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| Pizza: From Ancient Times To The New Era | | Date Added: April 14, 2010 04:52:00 AM |
| Pizza is an oven-cooked, flat, disc-shaped bread generally covered with tomato sauce and mozzarella and a selection of meats, salamis, seafood, cheeses, vegetables and herbs depending upon one's taste and culture.
Pizza has been around since antiquity in various types and decorated with nuts, raisin, herbs, honey or olives.
The word pizza in Italian denotes any type of flat bread or pie - fried or cooked. Although there are a great many kinds of pizza in the Mediterranean area, it is Naples that witnessed the appearance of pizza first, after the tomato became a popular ingredient in the XVIII century. The first records of pizza appeared around 1000. Pizzas were baked on the open fire and sometimes were folded in the form of a calzone.
The first pizzerias were opened in Naples. They were installed with brick wood-burning ovens which were heated with lava stones from Mount Vesuvius. The chefs of those times neglected pizza as a dish, since it was a poor people's main dish. Nevertheless, when pizzas covered with tomato appeared at the end of the XVIII century, pizza increased in popularity even among the royalties. The speedily growing popularity of pizza was vividly depicted in the Neapolitan folklore. Simple to cook and economical, it grew into a favorite dish of the nation.
A famous episode extended the popularity of pizza over the borders of Naples. Italian Queen Margherita visited the city in 1889. She was told about pizza and wanted to taste it. Famous cook Don Raffaele assisted by his wife Donna Rosa was asked to bake pizza in the royal palace. They cooked three pizzas characteristic of that time: one with basil and cheese; one with tomato, oil and garlic; and one with mozzarella, basil and tomato. The queen stirred by the colors of the third pizza which resembled the national flag preferred it to the other two. This kind of pizza was called Pizza Margherita.
At the outset of the XX century, the first pizzerias appeared in the USA because of a huge number of Italian immigrants, and became very popular. Nevertheless, even now the best pizza is cooked in Naples. |
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