On Super Bowl Sunday, Americans will eat an estimated 15 million pizzas. Most will be satisfied by some combination of crust, cheese, and sauce; even so, inventors continue to search for enhancement. Can’t improve on perfection? To the contrary, please see Exhibit A: the stuffed crust pizza, which has evolved from its beginnings of simple cheese filling to more involved ingredients today, including hot dog and cheeseburger.
When Pizza Hut introduced a pie with mozzarella cheese filling inside the crust in 1995, it touted the product as an industry “revolution.” It was a bold assertion with which cheese maker Anthony Mongiello and his family immediately took issue. The Brooklyn native claimed to have created the stuffed crust a decade earlier when he was 18 years old and, with his relatives, held a 1987 patent to prove it.
