How long is pizza safe to eat

[Traianvs]

Just stating the obvious here: you can usually tell from the way your pizza looks like. Besides I have no idea why the hell anyone would wait a few hours before devouring a lovely pizza. I would seriously overeat in order to finish the divine pizza!

[self biased]

two and a half days i've gone with pizza. granted, these were days that my kitchen hovered at 48 degrees because i had no heat, but that's beside the point.

[KrazyHorse]

Longest I've let a pizza go unrefrigerated before eating was 36 hours.

No problems.

[SlowwHand]

two and a half days i've gone with pizza. granted, these were days that my kitchen hovered at 48 degrees because i had no heat, but that's beside the point.

Really, that's exactly the point. It's been sitting unrefigerated, in temperature that I'm sure is over 48.

[Elok]

As a pizza-maker myself, I wish to point out that pizza that's been allowed to sit out for hours will not be all that yummy. If you're worried about disease, just microwave the SOB; germs don't like high temperatures. If you're one of those weirdos who actually likes cold pizza, microwave it and then refrigerate a couple of hours until it's cold again.

If you want to be 100% sure you're safe, you need an oven like we have at work. 600 degrees Fahrenheit and that's just in the bricks. The air's supposedly closer to 1000. Even endospores won't survive three minutes of that. While I'm giving advice, be careful if you choose to brag about that. I got carried away one day, said to a customer, "Hey, see these gloves? Purely cosmetic! Typhoid Mary could come up and sneeze in the pepperoni and--"

At that point, the GM over at the register said loudly, "all right, that's enough!" As if that weren't the sort of reassuring thing customers want to hear...

[SlowwHand]

Yeah, Dis. Go buy you an oven that heats to 1000 degrees so you can be lazy and eat rancid pizza.

[SpencerH]

Not really. Prepared foods left out at room temp spoil rather quickly, but it depends on a number of factors whether or not bacteria will grow fast enough to make you ill. The feds just treat all foods the same and tell you to discard after 4 hours- not 2- whether room temp or not.

That said I've eaten food left out for hours and been fine.

I'm sure you're correct wrt the government regs, I'm just saying they are ridiculous from my perspective as a cellular microbiologist.

There are virtually no pathogenic bacteria that willl grow fast enough at room temp such that they will become a health hazard in 2-4 h that werent a hazard at T=0. In other words, if you get sick from eating room temperature food after 2-4 h, you would have likely become sick if you ate the food when it was placed there.

The exception to this that I'm aware of is some particularly virulent isolates of Salmonella and other E. coli where even a few bacterial doublings can raise the numbers above that needed to cause disease. I'd guess that there are also virulent Vibrio isolates that would be similarly infectious at low numbers that would be relevant in some food poisoning cases but I've never worked with them so I cant say for sure.

[ColdPhoenix]

When my wife's away I order using a buy one get one free deal at my local pizza delivery. Eat one when it arrives and the other the next day. Without refrigeration or ever any bad effects. As well as cheese and veg my standard pizza also has pepperoni and anchovies on it. I've been eating left-over pizza for so many years that I would only consider not eating the non-refrigerated pizza if I saw mould on it.

[ColdPhoenix]

PS everyone who's claiming under 24 hours is a *****.

[ColdPhoenix]

Wow, can't believe that word is censored....

[Dis]

Yeah, Dis. Go buy you an oven that heats to 1000 degrees so you can be lazy and eat rancid pizza.

I should note I haven't eaten pizza in months. I'm health and weight concious (sp is messed up- too tired to look it up lol)

[b etor]

2 or 3 days old. i had 2 day old pizza for breakfast this morning. sausage.

[Dis]

ok now I said that I just had a piece of pizza. one won't kill me . my brother brought a box home and put it in the fridge, it had one piece left, so I ate it. Papa Johns pan pizza- supreme I think. I'm getting kinda sick of Papa Johns though, I'd like to find a place that makes good pizza, but there is no place like that around where I live.

[-Jrabbit]

What, you don't have a microwave?

[EPW]

capacious