If you ate pizza twice in Rome and came home confused, you were not paying poor attention. You ate two different styles that happen to share a city.
One is a high-hydration pan pizza sold by weight from a counter, cut with scissors, eaten standing up or wrapped in paper. The other is a thin round pizza served on a plate at a table, crisp enough to make a noise when you cut it. Neither is a variant of the other. They have different doughs, different bakes, different equipment, and different eating occasions.
This piece treats them as two styles, because that is what they are.
Teglia: the pan pizza
Teglia is the pan. The style is named after the equipment, which tells you something about where the character comes from.
The dough is worked at a high hydration, given a long fermentation, pressed out into an oiled rectangular pan, and baked into a base with a very open, irregular crumb and a crisp underside. It is normally baked in large sheets, then cut to order and often sold by weight rather than by the slice.
The high hydration is the defining decision, and it drives everything else. A very wet dough is difficult to handle, needs a flour that can carry the water without collapsing, and generally needs a long fermentation to develop the structure that holds those large irregular holes open. It also cannot be tossed or stretched conventionally, which is why it is pressed and stretched inside the pan.
We are not going to give you a hydration figure here.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Family | Rectangular pan, high hydration, open crumb |
| Hydration | High relative to round styles, but formula-specific; record baker's percentage and pan area together |
| Flour | Use a flour whose maker documents suitability for the planned water level and fermentation; record the product and lot |
| Fat in dough | Oil is commonly used; proportions vary by bakery |
| Sugar in dough | Conventionally none |
| Ball or dough weight | Determined by pan dimensions, not by a style convention |
| Fermentation | Long, frequently refrigerated. Exact schedules vary and no single convention governs them |
| Bake surface | The pan, often on a deck |
| Bake temperature | Oven-, pan-, and formula-specific; record the actual oven temperature and bake stage |
| Bake time | Considerably longer than a fast round bake |
| Sauce and toppings | Enormously variable. Some are dressed before baking, many are finished after |
| Governing standard | None |
| Origin | Rome. Its emergence as a distinct commercial style is recent enough to be within living memory, but we are not going to name an inventor or a first shop |
| Close relatives | Other Italian pan traditions; Detroit and Sicilian are separate pan lineages, not descendants |
The cells without figures are deliberate. Real published figures exist for most of them in bakery books and practitioner interviews. We have not verified them against a source we can cite, and a plausible-looking range that came from memory is worse than no number, because you cannot tell the difference by looking.
What the high hydration actually demands
Three things, in practice.
A flour that can take it. Water above a certain level needs protein quality and a long enough development window, or the dough turns to batter. The relevant properties are in flour protein, W value, and why "00" isn't a grade.
Time. Wet doughs are usually given long, often cold, fermentation. What that time is doing is covered in cold retard: what 24, 48, and 72 hours change.
Different handling. You do not stretch this by hand in the air. You fold it, rest it, and coax it into the pan. If you handle it like a 60% dough it will tear and deflate.
For the general relationship between water and crumb, see what hydration actually changes.
Tonda: the thin round pizza
Tonda just means round. In Roman usage it refers to a thin round pizza baked to a distinctly crisp, often cracker-like finish, served whole on a plate.
The crispness is the point, and it is not simply the result of rolling a Neapolitan thinner. It is a different dough and a different bake target. Where a Neapolitan sets fast and stays soft, a Roman tonda is baked so the base dries as well as sets. The finished pizza is rigid enough that a slice does not fold.
That difference in intent shows up in the formula. Fat in the dough is conventional in tonda in a way it is not in Neapolitan, and it contributes to the short, crisp texture. Hydration is conventionally lower than teglia by a wide margin.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Family | Round, thin, crisp, direct bake |
| Hydration | Lower than teglia in typical practice, but formula-specific; record baker's percentage |
| Flour | Varies; no single convention |
| Fat in dough | Oil is conventional and contributes to the crisp short texture |
| Sugar in dough | Varies |
| Ball weight | Diameter- and thickness-specific; record dough mass and finished diameter together |
| Fermentation | Varies; no single governing convention |
| Bake surface | Oven floor, directly |
| Bake temperature | Oven- and formula-specific; record the measured deck temperature |
| Bake time | Longer than an AVPN-style bake and shorter than teglia; stop at a dry, crisp base and record elapsed time |
| Rim | Thin and low. A large puffed cornicione is not the target |
| Governing standard | None |
| Origin | Rome |
| Close relatives | Other thin crisp round styles; the crispness target is shared with tavern style despite no direct lineage |
Side by side
| Attribute | Teglia | Tonda |
|---|---|---|
| Shape | Rectangular, baked in sheets | Round, individual |
| Baked in or on | An oiled pan | The oven floor |
| Hydration | Higher; record the formula | Lower; record the formula |
| Fat in dough | Commonly present | Conventional, and functional |
| Fermentation | Long, often refrigerated | Varies; no single convention |
| Crumb | Very open, large irregular holes | Thin, tight, short |
| Finished texture | Crisp base, airy interior | Crisp throughout, often rigid |
| Rim | Present but not the feature | Thin and low |
| Bake time | Long, sometimes staged; record each stage | Medium; record time to a crisp finish |
| Sold as | By weight, cut with scissors | Whole, on a plate |
| Eaten | Standing, walking, wrapped | Seated, with cutlery |
| Handling difficulty | High (wet dough) | Moderate (thin opening) |
| Realistic at home? | Yes, with a suitable pan | Partly |
Note what this table does not do. It does not rank them. Rome produced both and both are fully realised styles with their own logic. Anyone telling you one of them is the real Roman pizza is describing their own preference.
Which one can you actually make
Teglia: yes, with caveats. Like other pan styles, it does not depend on a screaming-hot conducting surface, because the pan is your heat path and it heats with the oven. A domestic oven can sustain a moderate temperature for a long bake, which is exactly what this needs. The difficulty is not the oven, it is the dough. High-hydration dough is genuinely hard to handle and most first attempts are a mess. That is a skill problem, and skill problems are solvable.
Tonda: partly. The dough is easy. The bake is the constraint. A crisp, dry base wants a hot surface and enough time on it to drive moisture out, and where domestic ovens sit relative to that target is. What we will say without a number is that this style sits closer to a home oven's reach than Neapolitan does, because it does not depend on an extremely short bake. See what your home oven can and cannot do for the general ceiling.
If you are choosing a first style rather than a favourite style, work through which style to learn first instead of picking by admiration.
What to order, and where
These are sold in different kinds of places, which is the fastest way to tell which one you are about to eat.
Teglia comes from a counter. You point, they cut with scissors, they weigh it, you pay by weight. Portions are whatever size you asked for. This is daytime and walking-around food.
Tonda comes from a table. You order a whole pizza, it arrives on a plate, you cut it yourself. This is a sit-down evening meal.
If you have arrived somewhere and cannot tell what style is in front of you, the general approach is in what to order at an unfamiliar style.
Two honest gaps
Origin stories. Both styles have widely repeated origin narratives, including confident attributions of teglia's modern form to specific bakers and specific decades. We are not repeating them. Some of it is probably accurate, most of it circulates without a citation, and a promotional history from a business with an interest in the answer is not a source. When we can cite it, we will write it up under the history hub.
Numbers. Neither style has one universal formula. Log pan area or finished diameter alongside dough mass, hydration, actual oven temperature, and elapsed time; those linked values are more useful than a disconnected range.
In Plain English
Rome has two unrelated pizza styles. Teglia is a wet, long-fermented dough baked in a rectangular oiled pan into an open airy crumb with a crisp base, sold by weight and cut with scissors. Tonda is a thin round pizza baked to a crisp, often rigid finish and served whole at a table. They share a city and almost nothing else.
This helps anyone who has eaten "Roman pizza" more than once and got a different thing each time, and anyone deciding which of the two to attempt at home.
Use teglia as your target if you have an ordinary oven and a suitable pan, and you are willing to spend a few sessions learning to handle a wet dough. Use tonda as your target if you want a thin crisp round pizza and you would rather fight the bake than the dough.
Next step: if teglia appeals, read what hydration actually changes before you mix anything, because the handling problem is the whole difficulty and it is much easier to survive if you know what the water is doing.
Where to go next
- Read the full guide: which pizza style should you learn first
- The water: pizza dough hydration explained
- The flour that carries it: protein, W value, and why "00" isn't a grade
- The other great pan style: Detroit style pizza reference
- On style rankings generally: why "authentic" is the least useful word in pizza
- Browse them all: the styles hub