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A History of Pizza
- potatofarmer45 7y ago"Some even had tomatoes on top. Only recently introduced from the Americas, these were still a curiosity, looked down upon by contemporary gourmets". Well that settles it. Next time a pizza traditionalist blasts me for having pineapple on my pizza, I'll counter that he shouldn't have tomatoes on theirs.
- SideburnsOfDoom 7y agoAnd the use of tomato paste or sauce underneath, rather than sliced tomato on top, seems to be an even later innovation.
- dotancohen 7y agoThis was done not for the taste, but so that the pizza could be prepared in advance of being served. The idea was that the tomato paste would not go bad or seep juices into the dough base. Its is actually a regression from a culinary standpoint.
- mattmar96 7y agoI disagree. Pizza sauce means more oppurtunity for culinary expression. Dont get me wrong, margherita is great, but to say pizza sauce is a regression is a bit silly IMO
- SamBam 7y agoThat's like saying pickles and preserves and fermented foods are a "culinary regression" because they were created to prevent fresh food from going bad. Something can be both practical and not a "regression."
- NCG_Mike 7y agoThere's a kind of pizza that I've had at a Turkish restaurant that comes without tomatoes. Really nice. I'd assume a common origin with the Italian variety via the Romans (ancient).
- SideburnsOfDoom 7y agoMany varieties of Italian pizza are "white pizza" / "pizza blanca" and have no tomatoes.
- manojlds 7y agoLike pesto ones too right.
- zeitg3ist 7y agoAs an Italian (not from Genoa though), pesto to me has always been just a pasta sauce, so I was very surprised to see it used on salads and pizzas abroad. But recently (in the last 2-3 years) I’ve seen quite a few Italian pizzerias (not the most traditional, of course) starting to use it as an alternative choice to the tomato sauce, or, sometimes, in place of the olive oil on top. Not sure if it’s a regional variation gone national or an influence from abroad... but if it’s the latter, no Italian would ever admit that :)
- SamBam 7y agoPesto is very rare on pizzas in Italy, as is chicken and many of the other things that are found in the US. (It's not bad, it's just that if you were looking for tomato-less pizza in Italy, you wouldn't find pesto.)
- clan 7y agoYes! It is called "pide". Wikipedia relates it to the pita - but I would describe it closer to as pizza as well. I find them in Turkish restaurants around here as well. They often look like this: http://loveantalya.com/turkish-pide-with-meat-filling-cheese-and-sucuk/ http://loveantalya.com/turkish-pide-with-meat-filling-cheese... Pizza-like but not pizza. I love them for what they are. But again I love any kind of pizza (Naples, Chicago, thin, thick, doughy etc.)
- benj111 7y agoWhen you say "pizza traditionalist" you seem to mean 'someone with functioning tastebuds'. :)
- ryanlol 7y agoWhy is it always pineapple in pizza? Why not lemon for example? I don’t understand the whole pineapple pizza lobby, it’s just not a particularly good fruit for pizza.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoThe contrasting taste of Pineapple and Ham does work well in my opinion.
- ryanlol 7y agoHave you tried lemon (somewhat caramelized) and ham? :P
- soperj 7y agoI've done mango, and it's pretty good. I could see lemon being nice. Dried Fig is also great on pizza.
- 98codes 7y agoIt's a question of ingredient quality. Most Hawaiian pizza is made with canned pineapple and thick-cut deli ham. Fresh pineapple and also any other pork aside from that ham is a big, big upgrade.
- Terr_ 7y agoYeah, that may have something to do with Hawaii as an island location, and what can easily be preserved, shipped, and stockpiled.
- ofrzeta 7y agoThough not strictly pizza Chris Bianco has lemon, rosemary and pecorino focaccia in his cookbook https://www.bakingsteel.com/blog/lemon-and-rosemary-focaccia https://www.bakingsteel.com/blog/lemon-and-rosemary-focaccia
- grumpydba 7y ago> Well that settles it. Next time a pizza traditionalist blasts me for having pineapple on my pizza, I'll counter that he shouldn't have tomatoes on theirs. I don't think it's a matter of tradition. It's a matter of taste.
- jgwil2 7y agoHave whatever pleases you, but for the life of me I will never understand corn on pizza.
- SideburnsOfDoom 7y agoBy co-incidence I saw this on twitter today: > A beautifully preserved thermopolium (cook shop), one of the places in #Pompeii where one could purchase hot and ready-to-eat food. Most Romans resided in insulae and did not have facilities to cook at home and relied on thermopolia to buy their hot meals. (photo) https://twitter.com/carolemadge/status/1184381800656920577 https://twitter.com/carolemadge/status/1184381800656920577 The baking ovens in Pompei are - of course - wood-fired brick structures with domed tops on the inside. Like a pizza oven. http://www.pompeiin.com/en/Bakeries_in_Pompeii.html http://www.pompeiin.com/en/Bakeries_in_Pompeii.html I would be completely unsurprised if there is an unbroken lineage from these shops (in other towns that were not obliterated by Vesuvius) through to Pizzerias in present-day Napoli.
- seapunk 7y agoHappy to see a reference about the pineapple pizza invention.
- dr_dshiv 7y agoBoo, no mention of New Haven's early contribution. Not that I'm biased (I am, they have the best pizza in the world, objectively speaking, of course) http://www.ctvisit.com/articles/new-haven-apizza-history http://www.ctvisit.com/articles/new-haven-apizza-history
- zeitg3ist 7y agoThe pizza on that page looks extremely greasy and - most importantly - burned! Hope it's not representative of New Haven pizza in general.
- ReptileMan 7y agoI have eaten those style of pizza. They are tasty. Not everything must be Neapolitan to be edible. I think it may depends on local ingredients - since Italy has amazing ones it is just a matter of putting simple toppings with minimal heat processing not to fuck them up and serve. If there were no good local substitutes you have to pump up the grease and toast the ingredients a bit more to make it flavorful enough.
- zeitg3ist 7y agoOh I know it can be tasty, I have eaten my fair share of greasy pizzas too. And I’m not saying neapolitan is the only possible pizza style, although in my opinion it’s the best one. Neapolitan is actually charred on the crust too, but it’s not that extreme - the crust from the pizza above is basically coal... Don’t get me wrong, I would eat it anyway (maybe skipping the crust), but it definitely doesn’t look like a “best in the world” pizza. As for the ingredients, I’m not sure why Italy would have inherently better local ingredients. I can understand why northern Europe has shitty tomatoes (too cold to grow compared to, for example, southern Italy), but with its size, population and diversity of climates I imagine you can grow pretty much anything in the US at a decent quality, without the need to grease stuff to give it flavor.
- ReptileMan 7y ago
- lordnacho 7y agoThe abomination created by putting pineapple on pizza is either Canadian or German: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_pizza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_pizza Dig a bit more and it seems the German claim is a bit stronger. The postwar years were difficult in Europe.
- grull 7y agoAlways ze Germans :) https://www.kialo.com/does-pineapple-belong-on-pizza-10104 https://www.kialo.com/does-pineapple-belong-on-pizza-10104
- greggman2 7y agoI'm pretty sure tuna and corn on pizza is a German thing too.
- dotancohen 7y agoIt should be noted that the original idea for pizza is that anything available would be thrown on top. So the Germans may have popularized the tuna and corn, but in effect the original pizzas would have had those thrown on if they had been common in Naples at the time.
- ThePadawan 7y agoI'm sorely disappointed about the English language Wikipedia article on Toast Hawaii. Yes, it was a post-war German invention, but it was also so much more than that. Just the fact that the German-language article [0] has a three-paragraph section "Reception" should tell you that. It's a symbol of post-war economic growth that a household could afford both ham and cheese and exotic fruit for a single meal. It didn't matter that it taste that nice. Neither do many other meals that only serve to demonstrate the wealth of the host. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toast_Hawaii https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toast_Hawaii
- SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago> ihn 1955 in Deutschland erstmals vorstellte. So it would be an anachronism in scene set in 1953 Germany?
- mikekchar 7y agoQuick note: caciocavello is not horse milk cheese. It's a pasta filata cheese (stretched curd cheese) that is aged. It's formed into jug shaped cheeses with a string tied to the top to age it. Normally there are 2 cheeses tied to either end of the string and you hang them. It's called "cavello" (horse) because you could put it on horse back with one cheese on either side of the horse. It's essentially a drier version of mozzarella, though (very similar to Italian provalone). Edit: non-sensical sentence
- cloudify 7y agoIt's actually: - "cavallo" (horse) - "caciocavallo" (cheese) - "provolone" (cheese)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- fmajid 7y agoIn Lee Iacocca's memoirs, he recalls how kids in school bullied him and taunted him for eating pizza, calling it "Dago food". Now it's America's #1 food, but the change was within living memory.
- dfxm12 7y agoWere they taunting him because he was eating pizza or because he was part of the "other" group with a funny name?
- leksak 7y agoHas "vulkanpizza" (volcano-pizza) spread to other countries outside of Sweden yet? https://imgs.aftonbladet-cdn.se/v2/images/ce5c799d-dfe7-46e7-b5a6-3b82d521ec1a?fit=crop&h=713&q=50&w=960&s=c76b10318295fa28685c569fd3d17ccb70c7584d https://imgs.aftonbladet-cdn.se/v2/images/ce5c799d-dfe7-46e7...
- midgetjones 7y agoI sincerely hope not
- barry-cotter 7y agoThat looks delicious but it’s not pizza.
- leksak 7y agoWe also have the calskrove (Calzone + skrovmål) which is a hamburger baked into a Calzone: https://www.thelocal.se/userdata/images/article/c963e09e3d272eb8786f4285edc5ec39180b725e2d2051691fcabf2548a55499.jpg https://www.thelocal.se/userdata/images/article/c963e09e3d27...
- tigershark 7y agoWhy on earth???
- barry-cotter 7y agoSame reason Scots deep fry Snickers bars, because it seemed like a great idea to some drunk and then they woke up and remembered it was delicious.
- davis_m 7y agoHow does one eat that?
- dexterdog 7y ago
- m-i-l 7y agoDon't know how true it is, or whether it is a modern invention, but the story goes that the pizza created for Margherita of Savoy had basil, mozzarella and tomatoes to represent the 3 colours on the national flag of Italy (green, white and red).
- L_226 7y agoWhen I was in Naples a few weeks ago I was told that the Margherita variant was created by the wife of the chef who added a single basil leaf onto the completed pizza. This pizza was served to the royal couple, where the queen (Margherita) was so taken by the creation that the chef decided to name it in her honour. Also, the flag of Italy was only adopted in the mid 1940's, and Queen Margherita was around about 100 years earlier.
- SamBam 7y agoThe red, white and green were commonly used as the Italian colors from the end of the 1700s.[1] Queen Margherita was born in 1850. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_colours_of_Italy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_colours_of_Italy
- m-i-l 7y agoAccording to the original article, the Margherita pizza was invented after Italian Reunification: "All that changed after Italian unification. While on a visit to Naples in 1889..." I'm not a vexillologist (expert on flags) but looking at the historical flags at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Italian_flags#Unification_and_Kingdom_of_Italy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Italian_flags#Unificat... there are many from 1889 that have the green, white and red, e.g. the state flag of the Kingdom of Italy from 1861. So I think the story is plausible, although that doesn't necessarily mean it is true or didn't come after the event.
- L_226 7y agoFair enough, I stand corrected.
- wirrbel 7y agoThere is a lot of mysticism over the origin of Pizza. In fact, it's probably a very straightforward kind of dish that probably has been invented multiple times, of course with varying toppings and maybe a few other differing ideals. Basically if you have a wooden oven to bake bread, baking is risky. If the oven is too hot, the bread will become burnt before being thoroughly baked within, if you put it in too late, the heat will not be enough. So how do you, as a baker (or farmer baking for your own supply) test whether the oven has the right temperature? You trial-run with very thin patches of dough, that you can pull out easily and are always done inside, when the outside is nicely burnt: a kind of flat bread. Putting stuff on top of the flat bread and making it your snack on baking day is just a logical conclusion. In fact, around here, there are several regional dishes similar to a pizza serving this purpose. Flammkuchen from Alsace, and Denede from Swabia. The village where I work still has preserved (and renovated recently) a "Backhaus", a common oven of the village that would be fired regularly and then used by all villagers to bake their own bread. Did they triage the heat of the fired oven by putting in a small piece of dough? probably. Did they put stuff on top of that piece? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised.
- lqet 7y agoThis. My great-grandmothers all used to bake bread in the village Backhaus once a week, and the oven temperature was always checked by baking something pizza-like, for example a crude Salzkuchen [0], which is basically a very thin Quiche, or just a flat portion of dough which was eaten without or with a cold topping. I guess that basically every culture which developed baking skills has one or multiple dishes which resemble a Pizza. [0] http://www.ebbi-world.de/brot/salz-kuchen-stueck.jpg http://www.ebbi-world.de/brot/salz-kuchen-stueck.jpg
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- blacksmith_tb 7y agoFlatbreads are of course very, very common all over the world. Anywhere that people had access to grain they would have been standard, though yeasted ones mostly require wheat (or rye). Just from baking myself I would say that some of the appeal is not having to wait for multiple risings, punching down, and kneading - just mix flour, water, yeast, and throw it in a hot oven to have fresh bread in a few minutes.
- goatinaboat 7y agoHere in Wales pizza was originally known as “Italian rarebit” and some still call it that. The best pizza I’ve ever had was from a van in a lay-by off the A470, the “Route 66” of Wales.
- momentmaker 7y agoThis documentary is very interesting about a man's obsession with pizza: Scott's Pizza Tours https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5252674/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5252674/
- rmason 7y agoWhen I was a kid in the summer my dad would take me with him for the day on his sales route. One of my favorite places for us to stop for lunch was Detroit's first pizzeria. When it opened in the late thirties pizza was totally unknown in Detroit. The founder was an immigrant from Naples. An Italian friend of my father's introduced him to the place and he took my Mother there on one of their first dates. The owner and his wife were by then good friends of my Dad and it was almost like being in someone's kitchen, if things were slow they'd sit at the table with us.
- ravenwren 7y agoPizza is the only thing all of my family can ever agree on to eat! To now know the history of pizza will be a good conversation starter next dinner together.