Why You Should Be Cutting Your Pizza With Scissors

Most of you who grew up eating lots of pizza probably remember the pizza cutter wheel, and of equal importance, having to roll that circular doohickey back and forth until the cardboard on the bottom was practically worn through. If you didn't, you had no assurance that some of pizza slice wouldn't cling on to the rest of the pie. And because using the wheel is so ingrained in people's pizza-loving psyches, it never occurs to most to use something like scissors, which are both infinitely easier to navigate through a pizza and waaaay more fun to use than a subpar pizza cutter.

Some styles of pizza — namely square-shaped, Roman-style pizzas – naturally lend themselves with this method of cutting. Since Roman-style pizza is rectangular, like a bolt of fabric, it's cut to the length of the user's preference, again, like a bolt of fabric. If you want a 3-inch long slice of pizza, no problem. And if you'd like a 10-inch slice of pizza, that's also no problem. You get the exact length of pizza that you want. You pay for the pizza by weight instead of by the slice. As the slice could get quite long, in theory, anyway, it is simpler to manage this task if you use shears instead of a cutting wheel.

It's also a tradition to cut Roman-style pizza that way, so if you go into an authentic Roman-style pizzeria, then expect to see plenty of pairs of scissors. In other words, when in Rome, cut your pizza like the Romans do. And while it's cool to stick with tradition, scissors work equally well with the traditional round pizza pie, too, so don't just use them when you have a square pizza to cut. Use them for any pie.

Ooey-gooey mozzarella cheese, fresh baby spinach from the garden, over-sized rounds of Canadian bacon; these are just three reasons why cutting pizza with shears is a good idea. More specifically, cutting through such unwieldy ingredients is practically an Olympic sport. You wrestle with a lot of goo and loose ends when you're working with delicious pizza toppings like these. 

Whether you're starting with budget-friendly frozen pizza or a pie from your favorite Italian restaurant, torn-up pie is often a by-product of trying to cut through bigger or greasier ingredients with a pizza wheel. A pair of scissors snips deftly through different textures. Layers of crust — thick or thin — stringy cheese, an assortment of meats, strips of roasted red peppers, and long pieces of sweet red onions, don't stand a chance against the dual-edged cutting powers of your standard pair of fabric scissors. The bonus is you don't end up with more toppings on the blades of the scissors or at the bottom of the pizza box than you do on your plate. Scissors make cleaner cuts all around.

You'll want to start with a clean pair of scissors. Wipe the blades down, taking care to open the scissors so that you can clean any debris off the blades. A sponge/scratch pad combo works best here. The built-in scratch pad not only scrapes leftover food particles off the blades, it also puts another protective layer between your hands and the blades of the scissors. Additionally, while there are such things as pizza shears (like the Dreamfarm Scizza 2-In-1 pizza scissors), you won't find a plain pair of Fiskars orange-handled scissors lacking when it comes time to tackle this task. Usually, a standard pair of scissors is strong enough to cut through most pizzas.

Once the preliminaries are out of the way, grab your pizza firmly by the crust, so that the pie doesn't slide around while you cut it. If you're working with a round pizza, cut across the pizza until you reach the opposite side. It's ideal if you cut the halves so that they're the same size. Rotate the pizza after that and cut it again crossways. Rinse and repeat until you have eight slices of pizza.

For square pizzas, cut them like you'd cut a rectangle out of a piece of paper. Cut the slices the length and width you want them. While this method doesn't have rules in terms of length, there is an argument to be made for making two or three smaller slices instead of one long one. The smaller sizes will be easier to handle. Finally, keep in mind that however your pizza slices end up is how they end up. Pizza's a feel-good food that's just as delicious to cut as it is to eat, so have fun with this newfangled cooking hack instead of worrying about how it looks.