I know why you are here, you tried cutting a pizza in 10 slices and it got really confusing really fast! I get it, and after some research I found out how to cut pizza into ten slices, and I want to share that with you. It’s not hard, just….different, if you will.
Short Answer: You can cut a pizza into 10 slices by making 36 degree cuts, but following the tips below make it quick and easy!
-PIZZAINFORMER
Why 10 Slices?
Cutting a pizza isn’t usually something you have to worry about too much. Generally, you’ll be able to cut them into four pieces (if you’re lazy and just want to eat them yourself) or eight pieces (if you’re sharing them with some friends and want them small enough to not be messy).
It’s easy to cut a pizza into these segments. The circular shape is perfect for four or eight slices.
But what happens when you need more than that? What happens when you need ten slices? All of a sudden you’ve got a problem on your hands. Ten slices don’t divide nicely into the four slices you’d usually start from.
Cutting a pizza in half and then half again is the perfect starting point – but unless you want uneven slices, this simply doesn’t work for ten slices of pizza.
Don’t worry though, I’m here to help! I’m sure you’ve been asking yourself what the best way to cut a pizza is in this way while remaining fair to all your friends or family. I had to do a quick bit of research to figure it out, but when you really think about it, it isn’t that hard at all.
Do The “Math”
Don’t get scared! I shouldn’t have put math in the title, I knew that much! Sorry. But technically, math will help you to figure this one out. If you think about the math of a circle, you’ll want to know that an entire circle is 360 degrees.
That’s all you need to know. You don’t need to know why or how, that can get entirely too confusing – even for me!
So, a 360 degrees circular pizza needs to be divided into ten even slices. What do you do? 360 divided by 10, and that makes 36.
Meaning that every slice needs to be cut at about a 36-degree angle to ensure the absolute most even slice possible for 10 people. This may sound a bit ridiculous at first, but don’t worry too much about your exact numbers, it’s just a good starting point.
Cut The Angles
If you reference the video, you’ll see chef Michael Neylan cutting ten slices of pizza easily enough.
He doesn’t use any special tools to do it (there’s not a protractor in sight), he’s just confident in his ability to cut the right size slices for a 10 slice pizza.
That’s all you’ll need to worry about too. Just make sure that your slices are almost right. They don’t have to be perfect.
Half of the time that I’m cutting a pizza into four or eight slices, I still can’t quite measure them out perfectly to be even. There’s no problem with accidentally cutting a slice for ten at 33 degrees or 40 degrees. There really isn’t that much difference in the 3 or 4-degree discrepancy.
Yes, in the video he makes it sound like it’s very important to hit that exact 36-degree angle, but as I said, you’ll notice he doesn’t use a protractor. There’s no way he knows exactly what 36 degrees of a pizza looks like, he’s just doing it with his own eyes and working from there.
Practice Helps
If you have a pizza in front of you right now and need ten slices, then maybe practice isn’t really a possibility for you.
Fair enough, just try your best to get your slices as even as possible and hope that you don’t accidentally give yourself a nice, meaty, thick slice and give your mother-in-law a slice thinner than her pursed lips when she receives it.
However, if you don’t need to get your pizza cut into ten even slices today but you may need to in the future, then I recommend you start practicing now to try and figure out the exact angles you’ll need to work with.
On your first attempt, you might be incredibly fortunate and manage to get ten perfect slices. Good for you! However, you might completely mess it up and somehow cut nine or eleven slices without understanding how or why.
That’s why it’s a smart idea to get some practice in. You’ll never have to perfectly know what a 36-degree angle looks like in a slice of pizza, but you’ll get very close the more you try.
Thinking about eating raw pizza dough? Think again and read this FIRST.
-sick guy
For all you math whizzes out there, maybe you can get that protractor out if you really want to. I wouldn’t encourage that, as it’s an awful lot more work than it’s really worth. But hey, some people are perfectionists and like everything to be exactly right!
I must admit, if I was presented with a ten slice pizza and all ten slices were a different size, I would always try to get my hands on the thicker slices before I consider the smaller ones.
I’m sure most people would. I suppose the harder you try to actually get those angles perfect, the more you’ll be able to please everyone. Equal slices will go a long way.
Summary
Make sure you watch the video if you haven’t already to get a good idea of how a professional chef will do it. I’ve already covered all the important points here, so if you’ve had a read-through and you’re ready to tackle the 36-degree pizza slice, then go for it.
The only reason I’d encourage watching the video after reading this is to prove to you that it isn’t THAT important to get your angles correct.
Also, it’s a good point to mention that these steps only truly work for a pizza that is a perfect circle.
Which technically isn’t a possible feat. It’s so difficult for any chef to get a perfectly circular pizza, meaning that the whole angle thing becomes pretty obsolete. I’ve only included it all as a guideline more than anything else.
Some pizzas are more oval-shaped and some manage to resemble something more of a rectangle. The same rules do still apply to these odd-shaped pizzas, it just requires you to be a bit laxer about the 36-degree rule.
