A Formula for the Perfect Pizza?

If you thought making pizza involved slapping some cheese and tomato sauce on dough or, better yet, calling the delivery man, think again.

A U.K.-based mathematician says she has come up with the formula for creating the "perfectly proportioned" to "ensure maximum flavor of topping to base."

For pizza lovers still with us and ready to break out their graphic calculators, Eugenia Cheng, a senior lecturer in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, says the trick to creating the perfect pizza is to obtain the right balance of flavors between the topping and the dough so the pizza eater can enjoy the right amount of toppings per bite.

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Cheng told the U.K.'s Daily Mail that her calculations determined the average bite taken from an 11-inch pizza has 10 percent more topping than the average bite from a 14-inch pizza. So, for more topping per bite, make a smaller pizza. If you want a more even spread of toppings per bite, make a larger pizza.

The reason Cheng studied those specific pizza sizes, the Daily Mail reports, is because U.K.-based restaurant chain PizzaExpress asked her to figure out why its 14-inch Romana pizza, with a thinner and crispier base, is more popular than their classic, 11-inch pizza option.

Cheng's formula uses "d" as the constant volume of dough and "t" for the constant volume of topping. She also found that the size of the pizza's crust is proportional to the thickness of the pizza, meaning a larger pizza will have a thinner base.

Cheng, who did not reply to a request for comment from ABCNews.com, released her report for the chain Oct. 14. She is a visiting senior lecturer at the University of Chicago for the 2013-2014 academic year, according to her website.

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A spokeswoman for PizzaExpress told the Daily Mail the chain has changed its pizza formula for the first time in 48 years by adding 15 grams, or about 0.5 ounces, of dough.

"It may not seem like much at all, but it means that the thickness of every Romana pizza, which is rolled with a rolling pin to ensure an even amount of dough across the whole of the base and no air pockets, is even more consistent than before," Rebecca Farrer, PizzaExpress' brand director, told the paper.

"For people who are as obsessive about pizza as we are, 15g makes all the difference."