincho style after a chat with @PizzaRosha, a fellow Instagram pizzaiola in Germany. “When I mentioned making a pepperoni pizza, she jokingly called pepperoni pizza boring,” Alia said. “That inspired me to prove her wrong. Given her incredibly creative and unique approach to pizza on her account, I couldn’t resist the challenge.”
“I decided to experiment with incorporating pepperoni into the crust while keeping it crispy, rather than opting for a stuffed or star-shaped crust, which won’t allow it to crisp up properly,” Alia added. “Thus, the Pincho-style pizza was born!”
Related Podcast: How Christy Alia made Women’s Pizza Month a viral sensation
It’s a gorgeous work of culinary art, blossoming with crunchy florets of crust all around the edges. For added savory goodness, Alia tucks a half-slice of pepperoni into each “flower,” ensuring that no one will want to leave the crust edges on their plate.
“It’s indeed a playful twist on the classic pepperoni pizza,” Alia said. “I’ve already played with it with bacon and made a mini version and a pizza sandwich version that will be coming out in the next week or so. I’m even hosting an Ooni gift card giveaway for those who try out the style before May 1.”
So what about the style’s name? That was decided in a poll of Alia’s 42,000-plus followers on Instagram. Pincho, the winning suggestion, came from @planetfriendlyfirewood. It’s a fitting moniker since the dough’s edges are slitted, then twisted and pinched around the pepperoni slices before the bake. “It was a close call between Pincho and Cobble Crust, suggested by another Brit, @dough_and_behold,” Alia said. (That Brit is better known to PMQ readers as Richard Payne, a London pop-up pizza maker featured here.)
Alia debuted the Pincho-style pizza in an Instagram post on April Fool’s Day. That post garnered 657 likes, but many of Alia’s followers didn’t see it as a joke—the pie was just too eye-catching and tasty-looking. A later Instagram Reel featuring the pizza drew more than 19,000 views, 326 likes, 94 comments and 11 shares.
On April 10, Alia followed up with a step-by-step video tutorial for making the pizza, with her sourdough recipe included in the text of the post.
Pincho-style pizza isn’t Alia’s only innovation. She also founded Women’s Pizza Month in 2021, sparking a fast-growing movement celebrating female pizza makers around the world every March. This year, she teamed up with Stanislaus Foods and Corto Olive on a Women’s Pizza Month initiative that will award Pizza University scholarships to five aspiring pizzaiolas.
