The Origin of Pizza

Pizza and pizza-like creations are common throughout Italy, and a number of regions claim the honor of having invented pizza in the first place. Not that pizza's invention could ever be proven -- the idea of slipping a flattened disk of dough graced with a topping into a hot oven and baking it quickly is amazingly simple, and many people must have come up with it independently.

Indeed, in a post to It.Hobby.Cucina, the Italian general cooking newsgroup, RoDante da Fano traces pizza's origins from Ancient Egypt to Imperial Rome, where there were a number of different kinds of flat baked breads with a variety of sweet or salty toppings, and goes on to say that the descendents of these proto-pizzas were common throughout the peninsula in the 1700s. In 1835, he continues, Alexandre Dumas noted in his diary that "in Naples pizza is flavored with oil, lard, tallow, cheese, tomato, or anchovies…" Other chroniclers listed other common toppings, also noting that pizza was a cheap food that Neapolitans ate for breakfast or lunch; in the 1870s things stabilized to a degree, when a Neapolitan pizzaiolo created the Margherita, which he named after Italy's beautiful queen, by sprinkling a few fresh basil leaves over a pizza topped with mozzarella and tomato -- red, white and green, the national colors.

The Margherita is still the most popular pizza today, perhaps because it's simple, light and tasty. It's also, in some ways, a better foil for the pizzaiolo's skill than some a pizza with a more elaborate toppings, because what little there is has to be perfect: Well-risen well-turned dough; mozzarella di bufala, made from the milk of the water buffaloes that are raised around Naples; good light tomato sauce; good extra virgin olive oil; and fresh basil. Ideally it should be baked in a wood-fired oven, whose hot floor will rapidly crisp the dough.

At home, a pizza stone can take the place of the terracotta floor of the wood-fired oven, and one can substitute the mozzarella di bufala with mozzarella fiordilatte made from cow's milk (as do most Italian pizzerias). The important thing is that you use good quality ingredients, and make your pizza with care.