History of Pizza

Pizza

 The history of pizza began in antiquity, as various ancient cultures produced flatbreads with several toppings. Pizza today is an Italian dish with a flat dough-based base and toppings, with significant Italian roots in history.

A precursor of pizza was probably the focaccia, a flatbread known to the Romans as panis focacius, to which toppings were then added. Modern pizza evolved from similar flatbread dishes in Naples, Italy, between the 16th and mid-18th century.

The word pizza was first documented in 997 CE in Gaeta and successively in different parts of central and southern Italy. Furthermore, the Etymological Dictionary of the Italian Language explains the word pizza as coming from dialectal pinza, 'clamp', as in modern Italian pinze, 'pliers, pincers, tongs, forceps'. Their origin is from Latin pinsere, 'to pound, stamp'.

Orgin 

A fresco depicting an "adorea" style flat bread with various ingredients, from Pompeii

An illustration of a Roman bread shop. In the top right corner, a smaller flatbread can be seen with a crust-like border. Such breads would have served as mensa ('table') breads for additional toppings.

Foods similar to pizza have been prepared since ancient times. References to pizza-like dishes appear throughout early history.

In the 6th century BCE, Persian soldiers serving under Darius the Great baked flatbreads with cheese and dates on top of their battle shields.

In ancient Greece, citizens made a flatbread called plakous (πλακοῦς, gen. πλακοῦντος – plakountos) which was flavored with toppings such as herbs, onion, cheese, and garlic. Another term for this type of flatbread was placentae (a term for pastries of flour, cheese, oil, and honey). They are mentioned by Athenaeus of Naucratis, a 2nd-century grammarian, who writes that they were topped with fruit puree called coulis and used as sacrificial offerings.

One example of a Roman bread that was covered with numerous toppings (such as cheese spreads called moretum, and fruits) was called adorea or libum adoreum. These flat breads were made with wheat, honey, and oil. A painting of this ancient Roman food was found at Pompeii.

Modern reconstruction of Roman bread, and moretum (herb cheese spread)

Examples of other flatbreads that survive to this day from the ancient Mediterranean world include focaccia (which may date back as far as the ancient Etruscans); manakish in the Levant, coca (which has sweet and savory varieties) from Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands; the Greek pita; lepinja in the Balkans; and piadina in the Romagna part of the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy.

llustration from a manuscript of the Decameron depicting galettes, c. 1425 and 1450

By the late Medieval and early modern eras, flatbreads, cakes or pastries eaten with toppings, such as galettes and cocas, were common throughout the Mediterranean region. In 16th-century Naples, some galettes were referred to as "pizza"; it was known as a dish for poor people, particularly as street food, and was not considered a kitchen recipe until much later. It was not until the Spanish brought the tomato from the Americas and developed the modern tomato that "pizzas" in their modern conception were invented. It is said that the tomato reached the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, when it was part of the Spanish Empire, through either Pedro Álvarez de Toledo in the 16th century or viceroy Manuel de Amat, who may have gifted some seeds to the Neapolitans in 1770 on behalf of the Viceroyalty of Peru. At some point the tomato began to be consumed with flatbreads, although it was not then known as a singular named dish.[citation needed]

Similar foods

Furthermore, throughout Europe, there are many similar foods based on the idea of covering flat bread or pastry with different toppings, such as Alsatian flammkuchen, German zwiebelkuchen, French quiche, Chinese cōng jiānbǐng, and Sardinian pane carasau.[citation needed]

Other similar foods in other parts of the world include Chinese bing (a wheat flour-based Chinese food with a flattened or disk-like shape), Indian paratha (in which fat is incorporated), the Central and South Asian naan (leavened) and roti (unleavened), and Finnish rieska.[citation needed]

Modern era

1858 illustration of a pizzaiolo selling his wares

An illustration from 1830 of a pizzaiolo in Naples

In 1843, Alexandre Dumas described the diversity of pizza toppings.

An often recounted story holds that on June 11, 1889, to honour the queen consort of Italy, Margherita of Savoy, the Neapolitan pizza maker Raffaele Esposito created the "pizza Margherita", a pizza garnished with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil, to represent the national colors of Italy as on the flag of Italy. But the pizza Margherita already existed: "The most popular and famous pizzas from Naples were the 'Marinara', created in 1734, and the 'Margherita', which dates from 1796–1810. The latter was presented to the Queen of Italy upon her visit to Naples in 1889, specifically on account of the colour of its seasoning (tomato, mozzarella, and basil), which are reminiscent of the colours of the Italian flag." Later research casts further doubt on this legend, also undermining the authenticity of the letter of recognition, pointing that no media of the period reported about the supposed visit and that the story was first promoted in the 1930s–1940s.

In 1830, a certain "Riccio", had described a pizza with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil in the book Napoli, contorni e dintorni.

Emmanuele Rocco described in 1849 the main types of pizza, today called marinara, Margherita, and calzone in Francesco De Bourcard's second volume of Usi e costumi di Napoli e contorni descritti e dipinti

The most ordinary pizza, called coll'aglio e l'olio (lit. 'with garlic and oil'), is dressed with oil, and over it is spread, as well as salt, origanum and garlic cloves shredded minutely (optionally). Others can be covered in grated cheese and dressed with lard, and then they put on a few leaves of basil. Over the former is often added (depending on the region) some small seafish; on the latter some thin slices of mozzarella. Sometimes they use slices of prosciutto, tomato, arselle, etc. Sometimes folding the dough over itself to form what is called calzone.

 Francesco de Bourcard, Usi e costumi di Napoli e contorni descritti e dipinti, Vol. II, p. 124

Slowly the flatbread with toppings started to be appreciated by all social classes, although initially it was produced by bakeries and meant to be eaten while walking. In the first decades of the 19th century this changed with the opening of the first pizzerias with tables in Naples. The first was Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba in 1830, followed by the opening of Le stanze di Piazza Carità (today Mattozzi) by Antonio la Vecchia in largo della Carità in 1833. The scholar and minister of public instruction Francesco de Sanctis describes the latter in his memoirs as the place he used to go eat pizza with his friends when he was 16

In the evening we sometimes went to eat pizza in the stanze at largo della Carità.

Francesco De Sanctis, La giovinezza di Francesco de Sanctis: frammento autobiografico, p. 39

Pizza evolved into a variety of bread and tomato dish often served with cheese. Until the late 19th or early 20th century, the dish was often sweet, not exclusively savory, and earlier versions that were savory resembled the flatbreads now known as schiacciata. Pellegrino Artusi's classic early-20th-century cookbook, La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene gives three recipes for pizza, all of which are sweet. After the feedback of some readers, Artusi added a typed sheet in the 1911 edition (discovered by food historian Alberto Capatti), bound with the volume, with the recipe of pizza alla napoletana: mozzarella, tomatoes, anchovies, and mushrooms. By 1927, Ada Boni's first edition of Il talismano della felicità (a well-known Italian cookbook) includes a recipe using tomatoes and mozzarella.