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The History
of Pizza
Like living
things, pizza has evolved into its current form
very gradually. It bears the mark of many ancient
cultures centered around the Mediterranean sea. If
you're looking for a simplified review of the
history of pizza, try the outline below. If you
want more detail, try the longer
review
that follows this outline.
- Ancient
Greeks ate a flat, baked bread with assorted
toppings called plankuntos. This
flatbread may have been a derivative of
something Babylonians ate in earlier
centuries.
- While
originally thought to be poisonous, Spaniards
who had been to Mexico and Peru introduced the
tomato to Italy in the 16th century.
- The original
mozzarella cheese was made from the milk of
Indian water buffalo in the 7th century. It was
introduced to Italy in the 18th
century.
- The world's
first true pizzeria may have been "Antica
Pizzeria Port'Alba" which opened in 1830 and is
still in business today at Via Port'Alba 18 in
Naples.
- Italian and
Greek peasants ate earlier forms of pizza for
several centuries before it became a hit among
aristocracy. In 1889, a Neapolitan named Rafaele
Esposito prepared pizza for King Umberto I and
Queen Margherita, who apparently loved
it.
- An Italian
immigrant named Gennaro Lombardi opened the
first U.S. pizzeria in 1895 in New York
City.
- Pizza is now
consumed all over the world, though travelers
are often amazed by how different cultures have
adapted pizza to their own
preferences.
The
History of Pizza In Detail
It's kind of
silly to talk about anyone "inventing" pizza. Pizza
has undergone a very slow process of evolution over
the centuries, but it is quite certainly the
cultures of the Mediterranean that deserve credit
for creating it. Historical records suggest that
people in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome all ate
things that are very similar to our modern pizza
crust. Ancient Egyptians had a custom of
celebrating the Pharaoh's birthday with a flat
bread seasoned with herbs, and Herodotus, a Greek
historian described Babylonian recipes that are
very similar to contemporary pizza crust. The word
pizza may be a derivative of the Latin word
picea, a word which the Romans used to
describe the blackening of bread in an
oven.
PREDECESSORS
OF PIZZA IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Pizza most
clearly took the form that we are now familiar with
in pre-Renaissance Naples, a large city in central
Italy. Poor peasants used their limited ingredients
(wheat flour, olive oil, lard, cheese and natural
herbs) to make a seasoned, flat bread garnished
with cheese. Mozzarella cheese was one benefit of
an invasion from Asian peoples, who brought the
water buffalo to Italy. Today, the best mozzarella
cheese is still made from water buffalo
milk.
The word
pizza, as it is currently spelled, also
emerged some time in the Middle Ages. It was used
to describe both sweet and salty pies that were
becoming increasingly popular among Italian
aristocracy.
THE FEARED
AMERICAN TOMATO
Europeans
returning from Peru and Mexico brought with them
what was originally thought to be a very poisonous
fruit: the tomato. Precisely how they decided that
the tomato was actually edible is unclear, but as
Southern Europeans overcame their suspicions, the
tomato became enormously popular. Today, of course,
the tomato is a crucial component of Mediterranean
cuisine, and is still used in most pizza
recipes.
NAPLES BECOMES
THE PIZZA CAPITOL OF THE WORLD
Naples gradually
assumed its reputation as having the finest pizza
in Italy throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. In
the 19th century, pizza became a popular fast
food.
Before pizzerias
became very popular, however, street vendors
(typically young boys) walked around the city with
small tin stoves on their heads, calling out to
attract customers. While undoubtedly uncomfortable
for these 19th-century delivery boys, this
street-vending method made pizza ever-more popular,
and paved the way for the opening of the world's
first pizzeria.
The world's first
true pizzeria, "Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba", opened
in 1830 and is still in business today at Via
Port'Alba 18 in Naples. Pizzerias in this era
usually included a large brick oven, a marble
counter where the crust was prepared, and a shelf
lined with ingredients. Contemporary Neapolitan
pizzerias are prepared in the same way they were
100 years ago. The large brick ovens make the
pizzerias uncomfortably hot in every season except
winter, but the unique flavor of these brick-oven
pizzas is unmatched. Pizzaioli (makers of pizza)
often assemble the entire pizza on a marble counter
right before the customer's eyes.
Some writers have
considered the pizza an invention of the man who is
responsible for making it an international
phenomenon (but the fact that this man worked in
a pizzeria makes it difficult to call him the
father of pizza!). In 1889, Rafaele Esposito of the
Pizzeria di Pietro e Basta Cosi (now called
Pizzeria Brandi) baked pizza especially for the
visit of King Umberto I and Queen Margherita. To
make the pizza a little more patriotic-looking,
Esposito used red tomato sauce, white mozzarella
cheese and green basil leaves as toppings. Queen
Margherita loved the pizza, and what eventually
became Pizza Margherita has since become an
international standard. Pizzeria Brandi, now more
than 200 years old, still proudly displays a royal
thank-you note signed by Galli Camillo, "head of
the table of the royal household", dated June
1889.
Neapolitan pizza
is still widely regarded as the best in the world,
probably because of the fresh ingredients available
to Neapolitan pizzerias: herbs, garlic, and
tomatoes grown in the rich volcanic ash of
Vesuvius, and fresh mozzarella from water buffalo
milk.
Today, the
Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (the
Association of True Neapolitan Pizza) maintains
strict member guidelines for ingredients, dough,
and cooking. This elite organization maintains that
pizza dough must be 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. Also, only wood-burning,
bell-shaped brick ovens are permitted in pizzerias
that belong to this organization. The pizza must be
cooked on the surface of the oven (often made of
volcanic stone), and not in any pan or container,
with oven temperatures reaching at least
400-430° C (750-800° F). These ovens
often have to heat up for hours before the first
pizza is cooked.
PAYING FOR
YOUR PIZZA
Always in the
history, pizza was a business, in fact, as times
went on, it has always followed the fluctations of
the money market, as stokes do. For example, if the
price of "pizza and CECENIELLI" (little anchovies)
was falling down, it was a sign of good catch. If
oil pizza cost more, it meant that the
olive-harvest hadn' t been satisfactory. If you
didn' t even have the modest amount to secure
yourself a pizza, you could obtain different forms
of credit. For example, they granted a credit
untill the drawing of the lottery day, in the
unadvised hope that someone of the neighbourhood
won so as to be able to pay pizza for
everybody.
Or while waiting
for the weekly pay, they gave you pizza "this day
week".
In other words,
pizza which you ate in that day, was to be paid
within a week.
It happened that
the Napolitan every day ate a pizza and every day
paid for one : in this way the debt became
everlasting and the "pizzaiolo" knew it ; nowadays
pizza "this day week" is disappeared. Neither is
there the pedlar, only the pizza-places still
remain. But even these have undergone the
inevitable transformation during the years : the
white tiles and the tables with the marble tops
have been substituted by the white wash walls and
the formica tables. Today they are fashion and
refined places.
Etymology
of the name
From the Latin
word "puls" (pap, little pap) derives the Italian
word "polenta, polentina" (pudding of maize, little
pudding); this kind of pudding was the main food of
all ancient Italic populations as they had been for
prehistoric men and it' s from this kneaded and
cooked mush that our pizza derives. The word PIZZA
would come out from PINSA, past participle of the
Latin verb PINSERE, which means to pound, to crush,
to press, to crumble, to gring, to reduce sthg. to
pulp.
In Roman times
pizza, or flat bread, was called with different
names : Laganum (Horace and Acipius) Tractum (Cato)
Placenta (Cato and Horace) Libum (Cato) Moretum
(Virgilius and Apicius) Picea (Horace)
From Latin : Puls
(pap, little pap) Pultes (little pudding) Pinsere
(to pound, to crush) Pinsa (flat bread)
From Greek :
Pitta (pitch) Picea Pincea Pinsa Piza
Pizza
Thus Pizza could
also mean flour flat bread, but in the dictionaries
we can find many synonyms : crostata (tart), offa
(spelt cake), piccia, stiacciata, schiacciata (flat
bread), sfogliata (puff-pastry), focaccia
(bun).
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