Pizza Handles, Pizza Rinds, and Other Names

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Anna in Concord, North Carolina.

Concord, right outside of Kannapolis. I know it well.

Exactly. And it’s not Concord, it’s Concord.

Right.

Concord. We are in Concord about Concord.

Hi, Anna. Welcome to the show. What is on your mind?

Well, my family and I were having pizza for dinner the other night, and my son happened to mention that he had told a friend of his that he will sometimes give our dog pizza bones, and the dog will carry them around and just use them as a toy rather than a snack.

But anyway, this friend said that she had never heard the term pizza bones before.

And that got us to thinking, well, where did we start using it?

And I seem to recollect that way back in the late 70s, early 80s, maybe, I knew somebody that worked at a pizza hut.

And I believe that that might be where I first heard the term pizza bones used.

And I’ve been using it ever since.

And my husband and I worked for a long time in Cleveland, and the backstage crew and theater tech people that we hung out with the most always seemed to use the term pizza bones.

And we didn’t have any idea where it came from.

So we thought we’d ask you.

And I think the big question is, does your family eat the pizza bones?

It depends on who made the pizza and how good the crust is.

Right, right.

Pizza bones are the crust.

After you’ve eaten the soft stuff with the cheese in the sauce, it’s the hard outer rim.

Yes, some people eat them, some people never do.

Right, right.

And I think you’re right that it depends on the pizza.

I mean, you get a good wood-fired pizza with those kinds of leopard spot, you know, slightly burned parts on the pizza bones.

I will gobble those up. How about you? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Especially if it’s really good thin crust.

Yes. Yes. And you know, I had never heard this term pizza bones until about 10 years ago when somebody called with that very same question. And they use the term pizza bones.

And since then, I’ve seen a lot of discussions where people argue over whether it’s a crust or pizza bones. And it seems like particularly dog lovers like to call them pizza bones because you can just picture, you know, Rover coming up to the table and handing them the bones. So that’s what I use now is pizza bones.

But there are different terms for this, certainly crust, and some people call it a dough lip. We also had a caller who said… A dough lip. You can’t just go right by that dough lip like l-i-p yes yes like the lip of the dough over the pan you know it’s it’s the dough lip and we also had a caller one time who said that what they do is they call it the dashboard which I kind of like you know it’s like the dashboard in a car kind of blocking things and then in italian it’s il cornicione which is the cornice you know like an architectural term.

Yeah. So pizza bones has been around for a while. Grant, I’m not sure how long, but it’s certainly something that a lot of people use.

Yeah. I don’t know how long either. It’s right up there with pizza handles and pizza rind. Rind suggests that you’re not going to eat it like you wouldn’t eat usually the rind of an orange, although some people do. Pizza handle. I like that. Yeah. The handle. It’s what you’re holding the pizza by. But that also suggests that maybe you’re not going to eat it.

The thing is, if it’s really hard, what you do, you make sure you have some extra marinara and you dip it.

That’s what you do with it if it’s hard.

Soften it up a little bit and then you can finish it.

Or garlic butter.

Garlic butter.

I was going for something of fewer calories, Martha.

The Japanese call it something like pizza no mimi, which means pizza ear.

So it’s the ear of the pizza.

You might grab somebody by the ear to hold them still.

But it sticks out, right?

Just like an ear does.

Yeah.

So, Anna, to answer your original question, yes, there are lots of people who use the term pizza bones, and I think particularly people who have dogs as companions.

Well, that certainly makes a lot of sense.

But I had never heard dough lip or dashboard or pizza.

I think I’ve heard pizza rind before, but the other two have never before.

So those are some good terms to throw out, too.

Thank you for sharing with us, Anna.

Call us again sometime.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Have a good afternoon.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

So put your phone up to your pizza hole and give us a call, 877-929-9673, and talk to us about the sling that you use and where you picked it up.