The history ofpizzais a declamatory pie — half Margherita and one-half lies .
The most famed story about its origins , in which the classic tri - colour Proto-Indo European was create to honor Queen Margherita of Savoy , is a work of fabrication . U.S. soldiers didnotfall in love with pizza pie en masse during their time agitate World War II and fetch it back to the States . And the pizza pie in New York is not adept because of the charming rap water .
The genuine , verifiable history of pizza is even cooler than the bunkum that often passes in its place . Let ’s take a look at some iconic pizza styles , arrest along the elbow room to nosh on slices of literal pizza history — from the time Kim Jong Il flew a pizzaiolo into North Korea to why some people mean the delicious dish ’s invention should be credited not to the Italians , but to the Greeks .
The Uncertain Origins of the Margherita pizza
In 2014 , newly - elected New York mayor Bill DeBlasio dress off a small outside incident when he was photographed eating his pizza with a knife andfork . Jon Stewart was one of many to come out against DeBlasio’stidy pick , call it “ the sterling sin a New Yorker can give . ” next Chief Executive Donald Trump was convict in the court of public persuasion forthe same cutlery crimeback in 2011 .
In DeBlasio ’s subject , he defended himself with an appeal to his Italian heritage , saying , “ In my patrimonial homeland , it ’s more distinctive to corrode with a fork and knife . ” sure enough enough , if you model down at a pizzeria inNaples , you ’ll be served an full-length Proto-Indo European and the silverware to eat it with .
Still , according to a YouGov poll convey in the wake of the ( mostly ) fake outrage over DeBlasio ’s dining riding habit , over 90 per centum of Americans corrode pizza with their hand . So , was the then - mayor wrong ? Right ?
The answer is both , and that ’s because pizza pie is at once internationally recognizable andcompletelyregional . That ’s why some people expect at a Hawaiian pie and see the greatest crime ever committed to leavened bread and others see a beautiful tarradiddle about in-migration , intercultural influence , and innovation ( or , at least , dejeuner ) .
Let ’s set off with the Neapolitan Proto-Indo European , from what is often call the provenience of pizza pie : Naples , Italy . That ’s where the Queen Margherita fib comes from . It supposedly took place in 1889 , at a pizza parlor that was once calledPietro e basta cosi , or “ Pietro and that ’s enough . ”
In the more dramatic reading of the legend , the Savoyard Queen of newly unified Italy helped bring the country together by eating the people ’s humble food — a food for thought that conveniently share a colour scheme with the pin that had rein different parts of the country since the late 18th 100 .
Sure enough , there oncewas apizzeria with that name , although the establishment — still making pies today — is now called Brandi . There was a Queen Margherita , too , and she might have had what we now call a Margherita Proto-Indo European . Pizzeria Brandi sure as shooting has a plaque on their wall that bear witness to the fact .
alas , the pizza pie now known as margherita prey this purportedly royal birth . As Neapolitan ( human , not pizza ) Giuseppe A. D’Angelo wrote for his websitePizza Dixit , we can find “ a pizza with tomato sauce , mozzarella , and basil ” in the 1853 bookUsi e Costumi di Napoli vitamin E contorni descritti e dipinti(Customs and Habits from Naples described and limn ) .
So maybe the pizza pie wasn’tinventedfor the Queen , but was appoint in her honor ? That may be so , but it ’s not clear it happened at Pizzeria Brandi . And if the name does escort back to 1889 , it did n’t exactly take the urban center by storm .
Even almost a hundred years after the Queen was purportedly honor with the pizza shoutout , it does n’t seem like everyone do it what the Margherita Proto-Indo European was , even in Naples . D’Angelo links to a 1967 RAI broadcast , in which a video reporter from Naplesseems confused about what a margherita pie is — he thinks it has an egg in the eye . The pizzaiolo , or pizza pie Lord , he ’s talking to has to clarify , “ There is indeed a pizza with the egg , but [ it ] is not called Margherita anymore . ”
We ’ll likely never know who devise the Margherita Proto-Indo European , or its humble sib , the Marinara — which is topped just with Lycopersicon esculentum , fossil oil , garlic , and salt ( though it often has oregano , and can be comparatively gussied up with anchovy ) .
The thing that micturate both label so catchy to get over is that pizza pie gens were n’t of necessity a thing back in the 19th one C . fit in to food historiographer Tommaso Esposito , up until the mid-20th one C , pizza were commonly consecrate by plainly listing the ingredients you wanted on top . Esposito wrote a leger all about pizza songs ( yes , that ’s a thing ) from the sixteenth hundred up until 1966 and find that none of the songs mentioned specific pizza pie types by name . It ’s rightful that the absence of trial impression is not the same thing as the proof of absence , but it does seem notable that there ’s no write track record of a Margherita pizzabeing called “ Margherita ” in the late 19th- or early 20th - century .
As evidence for their claim , Pizzeria Brandi steer to aroyal letterpurportedly written by Galli Camillo , the “ Head of the Table of the Royal Household . ” That missive , though , never refer to any fussy pizza ’s name ; it certainly does n’t utilise the phrasepizza Margherita . It also might be a counterfeit , according to a objet d’art by the Umbra Institute ’s Zachary Nowak . There ’s no grounds of the varsity letter in majestic records , and it does n’t seem to match other sample distribution of Camillo ’s hand .
That ’s the affair about Neapolitan pizza , though : It sort of encourages fixation . The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana — or “ The reliable Neapolitan Pizza Association”—publishes a set of what it call International Regulations [ PDF ] . And they are n’t what you ’d call loosey - dopy .
The AVPN permits , in the dough of its licensed pizza - Almighty , a upper limit of 20 percent unconstipated flour , as fight back to their preferred 00 flour , which “ has an almost talcum - powder like appearance , white , fine and … altogether barren of bran or germ . ” They set aside a 7 percentage point range of mountains in dough hydration and have thoughts about your P / L ( “ the balancebetweendough elasticity and malleability ” ) , your fermentation process , and your tomatoes ( which preferably come from one of three places in Italy ) . They are interested in only two type of pizza pie — Margherita and Marinara .
Let ’s touch on that second style briefly . There are several popular stories for its name , which is Italian for “ mariner”—so , it presumably signify something like “ leghorn stylus . ” Oneexplanationsays that ’s because crewman could lend the ingredients on long journeys . Anotherstorysays that it was due to the humble ingredients , which even low - paid sailor could afford . Whether that ’s truthful or not , it charge to pizza pie ’s longtime role as a highly low-cost repast . Pizza in Italy likely started as an soft - to - make , cheapofferingfrom baker , who could quickly fudge up the childlike dough and then sell it on the street for penny .
What Makes a Pizza a Pizza
Neither of those two famous Neapolitan pie variety show would have been possible without tomatoes . They first look in Italian cookbooks in thelate seventeenth century , but were introduced to the continent a century in the first place by the Spanish .
When we believe of pizza pie today , tomatoes — a crop the Aztecs had introduced to the Spanish — often seem like an of the essence ingredient . The Oxford English Dictionary , in fact , definespizza as a dough “ baked with a topping of tomatoes , cheese , and any of various other ingredients . ”
Anyone who ’s ever had a white Proto-Indo European might blanche at that definition . The OED in reality acknowledges , in an postscript , that some types of pizza pie omit one or both of the tomatoes and cheese .
That almost sure includes the first pizzas ever called “ pizza pie . ” There ’s a written criminal record from Gaeta , about 60 nautical mile up the seashore from Naples , dating back to the end of the 1st millennium CE . It place out an understanding in which someone owes a local bishop 12 pizzas every Christmas andEaster Sunday . The close tomatoes , at that point , were across the Atlantic Ocean .
We do n’t have any way to know exactly what that proto - pizza look or try like , but consider what the simplest interlingual rendition of a pre - Columbian - Exchange pizza might imply : a dim-witted Mediterranean flatbread . Kind of like … a pocket bread .
Plentyofsourcesthink this is no accident , and draw a linguistic line straight frompitatopizza . That ’s not the only potential etymology for the word , though . Some exact it come from the Germanic Lombards , associate to their wordbizzo , or “ chomp . ” A 1907 Italian etymology book ties it topinza , which meant something like “ clamp . ” Whichever is genuine , there ’s something revealing about the pocket bread / pizza similarity .
People around the world have been have flatbreads of one type or another for thousands of years . The cultivation of grains like wheat isinextricably linkedto the rise of civilization , and it does n’t take a Little Caesar to put some tasty morsels on top of whatever simple bread you ’ve got around .
If we define pizza as a flatbread with toppings , we can imagine it being “ cook up ” more or less independently by the Ancient Greeks , Egyptians , andNatufians(from modern - daylight Jordan , who were evidently get moolah more than 14,000 yr ago ) . It ’s difficult to say how , precisely , it ended up in Naples , but — in a provisional nod towards the pita / pizza pie surmisal — the Italian citywasoriginally establish by the Greeks , who establish it the nameNeapolisaround 600 BCE .
From Figs to Canned Pineapple
In Italy today , you may find different versions of Lycopersicon esculentum - less and/or cheese - less pizza pie . The most famous may be the Roman pizza bianca , which looks a stack like focaccia staff of life . It ’s prepare otherwise thanfocaccia , though , and falsify in a hotter oven ; it ’s also said to have cheekiness that ’s lighter and crunchier than traditional pizza pie crust .
Pizza bianca is often carve up in one-half and stuffed with tasty pick like mortadella , cheese , or veg . The mind of putting something delicious inside a pizza pie - like lolly likely go steady back thousands of twelvemonth . According to Franceso Duscio’sLa Romanesca , enslaved people in Ancient Rome used fig for this use .
Figs might seem like an unpaired choice for a poverty food for thought , but if you ’ve ever had a neighbour with a Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya tree diagram , you ’ll sympathise how they could grow to beabundanton Roman streets , which they reportedly were in antiquity . Even today , there ’s an Italian expression , mica pizza e fichi — literally , “ not pizza pie and figs”—that can be used to say something is valuable , or not totally simple .
finally , pizza pie with figs became popular beyond those who ate it out of economic requisite . Wealthier eaters deck the childlike dish with prosciutto , creating a new variation that harkens back to pizza pie ’s historical origin and persist popular today . Its flavors are a subject in contrast : The sugar in the figs antagonise the fat of the ham , creating a delicious , piquant - sugared synergism — the same form that can be found in a Hawaiian pie . And while fresh figs and delicious prosciutto might sound a little more appealing than canned pineapple and American ham , the similarities between the two salty / angelic Proto-Indo European should , perhaps , cause culinary snob to reconsider their pizza prejudice .
The Hawaiian pie was contrive in 1962 , harmonise to most accounts , by Sam Panopoulos , a restaurateur livelihood inOntario . Sam was in the beginning from Greece , and the gravy holder he get out on intercept , as luck would have it , in Naples , where he first became acquaint with pizza . Panopoulos did not then spend old age perfecting a perfectly veritable Neapolitan pie . His restaurants were n’t pizzerias at all — they serve middle - of - the - road fare like burger andpancakes . Pizza , especially the Hawaiian pizza , was offered as a room to stand out from the crew , to institute in commercial enterprise .
At the time , pizza pie did n’t have much of a visibility in Canada . As Panopoulossaid , “ Even Toronto did n’t know anything about pizza pie in those days . The only place you could have pizza pie was in Detroit . ”
Detroit to Chicago Deep Dish and Beyond
Gus Guerra is sometimes looked at as the sire of Detroit - style pizza , which is said to day of the month back to the 1940s . ADetroit pielooks a tidy sum like Sicilian , but , according to custom , is “ baked in a blue steel goat god like the ones that used to hold nuts and bolts in auto manufacturing plants . ”
Whether or not Detroit - style pizzerias continue to apply that nod to the metropolis ’s automobile industry , the idealistic Detroit pie has a lighter moolah than its Chicago counterpart and crispy cheese around the side . That delightful border is the outcome of the Malva sylvestris — often a “ Wisconsin brick cheese”—being besprinkle over the dough , edge - to - boundary . It then caramelizes in the oven .
Chicago - trend pizza is usually traced back to1943 , at Pizzeria Uno . The super - chintzy pie cooked for up to an hour and made use of a richly - sided , buttery “ pastry dough shell cheekiness . ” extra fat is put up by the olive oil that the pizza is generally cooked in , creating a sort of fried outer crunch . To protect the cheese during that long baking sentence , the Proto-Indo European is usually manufacture with the sauce on top of the mozzarella .
A dissimilar approach to that same long Captain James Cook time may have given usOhio Valley - fashion pizza . One of its delineate features is the last - moment addition of cold toppings , including cheese .
Chicago - style pizza is sometimes call “ deep dishful ” pizza . But even though it ’s cooked in a genus Pan , it ’s not usually call in “ pan pizza pie . ” That distinction belongs to its thick - crust cousin , which by and large couch the cheese backon top of the sauce . If that sounds a little bit like something you could get at Pizza Hut , that ’s no accident . The mountain range helped popularize what is often call genus Pan pizza today . chum Dan and Frank Carney start their chain inWichita , Kansas , during the middle of the old one C .
All of these thick pizza have a connection — if not historic , than at least spectral — with what many in the States call Sicilian pizza pie . That hearty pie seems to go down from Siciliansfincione , a mozzarella - free offering that is still popular in Sicily today . It ’s usually go past with tomatoes and onions and can also let in anchovies and gratedcaciocavallocheese . Sfincione translates to something like “ thick leech . ”
The so - called “ Sicilian pie ” in places like New York seems to be the result of immigrants from Sicily let tawdry access to mozzarella , perhaps determine by theirNeapolitan neighbour .
On the opposite end of the impudence continuum , there’sSt . Louis - flair pizza . This version uses an unraised dough , creating a nippy , cracker like texture . It ’s ordinarily topped with Provel , a processed cheese that combine timbre of provolone , swiss , and cheddar . rather of big square slices or familiar Triangle , St. Louis pie are often turn off “ tavern flair , ” a quick - to - contribution presentation that can be found throughout the Midwest .
And , of class , the United States is n’t the only placeItalian immigrantshave influenced the local cuisine . In Argentina , people eat fugazza con queso , a pizza pie with onion plant and cheese whose name come from a version of the wordfocaccia .
In Italy , you’re able to orderpizza montanara , a fried variation on Neapolitan - style . Pizzaiolos deteriorate the unvarnished clams into hot petroleum to fry up , take it out , top it , and then finish it rapidly in a traditional oven .
That ’s not to be confuse with pizza fritta , which is wide availablein Naples . In this version of fried pizza pie , the non - dough ingredients are n’t topping , butfillings . Everything gets folded into the kale and then fried up . Many say this variation come about , or at least got popular , duringfoodshortages of World War II , as a way to make otherwise - unsuitable ingredient palatable .
Popular Pizza Myths, Debunked
Those solid food shortages , accidentally , are why expert are dubious about the popular folk history that says pizza became popular in America after Gi tried it during the warfare . As food historiographer Simone Cinotto said , “ There were no ingredients for making pizza pie and many of the oven were actually destroyed by the bombings . ”
Most American servicemennever end up on theItalian mainland , and would most belike have had to sample pizza pie in struggle - ravaged Naples , since it was n’t popular throughout the country . That ’s not an impossibility , but plausibly not the primary causa of pizza ’s world - wide mastery in the next half - century . Sure enough , in 1947 — two year after the war had concluded — The New York Timeslamented , “ The pizza pie could be as democratic a snack as the hamburger if Americans only knew more about it . ”
In the case of pizza fritta , the war and its attendant challenge may have contribute to the stunner ’s spread , but it certainly was n’t the first deep-fried bread in Italian culinary art . There are examples dating back to the 1500s , include an former interpretation of zeppole , which can be sweet or savory .
Anyone who ’s been to the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy knows that New Yorkers happily adopted zeppole . And , of course , they put their own spin on pizza pie .
Lombardi ’s is often call the United States ’ first pizzeria . Gennaro Lombardi open it in Little Italy backin 1905 , grant to the restaurant ’s internet site . Lombardi , like most of the first American pizzaiolos , learned his craft in Naples . So how did New York prepare its own signature tune style ?
accord toSerious Eats , technology played a big part . Early 20th century New York pizza pie parlors used coal - burn down ovens , which could hit the kind of rip - roaring temperatures found in Naples ’s wood - burn down analogues . They had the added benefit of saving quad and money , since they burned more expeditiously . The result was not an precise reverberation of Neapolitan pizza pie , but was close enough that it was generally serve in the same fashion — in whole pies — and run through forthwith .
When Italian American immigrant Frank Mastro acquire and began successfully betray a gas - burn pizza pie oven a few decades later , its temperature maxed out around 550 degree Fahrenheit , as opposed to the 800 degree or more achievable with ember and Natalie Wood . The outcome is a slower - baking Proto-Indo European that dries out more . It might not have the fugacious airiness of a great Neapolitan Proto-Indo European , but that desiccant pizza does have a long ledge life . As pizza pie historiographer Scott Wiener said , “ Pizza by the slice is — has to be — reheated most of the time . So that oven is a big deal . ” In the ensuing decades , iconic slice shop set about to proliferate throughout the five boroughs , and eventually throughout the land .
Though the oven may bring a big role in New York - dash pizza pie , the water — despite what you might hear — probably does n’t . People say that New York pat piss hold in the utter amount of trace minerals to create an idealistic dough . There ’s actually a certain amount of logic to this claim : relatively balmy body of water , like New York ’s , can taste different than hard water , and element like calcium and magnesium can theoretically impact the gluten structure in dough , creating a tougher final product .
In practice , though , when J. Kenji López - Alt designed a semi - scientific experiment to test the effect of weewee hardness on the quality of pizza dough , he found no direct relationship between total dissolved solids in the water system andfinal cheekiness quality .
The “ magical New York tap water ” hypothesis also takes a strike when you take into account the incredible pizza pie you’re able to get in locations as far - flung as Naples , Italy , and Phoenix , Arizona . The latter is where Chris Bianco open his first renownedpizzeria , helping to set off a nationwide interest in Neapolitan ( sometimes dubbed Neo - Neapolitan ) pizza pie made with high - quality element in wood - raise ovens . In 2003 , Bianco became thefirst pizzaioloto win the James Beard Award for Best Chef Southwest .
About 15 months later , BBC Radio 3 documented a very unlike purity bestowed upon a pizza pie maker andculinary instructornamed Ermanno Furlanis . He was fly from Italy to North Korea , under rather opaque portion , to teach military officeholder about making pizza pie . It ’s arduous to severally reassert the detail of Furlanis ’s account , for obvious reasons , but it is dependable that North Korea ’s then - Supreme Leader , Kim Jong Il , was known to be a trencherman — he actually opened the shortage - ravaged country’sfirst pizzeriain 2009 .
Furlanis ’s story include one incident in which his attentive educatee even call for to look the act of olive on one of his PIE and measure the distance between them . It ’s a funny item , with potentially sinister socio - political undertones . But , in a way , measuring olive distance is n’t so far remove from the quest for authenticity that unnumberable Captain James Cook have put themselves through .
“Authentic” Pizza
Today , the position of some people in thefood worldtowards “ authenticity ” is one of reservation , if not outright rejection . The notion of “ authentic ” can be slippy , given how much food and the manner we refer to it is always changing . But pizza speaks simultaneously to both sides of this public debate .
On the one hand , it took a sound disrespect of tradition to invent delicious newfangled creations like cryptic dish pizza , or even a clean Proto-Indo European with prosciutto and fig . But on the other hand , there ’s something beautiful about spend countless time of day tinkering with just a few variable quantity to make the perfectly veritable Neapolitan pie — even if we know that the rather strict definition of an unquestionable Neapolitan Proto-Indo European was invented by a non - profit organization foundedin 1984 .
Even stripped down to its core constituent , no two twenty-four hours for a pizzaiolo are ever the same . The barm is alive ; the fire might as well be . Temperature and humidness change . In this context , authenticityhas the potential to be more than an out-of-date marketing buzzword ; it can refer to the meditative act of paying attention , of pursuing perfection , of extend to for an nonpareil that might only live in your own brain .
Some of the expert pizza in New York today can be find at Lucali , in Carroll Gardens , Brooklyn . Pies there begin at $ 30 a pop . In Naples , meanwhile , an equally delicious offering can be purchased for about $ 6 .
Part of that deviation can be attributed to substantial estate : a two - bedroom flat on the same block as Lucali deal in 2021 for almost $ 1.5 million ; a likewise - sized position in Naples can go for a quarter of the Mary Leontyne Price . Part of it come down to cookery elan : a true Neapolitan pie is made from a ball of dough between 200 and 280 grams and top meagerly . When aNew York Timeswriter weighed a individual fade from Ray ’s of Greenwich Village , it clocked in at about 240 gramme .
Lucali was started by Mark Iacono , a Brooklyn - born marble prole who had never made pizza professionally or even been to Italy before heopened his shop . It ’s honest that the high prices at Lucali owe a debt to in effect , no - frills merchandising , and presumptively unpaid celebrity secondment from the likes of Beyoncé and David Beckham . But Iacono , for all his plaudits , seems caught between two world . His pizza pie is much alright - dining , and yet he once said , “ A unspoiled New York fade trump every sort of pizza . ”
Iacono ’s love for the small slice is no - doubt genuine , but to accomplish the form of pizza beau ideal he ’s still churning out requires the variety of monastic devotion heavy pizzaiolos around the world have long - exhibited . After he contract his letting , it take Iacono more than two year of practicing his craftiness , in namelessness , before he felt he was quick to spread up to the public .
His delicious unpatterned pie look up — indirectly , tangentially , almost mythically — to the most traditional Neapolitan pizza , but he does n’t call it a Margherita because , as a 2015 visibility in theNew York Timessaid , “ Carroll Gardens is n’t Naples . ”
Neapolitanisthe one honest pizza . Andthere is no true pizza . A plain pie should be a simple , low-cost , working class food for thought . Andit should be celebrated for its prowess and appreciate accordingly . Half - margherita , half lie .
