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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, who in 1889
created a pizza especially for the visit of Italian King Umberto and Queen
Margherita. The pizza, named Pizza Margherita after the queen, was very
patriotic and resembled the Italian flag with its colors of red (tomatoes),
white (mozzarella cheese), and green (basil), and got rave reviews. It set
the standard by which today's pizza evolved. The idea of using bread as a
plate came from the Greeks, who ate flat round bread (plankuntos) baked with
an assortment of toppings. The tomato came to Italy from Mexico and Peru
through Spain in the 16th century as an ornamental plant first thought to be
poisonous. True mozzarella is made from the milk of the water buffalo
imported from India to Campania in the 7th century. So the Neopolitan baker,
as the saying goes, put it all together. Also, in 1830 the world's first
true pizzeria, Antica Pizzeria Port' Alba in Naples, opened and is still in
business today!
Pizza migrated to
America with the Italians. Gennaro Lombardi opened the first U.S. pizzeria
in 1905 in New York City at 53 1/3 Spring Street, but 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. For many, their
first recollection of pizza is homemade "box" pizza (Chef Boyardee) with
canned pizza sauce and parmesan cheese. In the late 1950's, Shakey's and
various other mass production pizza parlors appeared and further popularized
pizza.
Pizza in this day and
age is not limited to the flat round type. It's also deep-dish pizza,
stuffed pizza, pizza pockets, pizza turnovers, rolled pizza,
pizza-on-a-stick, pizza strudel, 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, a pizza baker, who prepares
his yeast dough and ingredients daily and heats his oven for hours before
baking the first pizza.
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