Jason Laska stopped at a Little Caesars to grab a pre-made "Hot-N-Ready" pizza for his family. When he got home, he and his wife discovered a (reverse) swastika made from pepperoni on the pie.

Laska told CNN he tried to call the store but the number was constantly busy so he posted to social media.

According to Little Caesar Enterprises spokesperson Jill Proctor, the two ignorant dumbfucks who made the pizza admitted to it and were fired.

"This is an example of what needs to change in our world," Laska said. "And we hope that people start to realize that and use their time to make those changes and not blast us for trying to do it." Read the rest

CEC Entertainment, owners of Chuck E. Cheese and Peter Piper Pizza, has filed for bankruptcy. The company reported $29 million in losses for 2019. From Reuters:

Chuck E. Cheese’s bid to boost sales through delivery apps under the name “Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings” earlier this year only created more problems, as many customers thought they were ordering from a local business.

As of Wednesday, 266 Chuck E. Cheese and Peter Piper Pizza restaurant and arcade venues were re-opened. The company expects to keep them open throughout Chapter 11 proceedings.

image: Dan Harkless (CC BY-SA 4.0) Read the rest

This is not something iguana see when I'm at a pizza restaurant. Read the rest

Pizza Rat has got nothing on this Philadelphia groundhog who casually walked up to a glass door and casually munched on a slice, apparently for more than an hour, as two dogs looked on with delight.

(6ABC) Read the rest

A friend just asked for help with sourdough pizza crust. Here are a few prior posts on sourdough pizza:

Sourdough pizza crust doesn't take much work

This post is a super simple thin crust pizza.

Honey whole wheat sourdough pizza dough

This one makes a deep dish whole wheat. I would now add a bit more honey than the post recommends.

My old Lodge chicken roasting pan bakes sourdough loaves, pizza and fries chicken

Cast iron and pizza. If you don't have a pizza oven or a stone, this is THE WAY. Read the rest

Ad agency Ogilvy Hong Kong teamed up with Ikea and Pizza Hut to create a life-size table, the Säva, that looks just like the little plastic "tables" inside pizza boxes. (Those little tables are officially called "pizza savers.") From Hypebeast:

Each table arrives in a humorous package that resembles a pizza box and, like other products, comes with details on how to assemble the product. IKEA illustrates a step-by-step process on unpacking the different parts, assembling the legs, calling Pizza Hut, receiving the pizza and placing it on the perfectly-sized table.

Pi Day is coming up this Saturday. To celebrate, here's a cool little demo of 3.14 using four pizzas and one circumference of crust.

With Pi Day just around the corner, let’s remember what Pi is all about.

After washing your hands thoroughly, cut the crust off a pizza pie and lay it across four others. You’ll see that the crust spans a little more than 3 pies. That’s Pi ≈ 3.14.

But that’s not all! (Cont’d) pic.twitter.com/xTVbObrPzH

— Alex Kontorovich (@AlexKontorovich) March 6, 2020

Image: Twitter screengrab Read the rest

Amherst, New York's Just Pizza & Wing Co. is slapping dog adoption fliers on their pie boxes to help animals at the local SPCA find their forever homes. And if you adopt one of the dogs, you get a $50 gift certificate for the restaurant. From CNN:

The unique idea came after Mary Alloy, who owns the pizza franchise with three of her children, began volunteering with the Niagara Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). Alloy worked with Kimberly LaRussa, an SPCA event coordinator, to come up with ways to help more shelter animals find their forever homes.

"Kimberly texted me one night and was like, 'Hey, what would you think about putting pictures of the dogs on pizza boxes?' and I just couldn't wait," Alloy said. "We are all animal lovers here, so I got permission from the franchise to do it and immediately got to work..."

"We've had a tremendous amount of interest and support from the community and beyond since the story went viral on Friday," LaRussa told CNN. "Many people want to order a pizza just to get the shelter dog photo, other pizzerias have offered to put flyers on their pizza boxes, and so many people are tagging their friends and family."

"A New York pizza shop is putting photos of dogs on pizza boxes to help them find homes" (CNN)

Previously: Woman spots her dog, lost in Idaho, on a Florida brewery's "adoptable dogs" beer can Read the rest

? Yes, that's a 100-meter record-setting Margherita Pizza. A pizza with a purpose. Read the rest

The University of North Florida is the latest customer of the Pizza ATM, an automated vending machine. The machine costs around $60,000. From the Florida Times-Union:

Brook Adams, senior executive chef for UNF’s Dining Services, said they make the pizza dough and shred the cheese from scratch daily in the campus kitchen.

“It’s all fresh toppings. Everything is absolutely fresh. There is no frozen pizza or anything going into the machine, Adams said.

After assembling the uncooked pizzas, they are placed into boxes with a bar code identifying the toppings and loaded into refrigerated storage shelves in the back of the vending machine.

Students use a touch-screen to select the pizza they want, pay for it and the machine then grabs the pizza from the refrigerated storage area and puts it into one of the machine’s two infrared ovens, Adams said.

“It cooks in about 3 minutes 45 seconds and dispenses it out to the student,” said Adams, noting the pizzas cost about $8.50 to $9 each, depending on the toppings.

I've been a fan of Blindboy Boatclub since I first discovered "Horse Outside," his hit(?) song with the Rubberbandits (and later, by complete happenstance, ended up staying at the same hotel that's featured in the video). His podcast consistently delivers a random, rambling ménage à trois of weird knowledge, cultural connections, empathy, and utter hilarity, and his delightful short story collections take the traditions of Samuel Beckett and Flann O'Brien and thrust them erotically into the social media sphere.

Or, if you want a perfect microcosmic metaphor for his career, there's this Twitter thread, where Blindboy talks about his  misconceptions of pizza while growing up in Limerick, which goes from silly childhood observation to profoundly resonant insight about cross-cultural communications in a post-colonial edge. And Ninja Turtles.

I finally had a pizza, It was on one of my childhood birthdays, a small frozen one from dunnes, my ma refused to put the oven on for it due to the extravagance of putting an oven on for one item. So she fried it in a pan instead.

— Rubber Bandits (@Rubberbandits) January 1, 2020

Blindboy was not alone in this strange experience, as the replies swiftly reveal:

I have a memory of my late grandfather taking us to get pizza at the Parkway Dunnes in Limerick in the early 90s. You assembled the toppings yourself, and he insisted on piling on a mound of ham cheese &sweetcorn to make a proper feed of it.

— Eoin Daly (@eoinmauricedaly) January 1, 2020

Because of TMNT I thought marshmallow and pepperoni was a proper pizza topping.

Many pizza places offer special "deals" if you order two medium pies. You might think that two mediums deliver more cheesy goodness than one large pie, but usually you'd be mistaken. From Primer, a mathematical comparison of two 12" pizzas and one 18" pizza:

Area of two 12” pizzas:

12/2 = 6 6×6=36 36xπ = 113.1 in² x 2 = 226.2 in²

Area of one 18” pizza:

18/2=9 9×9=81 81xπ = 254.5 in²

And as we know, more pizza is always better.

image: igorovsyannykov (CC0)

(via Cliff Pickover) Read the rest

Last night I made honey whole wheat sourdough pizza crust. It was quite good.

As a kid, there was a pizza place in my hometown that made a deep-dish pizza with a whole wheat crust. It was great, I tried and I couldn't replicate it. Then I substituted honey instead of sugar.

This simple crust is good.

Honey Whole Wheat Sourdough Pizza Dough

1 cup bread flour 1 cup whole wheat flour ½ cup sourdough starter 1 ½ tsp salt 3 tbs honey 1 ½ tbs olive oil ½ cup water

First: Mix ½ cup water, ½ cup starter, oil and the honey. Let sit while you measure out the dry goods and combine them all. Depending on your flour, and your starter, you may need to add a little flour to the mix to get a good consistency. Stop when it feels like the dough that you want to roll out.

Second: Leave it alone, probably covered, for 45-60 minutes. Refrigerate to store or use right away.

Bake at 475F or higher for 20 min, deep-dish. Probably the same for thin crust.

I have been using this dough for the crust of my deep-dish pizza, but you can easily roll it out for super-thin, Neapolitan stuff too.

Unless you do roll it super thin, I doubt this crust is going to get super cracker crisp, as it is sourdough and will retain more chew the longer you let it rise. Read the rest

A pizzeria that specializes in square pies shared a photo of a 9/11 tribute pie on 9/11. People lost their damn minds. Read the rest

I gave my mother my treasured 5-quart Lodge deep skillet and lid when I found a lovely antique to restore. I've been using it while visiting with them.

It was no easy thing when I gave my Mom my Lodge chicken pan. I had been using it for ages as my primary skillet and perfected fried chicken in it, as many of my colleagues here at Boing Boing will attest.

I have been instructed that his style skillet be called a chicken ROASTING pan and the lid's stalactite-like points are what makes it a 'self-basting' lid. Evidently 1 roaster size chicken (3-5lbs iirc) will fit in it, and with the lid on the bird will roast up nice and juicy.

I have never done this. I bought it to fry chicken. I learned it was awesome for frying eggs, bacon, pancake and sauteeing things. It became the most used item in my kitchen. Then I started baking in it like a Dutch Oven.

The Lodge ended its daily use, however, when I found a larger Wagner pan at the Goodwill and restored it. I started baking in my dutch oven. It is a bit easier to maneuver. When cast iron sits and isn't used, it needs to be used and this pan was truly special. I tried alternating between it and my Wagner, but the extra space and smoother finish of the Wagner kept it on my stove. It was a little easier to fry bacon and sear steaks and fish in the #9 vs the #8 pan. Read the rest

In 1994, Pizza Hut aired this TV commercial in the UK that was reportedly the first completely non-English advertisement on British television. The entire thing is in Klingon.

(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest