• The owner of Sauce’d Pizza and BYOB credits his dad for inventing Texas-style pizza, which is “like putting a crispy garlic breadstick at the top of a slice.”
• Sauce’d now has two locations in the Dallas area and is opening a third store in Fort Worth.

Various pizzerias and small chains claim to have invented their own regional pizza styles. Not all of them are truly unique. But Sauce’d Pizza and BYOB in Grapevine, Texas, just might be onto something with its so-called Texas-style pizza. And more Texans will get to try the unique crust for themselves as Sauce’d gets ready to open a new location in Fort Worth.

In media interviews, Conner Gildenblatt, Sauce’d Pizza’s chef/owner, has said he didn’t invent the style himself. The credit goes to his father.

According to the Dallas Observer, Gildenblatt took his first pizza-making class via YouTube University in January 2019. Before long, he was hosting pizza parties for his friends and testing out his recipes.

At first, he was more interested in the New York style until his father joined him in the kitchen one day and showed off a crust technique he’d been developing for 40 years.

After the dough was placed in the pan, his father stretched the edges out further and spread marinara in the middle. He then folded the stretched dough edge back over itself and brushed it with garlic butter. “We put it in the oven, [and] we took it out,” Gildenblatt told Community Impact. “I was like, ‘That’s the business. That crust is delicious.’”

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“It’s like putting a crispy garlic breadstick at the top of a slice of pizza,” Gildenblatt added in the Dallas Observer interview.

Gildenblatt opened the first Sauce’d location in Grapevine in 2019 and added another store in Dallas in 2021. The newest location will open in an old historic home in Fort Worth’s South Main Village.

The new restaurant will also serve burgers, beer and wine, along with a New York-style thin crust as well as Texas-style pies, the Star-Telegram reports.

Specialty pies on the Sauce’d menu come in 12” and 16” sizes. They include the Bee Sting, featuring mozzarella, hot soppressata, fresh jalapenos and a Mike’s Hot Honey drizzle; Smokey the Pie, topped with fresh mozz, crumbled Italian sausage, roasted red peppers and onions, plus a smokey BBQ sauce; and the 8 Finger Cheese, a classic cheese pie topped with fried mozzarella sticks and ranch dressing.