How to Make 1980s Rectangular School Lunch Pizza

Max Miller of Tasting History nostalgically prepared the iconic rectangular pizza that was served in school lunches during the late 20th century using a recipe he found in “Quantity Recipes for School Food Service”, a 1988 US Department of Agriculture booklet that was distributed to schools across the country.

If you grew up in the 80s and 90s here in the US then you probably remember Pizza Day at school. For me it was always on Fridays and it wasn’t just any pizza but the iconic rectangular pizza that I’ll be making today using the original recipe from 1988.

As he was preparing the recipe, Miller talked about the history of school lunches, noting how it began in 1969 with free breakfasts that were given to kids before school by the Black Panthers, which started locally in Oakland, California, and then spread across the nation. Unfortunately, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover felt that this was an underhanded ploy by revolutionaries who wanted to take over the government.

So this breakfast program that the Black Panthers were doing was happening all over the country, and it got really, really big.So big that it grabbed the attention of the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover… And this program that gave children free breakfast was so successful that Hoover decided it needed to be stopped.

While Hoover attempted to squelch this program, the desire still remained. This led to the government voting to implement school lunch programs across the country. Unfortunately, this type of program was often the victim of budget cuts. In fact, one Reagan USDA aide floated a very bad idea that was never implemented, but was certainly memorable.

Well one person had the idea to change the nutrition standards a little bit which would allow relish and ketchup to be considered a vegetable. Now that was a bad idea and unfortunately somebody wrote it down, and it didn’t get removed. Now it never actually became policy but the whole ketchup is a vegetable thing did get out into the public, and there was severe blowback, rightly so.

As he concluded the history of school lunches in the United States, Miller found that the pizza was ready. He cut it into nine rectangles, pulling out a piece for himself. Miller got a very nostalgic look on his face as he bit into the slice, stating that it’s just how he remembers it.

Tastes just like it. You can like- all of those herbs are exactly the same as they were. I think maybe it tastes a little fresher than I remember, like the flavors are a little heightened but that’s that’s them. This is the pizza…So if you are nostalgic for this pizza might I suggest you make it. It’s pretty cool to taste this flavor, because I don’t think they make it anymore at least not like this at schools and kudos to all the lunch ladies and lunch men out there today and from my past.