The History of Pizza
Considered a peasant's
meal in Italy for centuries, modern pizza is attributed to baker Raffaele Esposito
of Napoli (Naples) in the Italian region of Campania. In 1889, Esposito of Pizzeria
di Pietro (now called Pizzeria Brandi) baked pizza especially for the visit
of Italian King Umberto I and Queen Margherita and for one of the pizzas embellished
the classic Pizza Alla Marinara with mozzarella and basil. The pizza was very
patriotic and resembled the Italian flag with its colors of green (basil), white
(mozzarella), and red (tomatoes), and was favored by the Queen. This pizza was
named Pizza Margherita in honor of the Queen and set the standard by which today's
pizza evolved and spread to Northern Italy and beyond and firmly established
Naples as the pizza capitol of the world. (Check Naples weather.)
Actually, the idea of using bread as a plate came from the Greeks, who ate plakuntos,
flat round breads, baked with various simple toppings like oil, garlic, onion,
and herbs. The Romans enhanced the dish with finer ingredients and called it
placenta. The tomato came to Italy from Mexico and Peru through Spain in the
16th century as an ornamental plant first thought to be poisonous but finally
used in Neopolitan cuisine in the eighteenth century. True mozzarella is made
from the milk of the water buffalo imported from India in the 7th century and
was not widely available as a cheese product in Southern Italy and Campania
until the second half of the eighteenth century. By then, the word "pizza"
had evolved from "picea", the southern corruption of the Latin adjective
which described the black tar-like coating underneath the placenta as a result
of burning ashes, and "piza". Until about 1830, pizza was sold from
open-air stands and street vendors, but then the world's first true pizzeria,
Antica Pizzeria Port' Alba, opened in Naples and is still in business today
at Via Port'Alba 18!
Pizza migrated to America with the Italians in the latter half of the 19th century. By the turn of the century, the Italian immigrants had begun to open their own bakeries and were selling groceries as well as pizza. Gennaro Lombardi opened the first true U.S. pizzeria in 1905 in New York City at 53 1/3 Spring Street (Lombardi's is reopened today at 32 Spring Street). Neapolitan Totonno Pero immigrated to New York from Naples and as a teenager worked for Lombardi. Pero opened Totonno's, a coal-oven pizzeria in Brooklyn, in 1924 originally on West 15th Street in Coney Island and now on West 16th Street. (Totonno's holds the record for the oldest continuous pizzeria in business in the U.S.)
It wasn't until after World War II when returning GI's created a nationwide demand for the pizza they had eaten and loved in Italy that pizza went public.
The world's best and unarguably the most authentic pizza is Pizza Napoletana (Neapolitan Pizza), which maintains its preeminence through the quality of the local products - herbs, garlic, and tomatoes grown in the volcanic ash of Vesuvius and fresh mozzarella - and the artistry of the pizzaioli, the pizza makers. (Read Burton Anderson's "Pizza Napoletana" in his Treasures of the Italian Table, pp.125-149.) The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana sets down the rules for ingredients, dough, and cooking by which its member pizzerias must abide. Simply stated, dough is made only with flour, natural yeast or brewers yeast, salt and water. Dough must be kneaded by hand or mixers which do not cause the dough to overheat, and the dough must be punched down and shaped by hand. The oven must be a wood burning oven and structured in a bell shape and of special brick with the floor of the pizza oven constructed of volcanic stone. The cooking of the pizza must take place on the surface of the oven and not in any pan or container with oven temperatures reaching at least 750-800° F.
Pizza is perfect for improvisation and in this day and age is not limited to the flat round Neapolitan type. It's also deep-dish pizza, stuffed pizza, stuffed crust pizza, pizza pockets, pizza turnovers, rolled pizza, pizza-on-a-stick, pizza strudel, pizza wrap, toaster pizza, grilled pizza, etc., all with combinations of sauce, cheese, and toppings limited only by one's inventiveness. However, the best pizza still comes from the individual pizzaiolo who prepares his yeast dough and ingredients daily and heats his oven for hours before baking the first pizza. So fire up your oven and discover the fun of making homemade gourmet pizza!