Pizza Rule

SagXD@lemm.ee to 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone – 615 points –
89

I once taught private lessons in math on calculating the area of a circle and I wanted to show the students how much cheaper per area a larger pizza is. So we of course got the diameters of pizzas from their favorite restaurant and started calculating. Then we found out that the normal sized pizza was actually the cheapest per area. It wasn‘t quite what we expected, but a very good math lesson for the attendees nonetheless: The owner lost money, because they were bad at maths.

You didn't consider the crust ratio, did you?

The crust tends to be a consistent width, so it represents a greater portion of a smaller pizza, shrinking the bit most people are there for.

...but hey, if you love the crust just as much, more power to ya!

That's why you order thin crust and get those toppings out to the edge

A thin crust pizza is just a small pizza stretched out to the size of a larger pizza ... it's paying for a large pizza while asking for a small pizza.

I tell this to my wife all the time but she still loves her thin crust pizza.

It depends what you want to get for your money.

A meal you like and enjoy eating?

Or the maximum amount of pizza-ish mass per dollar?

We're spoiled ... we've had actual Neapolitan pizza that was baked in a traditional stone oven in Italy made with carefully prepared dough, fresh ingredients and thick heavy tasty mozzarella and a big ball of bufala campana cheese in the center ... pizza so thin, light and tasty that you can eat a whole one yourself and its a proper sized meal ... my wife and I both had it and that is the constant standard she is after when she orders those thin crust pizzas here in northern Ontario Canada. I keep telling her that we have to go to the city to find anything remotely like the real Italian stuff and we'll never get it anywhere else .... yet we still keep ordering thin crust pizza hoping that some day some Italian will just make us a real pizza one day and make it for us.

So it's no longer a cost/benefit thing .... just a nostalgia about pizzas past.

I have an app for that, put the price and diameter of different pizzas and it says what's the best one price wise.

What's the app?

I think its the calculator app, with a bit of prompt engineering to get the needed results.

Looks fun but unfortunately I can't install it on my updated Pixel 7 Pro with the latest Android 14, Dec 5th update. Any ideas?

Try an older version, but i doubt that would work. Try to compile a new version with the code published, or open an issue alerting is not working on your android version.

Did you take into account that the crust takes away area from the "filling"? Because me and my husband also once did the math (not sure if we were frugal, bored or broke) and it all came down on whether you eat/enjoy the crust or not

Crust is part of the pizza. That's what dipping sauces are for.

Where I live there is nothing like dipping sauces for pizza and thankfully so

Why thankfully?

I’m guessing because the crust can be delicious on its own when the pizza is made by someone who knows their shit. Or, just drop a bit of olive oil on that fucker, no extra stuff needed.

Of course it’s a matter of taste. The more dipping sauces and strong, complex flavors you use, the more you need them. There’s nothing bad about it, but it is pretty cool to be able to appreciate simple tastes, as getting those right is way harder when cooking.

Honestly my first thought was a big fat crust being dipped in ranch and somehow this felt disgusting (but to each their own).

There's a certain type of pizza crust that is amazing with ranch. It's kind of spongy with a bit of the pizza sauce still left.

Is my American showing?

We would just ask for extra marinara sauce or donair sauce on the side before the prepackaged dipping sauces were introduced. Dipping crusts in sauce has been around for a very long time...even where you live...

One of the most common dipping sauces is the same sauce put on the pizza, just put some aside next time you make a pizza.

But the 2 12” pizzas have more crust, so it depends what you prefer.

I’m wholly in the pizza centre and fuck the crust camp. But for those who like the crust…

You're meant to eat the crust, not fuck it, that might be where you're going wrong

You're meant to eat the crust, not fuck it

Really? Guess now I know why everyone has been looking at me funny after the company pizza party 🤔

I mean I like crust but who's out here looking for a higher crust ratio?

Shit man, I'm a crust guy but hate paying more for less...
You sort of ruined my life now.

Merry x-mas you bastard

ok but that picture is clearly one 18" pizza vs two 18" pizzas that have been hit by a shrink ray, meaning the two on the right have twice as much nutrition as the one on the left.

Ah but it's mini-nutrition now, so you have to shrink yourself in order for your body to be able to process it

You can compare areas with just r^2 you don't even need pi. So the math is easy.

A pizza is larger than two of another just before it hits 1.5 times the radius (sqrt 2 times, to be exact, about 1.41). So if the radius is 1.5 times bigger, like in the OP, you always know it's more than twice the area.

This is why, if you order pizza, getting anything less that the absolute largest size they offer is throwing your money away. Leftover pizza is great.

The math only really works for 18+ inch pizzas though. The pizza places around me don't even offer 18 inch pizzas. 14" large or 16" XL are the highest they go. In that case at most places near me, two twelves is often cheaper per square inch and does have more area than one 14" or 16". Especially since Domino's usually has coupons for two 12s that make it significantly cheaper than 1 L or XL.

Factor in the crust ratio of those though. We're talking 1.5 inch of crust, so 16" vs 12" is actually more like comparing 13" to 9" of pizza with cheese and topping. 132 v 64 square inches. You're getting 70 squares inches of crust on that 16", and 49 square inches of crust on the 12 inch. So more total food on 2 12s, but a lot more crust than one 16.

Even better!

Make it extra crust with pieces of crust as a topping and it'll be perfect.

Pizza place that just opened up down the street from me only offers one size:

18 inches.

The other option is to purchase by the slice.

9 more...

The most worthwhile comparison is of the surface area, excluding crust. Crust quotient must be disregarded.

I figured this out pretty quick when I was 16 trying to calculate the optimal pizza per $ order when I first started getting allowance

I saw this exact thing in a pizza shop an hour ago. What the actual hell

Importantly, it also has a different crust-to-center ratio, which - depending on your taste - could be a reason to go for less pizza.

given a choice, i usually go with larger pizzas for crispy thin crust (also cut those in squares); and smaller ones for 'deep dish' or pan, where there isn't really an outside 'crust'.

At least you didn't measure the pizzas with your feet.

fun fact: to find the actual diameter of the pizza that would larger by a factor of x its (D/2)*2√x

good luck finding a place that offers irrational size pizza though

yeah, but
C_1 = pi * d = 3,14 * 18 = 56,52
C_2 = pi * d * 2 = 3,14 * 12 * 2 = 75,36

so the smaller ones have 50% more crust and are therefor more delicious.

I found myself making a similar calculation recently - I have a project car, and when I dragged it out of a field and hacked the vegetation out of the engine compartment, there was a 40mm motorcycle carburetor mounted to an adapter mounted to the intake. The carburetor even had a Harley-Davidson logo embossed in it.

I wanted to put a two-barrel Weber carb on it, which had a 36 mm and a 32 mm throttle plate. The 40 mm motorcycle carb had an area of 1256 mm^2^, while the combined area for the Weber was more like 1820 mm^2^.