this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2024
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Laittakaa meemejä tänne.

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Lol I can't believe this is real. How terrible must food be in your city for this to be successful? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altoona-style_pizza

[–] [email protected] 83 points 2 months ago (9 children)

While originally topped with Velveeta, Altoona-style pizza is popularly topped with yellow processed cheese known as American cheese. The yellow squares of American cheese are a staple of this dish, used instead of the mozzarella or provolone common to other styles of pizza.

Everything about that paragraph makes me feel ill.

[–] [email protected] 64 points 2 months ago

Following the destruction of the hotel in 2013 by fire, other local restaurants began serving Altoona-style pizza

It could have died there, but they had to do this

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Mozzarella is nice though, just that it's mentioned makes me feel a bit better. As if the world isn't broken completely.

[–] ILikeBoobies 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I do find it comical that Americans call processed cheese “American”

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

It's telling for sure.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Fun fact, you can trigger Wikipedia editors by changing the page in developer console and posting a screenshot of it, they'll scramble to revert a change that doesn't exist.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

The most successful businesses in Altoona when I lived there in the early 2010s were drug rehabilitation centers. All the factories closed, and the town is slowly dying.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 2 months ago (2 children)

American cheese on pizza? that's the kind of thing I would do if I'm down to the last two items in the kitchen, and feel too lazy to go shopping, but still would hate it

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

That's the type of thing you make if you have nothing else in the fridge and you can't go out to get anything else. And you'd keep that shit quiet and never admit to it to anyone.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Like Kenji's smash burgers, "held together with hope and American Cheese"

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

cook with it? yeah
call it pizza? nope

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 months ago (6 children)

there's no excuse for making a bad pizza. It's pizza, it's very hard to do it wrong

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah like, just don't call it a pizza and we're good. Call it an "Altooner" or whatever, but don't soil the good reputation of pizza with whatever this creation is.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

Altoona melt

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago

This is a fucking culinary crime.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Is this town filled with broke stoners or something?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

Broke stoners in rural Pennsylvania? Say it ain't so!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

Dunno about this particular area of PA, but the areas I am familiar with... the answer is meth.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (9 children)

Y'all better be careful or you're going to fall down a rabithold of locally celebrated yet disgusting pizza in PA. It's like a whole thing there.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

I knew PA was evil, but I never knew just how horrible.

I am biased being from NJ, but these pizzas vindicate me!

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago

This is not pizza.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

Hello? I would like to report a crime against humanity.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

Not even pineapple could save that.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I mean, sandwich bread, tomato sauce, ham and cheese on top, it's not a pizza, it's a microwaved 3am sandwich

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Not cheese. Kraft fucking singles

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Kraft singles are still cheese. They've just been pasteurized and adulterated with sodium citrate.

That actually makes them super useful in making a cheese sauce.

Add a few slices to a queso and it will not break.

You fat. Smooth cheesey sauce that comes out perfect every time.

You can make sodium citrate with lemon juice and baking soda. Lime juice also works. Really any citric acid.

Anyway, you don't need much to make cheese melt smoothly.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Kraft singles are still cheese. They've just been pasteurized and adulterated with sodium citrate.

No, if it was just cheese that's been pasteurized and adulterated with sodium citrate it would be pasteurized process cheese. A couple other additional additives are acceptable.

When it has other additives but is at least half cheese by weight it's pasteurized process cheese food.

When it's pasteurized process cheese product it's not meeting any of those standards. Often because it's less than half cheese or an addictive outside the accepted list to meet the other definitions is being used. Milk protein concentrate is an example, but also increasing the fat content with something like vegetable oil or adding flavoring agents to make the result taste more like cheese.

The FDA caught Kraft singles not meeting the definition of pasteurized process cheese food something like 20 years ago which is why it's labeled a pasteurized process cheese product.

For any curious, the sodium citrate is an emulsifying agents that helps the natural cheeses used melt together smoothly, and pasteurization was originally done to prolong the life of the resultant mixed cheese as the whole original point of American cheese was to reprocess ends and scraps into something homogeneous and comparatively safe for long distance overland transport before refrigerated trucks were a thing.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yup. This is a stoner snack.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm Austrian and I feel betrayed

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

I'm italian, my day is ruined.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And they say white people have no culture.

Grand sweeping gesture

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

No-one ever talks about white on white violence

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

Yeah, it's not a great town

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Every person I've shared Altoona pizza with ironically has ended up unironically liking it, so I don't know anymore. I've never actually had it myself. Maybe this isn't any worse than Hawaiian pizza or cauliflower crust pizza?

At the end of the day though, this is just a regional food - like Cincinnati chili or Chicago hot dog - only after all the good ideas are taken, this was what was left. If they can sell one to everybody passing through Altoona just once, they've made a fair amount of money.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Are those fucken Kraft singles? That's deplorable and I am disgusted beyond the spiritual realm.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

I mean to be clear I'm from altoona and I've never seen pizza like this.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I’d hork down a barrel of sketchy dicks before I’d let this abomination inside of me.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I'm not trying to judge, but your bar for that might be slightly too low.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

There better be chilli fries under that cheese

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

I'm the one to do gross shit like dip a dill pickle in mayonnaise at 3am, and even this looks objectively horrifying to me

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Honestly this doesn't sound like it would taste all that bad. Thick crust, tomato sauce, green bell pepper, fried salami, and Velveeta cheese? That's gonna be pretty tasty. Calling it pizza might be the biggest issue, maybe something like open faced pepper sandwich would be better.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Calling Velveeta "cheese" is pretty bad

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Urgh, here in Canada they tried to trick us with "delux" kraft dinner. Velveeta is so bad that I avoid name brand KD to this day due to one time over a decade ago. How in the artificial fuck do americans eat that stuff?

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I mean, you just described a thick crust hot pocket. Which isn't bad. It ain't good, but it ain't bad.

Pretty much, any combination of bread, cheese, and tomato sauce is edible. The salami is just there for texture

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