Home > Encyclopedia of Food & Culture > Pizza

PIZZA. Although it is one of the world's simplest and most popular foods, pizza is oddly difficult to define. Centuries of evolution have transformed it from the patties made of mashed grains that were its earliest antecedents into a dish that, though related to those early grain cakes, is almost unrecognizable as their descendant. Most significant is the change in the primary ingredient, from various coarse grains to a solely wheat-based dough, and eventually to a dish made almost exclusively with white flour.

However, though pizza has taken many forms, and its composition, toppings, seasonings, methods of preparation, and the equipment used to make it have altered radically over the years, it has usually been a flatbread baked at high temperatures.

Early History of Pizza

For millennia, pizza, a food of various origins and multiple styles, has played an important role in the diet of those who inhabited the land now called Italy. Neolithic nomads, the Etruscans from the North, and the Greeks from southern regions were the three earliest societies to develop pizza prototypes, for example, focaccia. Each group made small adaptations that changed the original product into a slightly more refined dish.

As early as the Stone Age, Neolithic hunter-gatherer tribal groups foraged throughout what would become Italy for wild grains, among them wheat varieties such as emmer and einkorn, as well as barley. Commonly first soaked or boiled, these grains were mashed into pastes and cooked on hot stones over open fires.

Later, around 1000 B.C.E., the Etruscans, a people of uncertain origin, introduced their flatbread to Northern Italy. Like the Neolithic tribes before them, the Etruscans pounded their grains. However, unlike their predecessors, the Etruscans baked their mash on stones and buried the stones in the ashes, creating smoky tasting bread. They further elaborated on the primitive Neolithic flatbread by seasoning the mash with oil and herbs after baking it. Though little more than rough slabs of cooked grain, these Etruscan flatbreads, among the earliest forms of this type of food documented, were often used as dough "plates" in lieu of dishes.

The Greeks, who had superior baking skills and technology, further advanced and elaborated on pizza during their 600-year (730–130 B.C.E.) occupation of the southern areas of the Italian peninsula. Like their predecessors, they produced a grain-based mash, but instead of placing the toppings on the cooked breads, they placed them on the raw dough prior to baking, perhaps to ensure a more highly flavored dish. Plakuntos, for example, flat, round breads, were made with various simple toppings, among them oil, garlic, onion, and herbs. Additional Greek contributions included the use of ovens, instead of open fires, and the development of kneading, which produced a more digestible bread. Evelyne Sloman highlights early excerpts from Plato's Republic that refer to meals created from barley flour kneaded and cooked into "cakes" with olives and cheese (Sloman, 1984, p. 5).

Although it is not firmly established, many also credit the Greeks with improving on the knowledge of leavening agents that came down to them from the Egyptians, and then introducing yeast into their own flatbreads. The Greeks also added a raised rim to the outside of their dough circles, to stabilize their dough "plates," making them easier to hold, and, perhaps, even helping to keep the toppings in place.

Much later, the Romans combined the Etruscan and Greek techniques to create the pizza antecedent most like the pizza known today. They valued the intense heat the Etruscans achieved by baking their flatbreads below the fire, and they appreciated the Greek idea of preseasoning the dough. They also modified the Greek plakuntos. Known to them by the Latin term placenta, their adapted bread, though still round, was topped with cheese and baked on a wood-burning hearth. Laganum, a light, thin wafer bread, was also cooked on the hearth.

If the Greeks and Etruscans were primarily responsible for creating the prototypes of what was to become pizza, and the ancient Romans were responsible for improving it, it was largely the Neapolitans who brought it fame. Probably not coincidentally, the Neapolitans were responsible for the addition of the ingredient most commonly associated with pizza today—the tomato.

No one is sure of the precise reason, but it took well over two centuries from the time the New World tomato was introduced to the continent of Europe during the Columbian food exchange for Neapolitans, and various other inhabitants of the peninsula, to begin consuming tomatoes in quantity.

There are several theories about why adoption of a fruit that has almost come to symbolize Italian cuisine took so long. One argues that it was because tomatoes were believed to be poisonous, another that the earliest tomatoes were inferior and, therefore, eaten only in modest amounts until quality improved enough to make the fruit genuinely popular. In the area of Naples, for example, a key moment appears to have come in the middle of the eighteenth century with the development of a pleasing, large, and sweet tomato. The fruit quickly became the mainstay of Neapolitan pizza toppings.

It was also around this time, during the era of Bourbon King Ferdinando I and Queen Maria Carolina, whose empire included Naples, that one of the earliest pizza legends took root. In one version of the story, the queen (Marie Antoinette's sister and the daughter of Empress Maria Teresa of Austria) is said to have been described by the king as having "common tastes," apparently a quality thought to explain her love of pizza, a dish of the people. It is, however, a measure of the confounding nature of pizza lore that in a variant of the story, it is the king who relishes pizza and the refined queen who does not understand his passion.

Whichever of their majesties was the real enthusiast, the object of desire was probably flavored with lard (a less expensive alternative to oil), tomatoes, salt, and sometimes tiny eels, anchovies, or sardines. Over time, craving for this pie became so great that either the king, to gratify his wife's yearning, or the queen, to gratify the king's hunger, had a pizza oven built at the Capodimonte palace, so they could make the dish at home, an act that brought the pie even more attention. Pizza became the fashion, and other nobles followed suit, building pizza ovens where they lived.

However, it was not until 1889, a time when yet another ingredient is purported to have become part of the equation, that pizza began its march toward wide celebrity. It was then that inspiration is said to have struck Raffaele Esposito, a noted Neapolitan pizzaiolo (pizza chef), who decided to pay homage to Queen Margherita and King Umberto I of Savoia, the ruling house of Italy, by adding mozzarella to the traditional tomato and basil pie. The combination of red, white, and green suggested the colors of the Italian flag and saluted the United Kingdom of Italy, a gesture that for patriotic reasons is said to have made the pie a favorite of the queen.

Though most stories of origin give Esposito credit for adding cheese and thereby inventing the tri-color pizza, still known as Pizza Margherita, others deny it, believing that mozzarella had been used earlier. There is no doubt, however, that Esposito popularized the "made for each other" combination of cheese, dough, and tomato that produced a dish even more delicious than before, thereby setting the modest pie on a course to fame that he could never have imagined.

In Italy today, pizza exists in a number of regional styles, of which two of the most famous are the Neapolitan and the Roman. Both schools knead the dough, but pizza alla Napoletana is round, has a high border, takes diverse toppings, and is generally sold in pizzerias, while pizza alla Romana, also called pizza bianca, is more or less rectangular, often as much as a meter long, topped only with oil and salt, and sold by weight, primarily in bakeries and groceries, according to the size of the piece requested. Many other regions of Italy—Sicily, for example—also have distinctive versions of pizza. However, the popularity of the dish has meant that the styles are not always confined to the geographical areas in which they were created. Neapolitan-style pizza, for example, can be found in many places in Italy, as can Pizza alla Romana.

The Birth of the Pizzeria

From the beginning, pizza was rarely prepared at home because few people had the skill to stretch the dough properly or the money to build a wood-fired oven in which to bake it. Consequently, it was almost always bought from small stalls or from pizza sellers carrying their aromatic wares through the crowded Neapolitan streets. Some more elaborate open-air pizza stands offered slightly more upscale options, along with makeshift seating, but it was not until 1830 that the first documented pizzeria, that is, an inexpensive gathering place specializing in pizza and equipped with wood burning stoves, began doing business in Naples. It was called Port'Alba. Still in operation, its opening marked the birth of a style of eating establishment now known around the world.

The notion of a pizzeria as a fast-paced, economical restaurant has continued. In fact, the institution of the pizzeria is as critical to its vast global appeal as the food itself is.

The Development of Pizza as an American Icon

Although pizza is not exclusively Italian in origin, there is no question that from a cultural standpoint, it is an iconic food of Italy. Italians "own" this delicacy. Nevertheless, pizza in the United States may also be considered an icon food, perhaps even more so than in the land of its birth. The dish has become an American institution—embracing food-on-the-run, corporate enterprise, and American ingenuity, and it may fairly be said to be as representative of American foodways, food customs, and food choices as it is of Italian ones.

Pizza arrived in the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century, along with a wave of largely southern Italian immigrants. Soon many of those immigrants were making their livelihood operating bakeries and groceries where they sold pizza alongside produce and staple ingredients.

The first real American pizzeria, opened in New York City in 1905 by Gennaro Lombardi, was located in

Manhattan, at 53⅓ Spring Street. As with other early pizzerias, the clientele was composed predominantly of southern Italian immigrants, who wanted to eat their own dishes in a familiar and homey atmosphere. However, after World War II, when GIs returned from Italy well acquainted with pizza and other Italian foods, they forged a new and growing market for those foods.

As is the case with so many other traditional Italian foods, pizza underwent significant changes in the United States. Thanks to the American postwar emphasis on excess and increased portion size, as well, possibly, as the desire of poor Italian immigrants to eat more copiously than they had been able to do at home, the delicate Neapolitan pizza was transformed. Formerly lightly embellished with tomatoes and other toppings, it was increasingly laden with an abundance of meats and cheese, sometimes creating slices weighing close to a pound.

Other differences developed in the United States, too. The pie acquired regional American styles, New York, Chicago, California, and New Haven the best known among them. New York pizza is cheesy and gooey, with a high, dense border and medium-thick crust; it can be bought by the slice or whole. California style has a very thin crust, adorned with an array of toppings unlikely to be found in Italy, ranging from goat cheese to tandoori chicken, to moo shu pork or bacon with pineapples. Chicago style is "deep dish," prepared in a pan, and based on a thick-crust pizza. New Haven style is somewhat similar to New York pizza, but is known especially for its white clams.

In addition to the regional pizzas available in the United States, ethnic variations exist. Because the costs of opening a pizzeria are relatively low compared with those of opening a more formal restaurant, the business of pizzerias has long attracted immigrants. In addition, because pizza seems to be a blank slate inviting adaptation, Arabs, Chileans, Israelis, Greeks, Indians, and a diversity of other pizzeria owners often serve ethnicized versions next to traditional Italian pies. Depending on ownership, the menu may offer curried double-crust pizza, or pizza topped with feta cheese, or falafel. (It should also be noted that the same process occurs abroad. Pizza flourishes in Tokyo, Shanghai, Tel Aviv, Moscow, and other cities around the world.Though still associated with Italy or, perhaps, even the United States, the pizza itself often bears minimal resemblance to the original dish.)

Once a handcrafted art form, pizza in America (and often elsewhere) is now mass-produced by an overabundance of pizza chains that incorporate the technological advances featured in the monthly print-and-on-line trade journal Pizza Today. In 1951, just ten years after the Minneapolis-based members of the Totino family founded one of the first Midwestern pizzerias, that family initiated the frozen pizza business. In 1953, 100,000 stores were offering refrigerated or frozen pizza (Trager, 1966, p. 544), and at least 15,000 pizzerias similar to the Totino original were operating in the United States. Shakey's opened in 1954, Pizza Hut in 1958, Little Caesar's in 1959, and Domino's in 1960. In 1973, perhaps cashing in on the American attraction to anything French, Stouffer's introduced frozen French bread pizza.

In 1982, the California chef Wolfgang Puck joined the California food revolution and introduced his super thin–crusted, "designer" pizzas, featuring among other choices, a smoked salmon variety. This marked the beginning of the "anything goes" upscale and innovative pizza, completely characteristic of quintessentially American iconic foodways.

See also Bread; Icon Foods; Italy; Take-out Food; United States: Ethnic Cuisines.

Jennifer Berg Cara De Silva