Here's How Many Pizza Rolls You'd Have To Eat To Equal An Entire Pie
Pizza rolls are an elite convenience food, turning pizza into a finger food while staying true to the original dish's bold flavors. Not only are they bite-sized, but all you have to do is heat them up in the microwave or conventional oven. The problem with pizza rolls is that, given their poppable nature, you can easily go through more than you intended to. If you're wondering if you may have accidentally eaten enough to equal an entire pie, well, there's a good chance you don't have to worry about that.
In an experiment conducted by Thrillist, it was discovered that there is roughly one teaspoon of filling inside a pizza roll. You'll need the filling from about 78 of them in order to cover a 12-inch pizza crust. Depending on the brand, pizza rolls are typically sold in packs ranging from 12 to 160 pieces. So, you would need to consume most, if not all, of a bag, or even multiple bags (unless you buy in bulk), to have actually eaten the equivalent of a whole pizza.
What about the crust?
The initial experiment only took the filling into account when determining the number of pizza rolls needed to create the equivalent of a pizza. But of course, pizza rolls consist of both a filling and a crust.
In a YouTube video sharing how to make homemade bite-sized pizza rolls, YouTuber and cookbook author Joshua Weissman estimates that a single pizza roll is made up of a 2½ inch by 2½ inch piece of dough that is folded up. Considering that the area of a 12-inch pizza is 113 square inches, it would require approximately 45 pizza rolls to equal the entire crust if the dough were unfolded to lay flat.
Even if it's possible to create a pizza crust out of pizza rolls, it might not be a good idea in practice, because the outer layer of the pizza roll dough has already been fried. This would make it hard to combine it into one piece. As a result, attempting to cut a pizza made from pizza roll crust would likely cause it to fall apart.
You don't get as much pizza as you think with pizza rolls
While pizza rolls offer convenience and easy snacking, it's worth considering that you might not be getting as much pizza as you expect in each bag for the price. Based on the above calculations, you'll have to buy the 100-count pizza rolls (or multiple smaller packs adding up to 78) if you plan to eat a whole pizza's worth of food. At Walmart, for example, this would cost around $10, but a whole 12-inch pizza is less than half the price.
If you've ever bitten into a pizza roll that has almost no sauce or cheese, like the ones Aldi sells, you probably also know that the filling-to-dough ratio is often inconsistent, leaving you with less pizza in the end. Of course, if your main priority is being able to have something that's easy to heat up at a moment's notice, it may very well be worth paying double.