The regional treat started in West Virginia coal mines, but they didn’t travel very far.
Pepperoni rolls are practically the food of the gods, but this culinary delicacy has found little fame outside a small portion of Appalachia. About 25 years ago, I packed up and moved to Williamsport, Pennsylvania. I was driving for work one day when I stopped in a gas station for a staple of my diet: a pepperoni roll. I left empty-handed.
Have you ever moved somewhere new and realized that something you thought was a universal fact of life doesn’t exist far outside your hometown? That was this experience. The blank stares I got in return were honestly confusing. I might as well have asked the clerk for alien artifacts. I had to repeat myself, thinking he just didn’t hear me. When he finally told me he had no idea what a pepperoni roll was, I was floored!
Growing up in western Pennsylvania near the West Virginia border, the pepperoni roll was a way of life. You didn’t have to look for them; they were just there. You could find them everywhere from the checkout aisle of local gas stations to the glass display cases of neighborhood bakeries. My absolute favorites, though, came fresh-baked from a small store called Isaly’s. It was a famous regional chain known for their towering Skyscraper ice cream cones and, of course, the legendary chipped ham. Even as the Isaly’s near me transitioned into a private convenience store, the tradition lived on. Walking in and grabbing a fresh, perfectly baked pepperoni roll was part of a normal week.
The coal miner’s lunch
The pepperoni roll is said to have started commercially 1927 in Fairmont, West Virginia. It’s credited to Giuseppe “Joseph” Argiro, an Italian immigrant from Calabria who had spent time working in the local coal mines before opening his own business. Down in the mines, lunch breaks weren’t exactly glamorous. Argiro noticed his fellow miners holding bread in one hand and a stick of cured pepperoni in the other, taking alternating bites. According to The West Virginia Encyclopedia, Argiro opened Country Club Bakery and started baking the pepperoni inside the roll.
The design was brilliant. First, they were completely shelf-stable. In the hot, damp mines, nobody had a refrigerator. The cured meat and baked bread stayed good all day in a lunch pail. Second, the pepperoni roll is the ultimate one-handed food, which was helpful in underground mining conditions.
The food that was almost cancelled
Believe it or not, this humble snack sparked a fight with the federal government. In 1987, the USDA decided to take a closer look at the small, family-owned bakeries producing pepperoni rolls across West Virginia. Because the bakeries were placing meat inside the dough before baking it, the USDA tried to reclassify these small, independent bake shops as “meat packers.” If you know anything about commercial food regulations, becoming a certified meat packing facility requires entirely different equipment, strict inspections, and specific facility layouts. Because the regulations were so hard to meet, they would have forced almost every independent pepperoni roll bakery to close its doors.
West Virginians do not take kindly to outsiders messing with their food. The outrage was so immediate that U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller had to step in. Sources say that he personally intervened with the Secretary of Agriculture, fought the USDA on behalf of the local shops, and got the agency to back down. The bakeries were saved, and the pepperoni roll lived to see another day.
The pride runs so deep that there have been multiple legislative efforts—notably in 2013 and 2021—to officially declare the pepperoni roll the state food of West Virginia. While those bills have gotten stuck in committee debates, the state’s tourism bureau calls it the state food anyway. Who would argue?
The pepperoni roll hustle
Since I couldn’t buy them in Williamsport, and I refused to live without them, I had to figure out how to make them myself. Over the past couple of decades, I’ve cultured plenty of uninitiated friends and coworkers throughout the U.S. by baking them in my own kitchen. I’ve brought a massive tray of homemade rolls to workplaces and family gatherings, and they are always a huge hit.
Baking them is always a frantic race against the clock. Once you punch down the dough and start rolling, the yeast doesn’t stop working. If you take too long to fill and shape them, the dough rises too much right there on the counter. It gets puffy, uncooperative, and hard to work with. You must move fast: roll, cut, fill, pinch, place on the tray. It’s a rush, but it’s worth the challenge every single time.
In my rolls, I often add a slice of mozzarella. But purists will tell you that the correct way is just pepperoni and bread. Regardless of how others enjoy it, with an oven, some dough, and a stack of sandwich pepperoni, I can always bring a little bit of home wherever I go.
Check out this brief YouTube episode from CBS Sunday Morning about pepperoni rolls. One note: You can find pepperoni rolls in states neighboring West Virginia, not only in my native Western Pennsylvania, but also in Southeastern Ohio, Western Maryland, and Eastern Kentucky. Just don’t travel too far from the state line.
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