How Many Slices Were In The World's Largest Pizza?
When what we know as the modern pizza was invented in Italy several hundred years ago, the Neapolitans who first spread sauce and melted cheese atop flatbread couldn't have anticipated how the world — let alone a new nation an ocean away — would receive and recreate the food. By the 1900s, the first American pizzerias were popping up from coast to coast across the country. Cities from Detroit to Chicago have since put their own twists on the savory pie, serving it in square pans or deep dishes. But some pizza fanatics prefer to wow the world with size instead of style. After all, the only thing better than an extra-large pizza is the largest pizza on Earth.
Although any pizza spot across the U.S. can supply a pie fit to feed a family, only one chain has ever created one big enough for thousands of them. On January 19, 2023, YouTuber Eric "Airrack" Decker partnered with Pizza Hut to make the world's largest pizza in Los Angeles, California. Pictures don't quite do the enormous pie justice, though. Requiring an incomprehensible amount of ingredients, it spanned 13,990 square feet and had to be prepared and put together piece by piece: 68,000 slices in total (via CNN). Per a press release, the pizza consisted of 13,653 pounds of dough, 4,948 pounds of sauce, over 8,800 pounds of cheese, and approximately 630,496 pieces of pepperoni. Wondering why anyone would bother baking a record-breaking pizza? Besides bragging rights, of course, its purpose was to promote the specific pizza its recipe was based on.
The inspiration behind the world's biggest pizza
It isn't unusual for content creators to collaborate with brands, or for either party to pursue some sort of marvelous feat on their own. After all, Pizza Hut brought a pie to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2016, setting the record for the highest altitude pizza delivery on land at 19,341 feet. However, it isn't everyday that a YouTuber and a chain restaurant team up to break a Guinness world record (although that does sound like the makings of a good joke).
Both Airrack and Pizza Hut set out to create the world's largest pizza to celebrate two milestones: Airrack's YouTube channel reaching 10 million subscribers and the return of Pizza Hut's Big New Yorker. The specialty item first appeared on the chain's menus in 1999, but was discontinued in 2004 much to the dismay of its fans. What sets the 16-inch New York-style pizza apart from your average pie — perhaps with the exception of rival chain Domino's now-rebranded Brooklyn-style pizza — are its extra-large floppy pieces. Their larger size allows each slice to be folded for eating conveniently and, in true New Yorker fashion, on the go.
Pizza Hut took the opportunity to use the Big New Yorker's recipe to make the special record-breaking pie. Sure, the one you can get delivered to your house only has six slices, not 68,000, but they both feature the same sweet marinara and creamy mozzarella cheese.
The previous world's largest pizza
Airrack and Pizza Hut weren't the first ones to take on the world's largest pizza. True to the food's history, Italians were champions of the cheesy pie over a decade before Americans. In December 2012, a team of chefs representing Nazionale Italiana Pizzaioli, also known as NIPfood, in Rome, Italy, claimed the Guinness world record. Their pizza had a total surface area of approximately 13,580 square feet — only about 400 square feet shy of the one that took its throne.
The previous record-holding pizza even had a name: Ottavia. Meaning "eighth son," it paid "homage to the first Roman emperor Octavian Augustus, who represented an epoch-making change in the history of Rome and brought the Empire into a period of economic and cultural stability" (via Guinness World Records). Although Ottavia's background may be more noble than the Big New Yorker's celebrated return, cultural lore fueled the fires for both big pizza projects.
Notably, Ottavia was also completely gluten-free. This technically qualifies it as the world's largest gluten-free pizza — a feat that has yet to be bested — meaning that the chefs who prepared it secured two titles with a single pie. When Airrack and Pizza Hut assembled 68,000 slices worth of pizza, the Big New Yorker recipe stretched its gluten-rich dough to break the generic size record, not the gluten-free one. But who knows, maybe the chain will pursue yet another momentous pizza challenge in the future, living up to its slogan: "No one out-pizzas the hut."