A pizza puff is a deep-fried dough pocket filled with cheese, tomato sauce, and other pizza ingredients such as sausage or pepperoni.[1] Originally from Chicago, pizza puffs can be found at many casual dining restaurants there.[2][3][4][5][6]
Pizza puffs are similar to panzerotti. They are also somewhat like calzones, but calzones are baked instead of fried, and do not always include tomato sauce.[2]
Some Italian restaurants and casual dining establishments make their own pizza puffs from scratch. These pizza puffs feature a pizza dough wrapper, and tend to be somewhat larger than the pre-made ones.[7][8][9]
Commercial varieties
Some hot dog stands in the Chicago area serve mass-produced pizza puffs that they purchase from the Iltaco company. The frozen pizza puffs are deep-fried before serving. The dough wrapper of these pizza puffs is similar to a flour tortilla. Iltaco was founded in 1927 and was originally called the Illinois Tamale Company ("Il-Ta-Co"). It has been suggested that Iltaco invented the pizza puff.[1] Iltaco pizza puffs are also sold in the frozen food section of some local area grocery stores.[2][3][6][10]
Arco Frozen Foods is another company that mass-produced pizza puffs, and introduced a retail pizza puff circa 1968.[11]
