Oh I recently saw that episode from Max Miller on Youtube. It was honestly kind of heartwarming to see him almost tear up a little at the taste of it. Much like smell, I guess taste is closely connected to memory in the brain.
In England we also had square cafeteria pizza when I was little, before the Jamie Oliver 'Improve school food' campaign. This was back in the late 90s/early 2000s. They weren't like this though, they were deep pan, with really doughy, almost bread-like bases. I'll have to see if I can find a recipe for that.
sounds similar to how mine ended up coming out, lol. I didn't let the dough rest long enough, so yeah...it was kind of a pain to spread evenly, and it was very bready (just the way i like my pizza).
this is american style pizza though, not italian, just to warn you.
I watched it about a week ago. tried the recipe like i said. even though I messed it up a little bit (inconsistent thickness in the crust, failed to burn the cheese), it still came out pretty good.
lotta prep work, though it's definitely worth it if you care to try.
Part of the package of "public school is a free babysitting service and a community uplifting experience" meant that the lunches not only had to be available to everyone, but had to be filled with so much nutrition that it could cover for kids who had 0 other food sources. Which meant a lot of "freshly" cooked food and a fullish team of employees doing it daily, even if half of it was immediately thrown away.
There are a laundry list of ways that failed horribly and were filled with nonsensical decisions, but that was the "intent" so we had decent food at certain points of history.
I am an Aussie, but I did go to school for a while in Arizona. The hot lunches were always a highlight of my day.
They did serve pizza like this once a week, and it was pretty good.
Not ... actual pizza. I was taught to make pizza in the Sicilian style by an Italian who was a (locally) famous pizza chef. This is not that. It isn't even New York style pizza.
I fucking hated those pizzas and it feels like a psyop from everyone who keeps talking like they were this amazing thing. I was gone before Obama ruined school lunches so I can see them being better relatively but in all the schools I went to they were considered the lazy garbage we were being fed to avoid things like fried chicken, salisbury steak (which I also hate but a lot loved), and just regular ass delivery pizza from the local place.
Power to you though if you do like it and it holds up. Everyone has their tastes and deserves to try and cater to them.
no worries. we all like what we like. Maybe it's because I went to a rural school as a kid, but the lunches ladies actually seemed to understand the fine art of following directions, lol.
or maybe it was pure slop, and I just convinced myself it was good, because the sauce tasted okay, who knows?
I mean, I went to a repurposed plantation home in the far backwoods of a Louisiana swamp, so it was definitely rural here too. But maybe it was so backwoods they didn't even bother to follow the "standards" from the fed's recipe too and just made it how they wanted.
Though I do think yeah, we convinced ourselves a lot of slop was good because pizza woo. I thought Chortles and milk were as good as crack back then, and those things are nasty.
I sub to his YouTube channel and had to make it pretty close to immediately when I saw it.
Pretty nostalgic, but I agree with your fiance that it tasted better than I remember it tasting when I was a kid. Probably because they don't sell Grade D food ingredients to the general public.
...and fresh is a bit of a stretch, it's all dried or canned, lmao, other than the cheese, which doesn't really need to be, it's cheese for crying out loud, lmao.
lmao, other than the cheese, which doesn't really need to be, it's cheese for crying out loud, lmao.
You uncouth peasant!
America needs to be liberated from it's addiction to not-cheese. You think Cheese is a sauce that can be poured out from a can! That is a government psy-op!
lol. in the eghties and nineties, (as well as maybe the 2000s? dunno) schools in the U.S. had a bunch of recipes they made. one of them was a cheese pizza that was massed produced on giant cookie sheets and then cut into individual servings.
I can't speak for anyone else, but it was one of my personal favorites. Maybe not as good as homemade or mom n pop pizza, but good in its own right, and one of the things I looked forward to about school every year.
I've often joked about how it was probably pure cancer, but looking at the ingredients, other than the sugar and carbs in the crust, it's really not that bad.
The schools I went to didnt have square pizza ( I dont think. ) I stopped eating lunch in highschool.
But my fuck they had a square breakfast pizza which was like a white gravy on a biscuit like type dough, with scrambled eggs and country sausage on it.
Holy fuck I really want some of that again.
Its sad though, you cant buy country sausage here in nova scotia. You have to make your own. Canadians hate spices, that much.
Another thing I fondly remember was peanut butter sandwiches and chili, and we all would dip our peanut butter sandwiches into the chili lmao.
Apparently this is only something a small part of kentucky, small part of indiana, and a small part of ohio does LMAO. They used to take natural peanut butter and mix it with a little bit of sugar, so good.
This was like 30 years ago, and canada STILL doesnt have lunches for its kids, LMAO.
regarding the sausage, see if you can order some "old folks sausage," online. it's a brand of pork sausage that's really good (better than jimmy dean certainly. why does that stuff always have a weird aftertaste?).
If you order it in bulk and freeze it, you'd have it whenever you wanted.
the peanut butter thing sounds weird, but not the weirdest i've ever heard... I could tell you about the time my grandfather put mustard on ice cream, or the time my stepdad had mash potatoes and chocolate pudding by mistake...
Lots of folks like cold pizza, especially for breakfast. When ESPN2 launched their morning show was called "Cold Pizza." So you aren't out of the zeitgeist
certain pizzas especially are better cold than warm.
canadian bacon/ham and pineapple being the most obvious example that comes to mind. the pineapple is meh when it's hot, but when you eat it cold, it elevates it to the next level.
...actually, I just remembered; i spent six months working for pizza slut, and one of the things I learned is that with the amount of oil they used, if you ever ate a pan pizza, the crust was basically fried.
so I guess I've had fried pizza after all, lmao.
seriously, you could see the oil bubbling when the pan came out of the oven. it was marvelous.
The school pizza that is nostalgic for me doesn't look like this. It was triangle in shape and had a stuffed crust. Would give a lot to be able to have a slice for the first time in 20 years. I can still remember the taste exactly.
We make "school lunch pizza" all the time at my house.
That's just how you make pizza in a baking tray. Sometimes we use premade dough from the store for it, or sometimes I whip one up with the kitchenaid.
Either way it turns out quite well. It's kind of a bready pizza, since you can't make it thin and crispy with this method, but I like it.
3 tips I have:
Try putting extra sauce on the pizza and then baking it for a few minutes before putting the cheese on. This drys out the sauce a little and helps keep the pizza from being soggy.
Sometimes it's better to turn the over down and cook it for longer (like 325-350f). This makes the pizza tougher, which makes it hold together better while you're eating it.
The part where you spread the dough out onto the baking sheet can be intimidating, but just remember you can totally fuck it up and it will still look perfect after it's baked. Just spread it out as even as you can and don't worry if it's getting mangled.
looking back, I think I actually cooked the sauce a bit longer than necessary by mistake, which had roughly the same effect (normally when I make pizza, i just straight up use tomato paste and sprinkle the seasonings over the top, which amounts to about the same effect as well, lol). also, I'm thinking next time I make it, I'm gonna either use lard in place of the veggie oil or just do what I normally do and use extra flour in place of the fat altogether.
the dough is 'supposed' to be pourable, ie: semi-liquid, but for some reason it didn't come out that way for me, so yeah I had a bit of trouble. hmm...maybe i could try the jim lahey method... that stuff is pretty liquidity...
that being said, use a bread dough if you're using premade dough (and bake at the temp for the bread either way). those premade "pizza doughs" are just...wrong... pizza dough should be soft and pliable, not preformed and solid...
love to talk about cooking btw, especially baking.
the recipe has an optional "pourable" dough in the USDA cook book. the guy who made this smaller volume recipe used that. it flows okay-ish? not great, but well enough, i suppose. gotta let it rest a bit on the pan before you try to spread it out, though, else it's an iron bitch to stretch without tearing.
a decent french or italian bread recipe works well for a crust, too.
tomato paste
Mom used to work for a convenience store chain in the midwest, called casey's general store (made the best pizza i ever had from a franchise). I think that's where she got the idea, though I couldn't swear by it. it's a little tricky to spread, but no worse than the sauce here. gives you a nice, thin layer of tomato. try to resist to urge to eat the tomato paste if you can help it. surprisingly sweet with no sugar added to it, and just a little bit tart (especially since every brand seems to want to add citric acid these days for some reason...)
maybe, but it alters the flavor in a way that has to be compensated for in some recipes, which is a nuisance in certain recipes. Granted, there are far worse things they could use as preservatives, but it can still be a nuisance when you're spaghetti sauce comes out tangy, lol.
Oh I recently saw that episode from Max Miller on Youtube. It was honestly kind of heartwarming to see him almost tear up a little at the taste of it. Much like smell, I guess taste is closely connected to memory in the brain.
In England we also had square cafeteria pizza when I was little, before the Jamie Oliver 'Improve school food' campaign. This was back in the late 90s/early 2000s. They weren't like this though, they were deep pan, with really doughy, almost bread-like bases. I'll have to see if I can find a recipe for that.
sounds similar to how mine ended up coming out, lol. I didn't let the dough rest long enough, so yeah...it was kind of a pain to spread evenly, and it was very bready (just the way i like my pizza).
this is american style pizza though, not italian, just to warn you.
To be fair.. this square pizza (which i hated in school) is still miles ahead of the michelle obama era of school foods lol.
hey, free speech means you're allowed to be wrong. 😜
jokes aside, to each their own.😁
I do love waffle sticks and tater tots
dunno if those recipes are in here, but here you go.
keep in mind these recipes were designed for feeding hundreds of kids, so you may have to pair things down a bit, lmao.
I can already taste this!
That school pizza video has been showing up in my Youtube sidebar for at least a month now.
I watched it about a week ago. tried the recipe like i said. even though I messed it up a little bit (inconsistent thickness in the crust, failed to burn the cheese), it still came out pretty good.
lotta prep work, though it's definitely worth it if you care to try.
As a non-burger, the concept of school feeding you a warm lunch as a kid is a totally foreign concept.
There was paid Pizza Day from a local joint on Fridays sometimes though.
I recall being annoyed that they always distributed the slices alphabetically meaning the latter half of the alphabet got the small & cold leftovers.
funny enough, it was part of a broader effort to make school food "healthier," lol.
try it if you're curious. it's pretty good. Not the greatest in the world, but definitely worth a baking sheet's worth (about nine pieces).
Part of the package of "public school is a free babysitting service and a community uplifting experience" meant that the lunches not only had to be available to everyone, but had to be filled with so much nutrition that it could cover for kids who had 0 other food sources. Which meant a lot of "freshly" cooked food and a fullish team of employees doing it daily, even if half of it was immediately thrown away.
There are a laundry list of ways that failed horribly and were filled with nonsensical decisions, but that was the "intent" so we had decent food at certain points of history.
I am an Aussie, but I did go to school for a while in Arizona. The hot lunches were always a highlight of my day.
They did serve pizza like this once a week, and it was pretty good.
Not ... actual pizza. I was taught to make pizza in the Sicilian style by an Italian who was a (locally) famous pizza chef. This is not that. It isn't even New York style pizza.
But it is pretty good for what it is.
I fucking hated those pizzas and it feels like a psyop from everyone who keeps talking like they were this amazing thing. I was gone before Obama ruined school lunches so I can see them being better relatively but in all the schools I went to they were considered the lazy garbage we were being fed to avoid things like fried chicken, salisbury steak (which I also hate but a lot loved), and just regular ass delivery pizza from the local place.
Power to you though if you do like it and it holds up. Everyone has their tastes and deserves to try and cater to them.
no worries. we all like what we like. Maybe it's because I went to a rural school as a kid, but the lunches ladies actually seemed to understand the fine art of following directions, lol.
or maybe it was pure slop, and I just convinced myself it was good, because the sauce tasted okay, who knows?
I mean, I went to a repurposed plantation home in the far backwoods of a Louisiana swamp, so it was definitely rural here too. But maybe it was so backwoods they didn't even bother to follow the "standards" from the fed's recipe too and just made it how they wanted.
Though I do think yeah, we convinced ourselves a lot of slop was good because pizza woo. I thought Chortles and milk were as good as crack back then, and those things are nasty.
I think they used something else in the sauce seasoning wise, though I can't quite identify it from memory.
could have just been the fact the cheese was inevitably blackened almost to a crisp too, lol.
burnt cheese ftw!
I'm with you there. I almost puked just seeing that image.
I sub to his YouTube channel and had to make it pretty close to immediately when I saw it. Pretty nostalgic, but I agree with your fiance that it tasted better than I remember it tasting when I was a kid. Probably because they don't sell Grade D food ingredients to the general public.
lol, if you're referencing what I think you are, I'm pretty sure that's an urban myth, lol.
We called it cardboard pizza in elementary
lol
I always found Ellios to taste similar to school pizza.
Okay, first of all, this food is made with fresh ingredients and actual cheese.
This is NOT School Lunch pizza.
In the same way that you can't make School Lunch milk
lol.
Based on a USDA recipe, guy just paired it down for smaller serving sizes: https://archive.org/details/CAT92970475
...and fresh is a bit of a stretch, it's all dried or canned, lmao, other than the cheese, which doesn't really need to be, it's cheese for crying out loud, lmao.
You uncouth peasant!
America needs to be liberated from it's addiction to not-cheese. You think Cheese is a sauce that can be poured out from a can! That is a government psy-op!
exactly the opposite, friend, lmao.
I'm saying cheese stays good long enough of its own that there's no need to can or dry it. (in most cases. Rico's nacho cheese is fucking fantastic)
The term you are looking for is: Processed Cheese-Like Food.
Not even kidding.
I know you're not, it's on the package.
I must be out of the loop but what's this all about?
lol. in the eghties and nineties, (as well as maybe the 2000s? dunno) schools in the U.S. had a bunch of recipes they made. one of them was a cheese pizza that was massed produced on giant cookie sheets and then cut into individual servings.
I can't speak for anyone else, but it was one of my personal favorites. Maybe not as good as homemade or mom n pop pizza, but good in its own right, and one of the things I looked forward to about school every year.
I've often joked about how it was probably pure cancer, but looking at the ingredients, other than the sugar and carbs in the crust, it's really not that bad.
The schools I went to didnt have square pizza ( I dont think. ) I stopped eating lunch in highschool.
But my fuck they had a square breakfast pizza which was like a white gravy on a biscuit like type dough, with scrambled eggs and country sausage on it.
Holy fuck I really want some of that again.
Its sad though, you cant buy country sausage here in nova scotia. You have to make your own. Canadians hate spices, that much.
Another thing I fondly remember was peanut butter sandwiches and chili, and we all would dip our peanut butter sandwiches into the chili lmao.
Apparently this is only something a small part of kentucky, small part of indiana, and a small part of ohio does LMAO. They used to take natural peanut butter and mix it with a little bit of sugar, so good.
This was like 30 years ago, and canada STILL doesnt have lunches for its kids, LMAO.
my middle school did square pizzas, but the high school did round ones. same district.
update: found their website. got the name slightly wrong, it's "old folks country sausage"
good stuff if you've never had it.
sorry to hear that friend.
regarding the sausage, see if you can order some "old folks sausage," online. it's a brand of pork sausage that's really good (better than jimmy dean certainly. why does that stuff always have a weird aftertaste?).
If you order it in bulk and freeze it, you'd have it whenever you wanted.
the peanut butter thing sounds weird, but not the weirdest i've ever heard... I could tell you about the time my grandfather put mustard on ice cream, or the time my stepdad had mash potatoes and chocolate pudding by mistake...
Cool. You ever fried pizza?
Gives it a nice kick.
dunno, usually pizza doesn't last long enough for me to think of something like that. 😂 I'm one of those weirdos who enjoys it cold, so... [shrug]
might be worth trying sometime, though
Lots of folks like cold pizza, especially for breakfast. When ESPN2 launched their morning show was called "Cold Pizza." So you aren't out of the zeitgeist
Cold pizza is one of my secret guilty pleasures. I don't know what it is exactly but cold pizza tastes different enough to be its own great thing.
certain pizzas especially are better cold than warm.
canadian bacon/ham and pineapple being the most obvious example that comes to mind. the pineapple is meh when it's hot, but when you eat it cold, it elevates it to the next level.
lol, don't mind me, I'm self-deprecating to a fault.
I'll never mind you, not even if you were my boss
Like deep fry or air fryed?
Both work. As does a frying pan.
...actually, I just remembered; i spent six months working for pizza slut, and one of the things I learned is that with the amount of oil they used, if you ever ate a pan pizza, the crust was basically fried.
so I guess I've had fried pizza after all, lmao.
seriously, you could see the oil bubbling when the pan came out of the oven. it was marvelous.
Our cafeteria had these cheap-ish round pizzas. They were pretty good.
There were never enough for all costumers. You had to run directly from class to the cafeteria and hope.
Only tried 2 or 3 times per month because it was way more expensive than home-made lunch.
sound like the personal pan pizzas pizza slut still makes.
pretty tasty for what they are.
The school pizza that is nostalgic for me doesn't look like this. It was triangle in shape and had a stuffed crust. Would give a lot to be able to have a slice for the first time in 20 years. I can still remember the taste exactly.
maybe start here and work backwards?
I can tell you stuffed crust isn't that difficult... it's literally just string cheese(mozerella) with the crust folded over it if that helps.
That takes me back. Used to have them on the days they had them on the menu.
good stuff.
honestly, it's not even just about nostalgia (that was a rough period in my life, so yeah), i legitimately enjoyed the taste.
We make "school lunch pizza" all the time at my house.
That's just how you make pizza in a baking tray. Sometimes we use premade dough from the store for it, or sometimes I whip one up with the kitchenaid.
Either way it turns out quite well. It's kind of a bready pizza, since you can't make it thin and crispy with this method, but I like it.
3 tips I have:
Try putting extra sauce on the pizza and then baking it for a few minutes before putting the cheese on. This drys out the sauce a little and helps keep the pizza from being soggy.
Sometimes it's better to turn the over down and cook it for longer (like 325-350f). This makes the pizza tougher, which makes it hold together better while you're eating it.
The part where you spread the dough out onto the baking sheet can be intimidating, but just remember you can totally fuck it up and it will still look perfect after it's baked. Just spread it out as even as you can and don't worry if it's getting mangled.
looking back, I think I actually cooked the sauce a bit longer than necessary by mistake, which had roughly the same effect (normally when I make pizza, i just straight up use tomato paste and sprinkle the seasonings over the top, which amounts to about the same effect as well, lol). also, I'm thinking next time I make it, I'm gonna either use lard in place of the veggie oil or just do what I normally do and use extra flour in place of the fat altogether.
the dough is 'supposed' to be pourable, ie: semi-liquid, but for some reason it didn't come out that way for me, so yeah I had a bit of trouble. hmm...maybe i could try the jim lahey method... that stuff is pretty liquidity...
that being said, use a bread dough if you're using premade dough (and bake at the temp for the bread either way). those premade "pizza doughs" are just...wrong... pizza dough should be soft and pliable, not preformed and solid...
love to talk about cooking btw, especially baking.
I meant the premade dough that comes as a ball. Not the pre cook bread disk ones. I hate those too.
Pourable dough? I've never heard of that. I always just make regular dough that you have to swuish out into a rectangle. Interesting.
I like idea of using tomato paste as sauce, since its already really dry and strong. I add spices to mine too! I'm going to try that next time.
the recipe has an optional "pourable" dough in the USDA cook book. the guy who made this smaller volume recipe used that. it flows okay-ish? not great, but well enough, i suppose. gotta let it rest a bit on the pan before you try to spread it out, though, else it's an iron bitch to stretch without tearing.
a decent french or italian bread recipe works well for a crust, too.
Mom used to work for a convenience store chain in the midwest, called casey's general store (made the best pizza i ever had from a franchise). I think that's where she got the idea, though I couldn't swear by it. it's a little tricky to spread, but no worse than the sauce here. gives you a nice, thin layer of tomato. try to resist to urge to eat the tomato paste if you can help it. surprisingly sweet with no sugar added to it, and just a little bit tart (especially since every brand seems to want to add citric acid these days for some reason...)
The citric acid makes it last longer AFAIK.
maybe, but it alters the flavor in a way that has to be compensated for in some recipes, which is a nuisance in certain recipes. Granted, there are far worse things they could use as preservatives, but it can still be a nuisance when you're spaghetti sauce comes out tangy, lol.