Palermo, Italy (sfincione) → New York City sheet adaptation

Sicilian

Thick, focaccia-like square; sauce on top, cheese under.

Hydration
70–78%
Bake temp
475–525°F
Bake time
14–22 min
Ferment
18–48 h cold + 2 h pan proof
Oven
rectangular sheet pan in a conventional deck oven
Flour
Bread flour

Defining characteristics

Tall, airy, focaccia-like crumb. The American Sicilian slice (the NY-Italian-American version, distinct from sfincione) usually places cheese under the sauce so the cheese melts into the crumb and the sauce stays bright on top.

History

Sfincione — the original Sicilian — is a Palermo street pizza that predates tomato by centuries. The tall, spongy focaccia base is dressed with onion, anchovy, caciocavallo, oregano, and (after Columbian contact) tomato; breadcrumbs go on top so the surface stays dry through a long bake. It's traditionally a Christmas Eve and feast-day food, sold from bakery counters in pre-cut squares. The name comes from spugna ("sponge"), describing the open, oily crumb.

What Americans call "Sicilian" is the Italian-American descendant: a thick, oily, square pie that traveled from Palermo with Sicilian immigrants and got rebuilt inside Italian-American bakeries in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and northern New Jersey through the early 20th century. The bakery context is important — sheet pans were already in the building, and the half-sheet (~13×18") became the default vessel. L&B Spumoni Gardens (Brooklyn, 1939) is the iconic example, with cheese laid down before the sauce so the cheese caramelizes into the dough and the sauce stays bright and fresh on top. By the postwar slice-shop era the Sicilian square was standard alongside the round, sold by the slab.

Common riffs

Sfincione (Palermitan original) keeps onion, anchovy, caciocavallo, breadcrumb, and tomato; no mozzarella. Grandma is the home-cook cousin — thinner, faster, less proofed. The L&B-style square (cheese under, sauce on top, square-cut) is the NY-Italian-American canon. Vodka Sicilian and pesto-and-burrata variants have spread through the slice-shop revival of the 2010s (Mama's Too, F&F).

Other Sicilian recipes