Pizza

Napolitan Pizza

Definition

Pizza is the name of an oven-baked, flat, usually round bread covered with tomato sauce and cheese with other toppings left optional. While originating as a part of Neapolitan cuisine, the dish has become popular in different parts of the world.

Various toppings may be added, most typically:

•sauce, traditionally tomato-based but pesto, alfredo, barbecue sauce, and occasionally even ketchup are also common.

•cheese, traditionally mozzarella but often provolone or a blend of other cheeses

•herbs and seasonings such as basil, oregano, and garlic

•vegetables such as artichoke hearts, bell peppers, eggplant, olives, onions, spinach, asparagus, broccoli, and sweetcorn

•meat or seafood such as sausage (especially pepperoni or salami), ham, bacon, ground beef, anchovies, chicken, tuna, and shrimp

•Other common toppings include mushrooms, tomatoes, and pineapple.

The bread base is traditionally plain, but may also be seasoned with butter, garlic, or herbs, or stuffed with cheese. In some pizza recipes the tomato sauce is omitted (termed “white pizza”), or replaced with another sauce (usually garlic butter but sauces can also be made with spinach or onions). Pizza is normally eaten hot (typically at lunch or dinner), but leftovers are often eaten the next day for breakfast or as a snack.

A restaurant that serves pizza is called a pizzeria (from Italian). The phrase “pizza parlor” is also used in the United States and Canada. Pizza can also be purchased in grocery stores or supermarkets (usually, but not always, frozen); in many countries, pizza can also be ordered by telephone (or, increasingly, via the Internet) to be delivered, hot and ready to eat, to almost any address within range of the restaurant.

Bases and baking method

The bread base of the pizza (called the “crust” in the United States) may vary widely according to style: thin as in hand-tossed pizza or Roman pizza, thick as in pan pizza, or very thick as in Chicago-style pizza.

In restaurants, pizza can be baked in a gas canister (stone bricks above the heat source) oven, an electric deck oven, a conveyor belt oven or, in the case of more expensive restaurants, a wood- or coal-fired brick oven. On deck ovens, the pizza can be slid into the oven on a long paddle called a peel and baked directly on the hot bricks or baked on a screen (a round metal grate, typically aluminum). When making pizza at home, it can be baked on a “pizza stone” in a regular oven to imitate the effect of a brick oven. Another option is grilled pizza, in which the crust is baked directly on a barbecue grill. Greek pizza, like Chicago-style pizza, is baked in a pan rather than directly on the bricks of the pizza oven.

In home-made pizza, there are many variations on the bread used for crust. In some countries, creations such as pita pizza, bagel pizza, matzo pizza and tortilla pizza are popular, especially with children. In Japan, where full-size ovens are a rarity in the home, pizza toast is a popular version.

Frozen Pizza

Pizza is also found in supermarkets as a frozen food. A considerable amount of food technology ingenuity has gone into the creation of palatable frozen pizza. The main challenges include preventing the sauce from combining with the dough and producing a crust that can be frozen and reheated without becoming rigid. Modified corn starch is commonly used as a moisture barrier between the sauce and crust. Traditionally the dough is somewhat pre-baked and other ingredients are also sometimes pre-cooked.

More recently, frozen pizza with completely raw ingredients have also begun to appear, as have those with a self rising crust.

Another form of uncooked pizza is available from take and bake pizzerias. This pizza is created fresh using raw ingredients, and then sold to customers who take it home and bake it in their own ovens and microwaves. Supermarkets also offer this service.

Italian and European law

In Italy there is a bill before Parliament to safeguard the traditional Italian pizza, specifying permissible ingredients and methods of processing (e.g., excluding frozen pizzas). Only pizzas which followed these guidelines could be called “traditional Italian pizzas”, at least in Italy.

Italy has also requested that the European Union safeguard some traditional Italian pizzas, such as “Margherita” and “marinara”. The European Union enacted a protected designation of origin system in the 1990s.

Types of Pizza

In the 20th century and onward, pizza has become an international food and the toppings can be extensively varied to meet local variations in taste. These pizzas consist of the same basic design but include an exceptionally diverse choice of ingredients, such as anchovies, egg, pineapple, banana, coconut, sauerkraut, eggplant, kimchi, lamb, couscous, chicken, fish, and shellfish, meats prepared in styles such as Moroccan lamb, shawarma or chicken tikka masala, and non-traditional spices such as curry and Thai sweet chili. Pizzas can also be made without meat for vegetarians and without cheese for vegans. Breakfast pizzas are topped with ingredients such as scrambled eggs. “Supreme” pizzas typically include a thick layer of many different toppings.

Pizza Style

• Neapolitan pizza (pizza Napoletana). Authentic Neapolitan pizzas are made with local ingredients like San Marzano tomatoes, which grow on the volcanic plains to the south of Mount Vesuvius and Mozzarella di Bufala Campana, made with the milk from water buffalo raised in the marshlands of Campania and Lazio in a semi-wild state (this mozzarella is protected with its own European Protected designation of origin). According to the rules proposed by the Associazione vera pizza napoletana, the genuine Neapolitan pizza dough consists of Italian wheat flour (type 0 and/or 00), natural Neapolitan yeast or brewer’s yeast, salt and water. For proper results, strong flour with high protein content (as used for bread-making rather than cakes) must be used. The dough must be kneaded by hand or with a low-speed mixer. After the rising process, the dough must be formed by hand without the help of a rolling pin or other mechanical device, and may be no more than 3 mm (1/8 in) thick. The pizza must be baked for 60–90 seconds in a 485 °C (905 °F) stone oven with an oak-wood fire. When cooked, it should be soft and fragrant. Neapolitan pizza has gained the status of “guaranteed traditional specialty” in Italy. This admits only three official variants:

ü Pizza marinara: with tomato, garlic, oregano and extra virgin olive oil (although most Neapolitan pizzerias also add basil to the marinara);

ü Pizza Margherita: tomato, sliced mozzarella, basil and extra virgin olive oil;

ü Pizza Margherita Extra: tomato, buffalo mozzarella from Campania in fillets, basil and extra virgin olive oil.

• Lazio style: Pizza in Lazio (Rome), as well as in many other parts of Italy is available in 2 different “flavors”: 1) In take-away shops so-called “Pizza Rustica” or “Pizza a Taglio“. Pizza is cooked in long, rectangular baking pans and relatively thick (1-2 cm). The crust similar to that of an English muffin and mostly cooked in an electric oven. When purchased, it is usually cut with scissors or knife and priced by weight. 2) In Pizza Restaurants (Pizzerias), where it is served in a dish in its traditional round shape, it features a very thin crust compared to Neapolitan recipe. It is mostly cooked in a wood-fired oven which gives pizza its unique flavor and texture. In Rome a “Pizza Napoletana” is topped with tomato, mozzarella, anchovies and oil (thus, what in Naples is called “Pizza Romana“, in Rome is called “Pizza Napoletana“).
• Pizza Romana (in Naples): tomato, mozzarella, anchovies, oregano, oil;
• Pizza Viennese: tomato, mozzarella, German sausage, oregano, oil;
• Pizza Capricciosa (“Capricious Pizza”): mozzarella, tomato, mushrooms, artichokes, cooked ham, olives, oil (in Rome raw ham is used and half a hard-boiled egg is added);
• Pizza Quattro Stagioni (“Four Seasons Pizza”): same ingredients for the Capricciosa, but ingredients not mixed;
• Pizza Quattro Formaggi (“Four Cheese Pizza”): tomatoes, mozzarella, stracchino, fontina, gorgonzola (sometimes ricotta can be swapped for one of the last three);
• Sicilian-style pizza has its toppings baked directly into the crust. An authentic recipe uses neither cheese nor anchovies. Sicilian Pizza in the United States is typically a different variety of product made with a thick crust characterized by a rectangular shape and topped with tomato sauce and cheese (and optional toppings). Pizza Hut’s Sicilian Pizza, introduced in 1994, is not an authentic example of the style as only garlic, basil, and oregano are mixed into the crust;
• White pizza (pizza bianca) uses no tomato sauce, often substituting pesto or dairy products such as sour cream. Most commonly, especially on the East Coast of the United States, the toppings consist only of mozzarella and ricotta cheese drizzled with olive oil and spices like fresh basil and garlic. In Rome, the term pizza bianca refers to a type of bread topped only with olive oil. It’s also a Roman style, to top the white pizza with figs, called Pizza e fichi (Pizza with figs);
• Ripieno or Calzone is a pizza in the form of a half moon, sometimes filled with ricotta, salami and mozzarella; it can be either fried or oven baked.

U.S Style and Specialty

Due to the wide influence of Italian and Greek immigrants in American culture, the United States has developed quite a large number of regional forms of pizza, many bearing only a casual resemblance to the Italian original. During the latter half of the 20th century, pizza in the United States became an iconic dish of considerable popularity, and may have contributed to the decline of the British pie heritage previously common in American cuisine.

• The most Americanized style of pizza is the classic pepperoni pizza. It is made with classic pizza dough and marinara sauce, topped with mozzarella and cheddar cheese. A layer of pepperoni is then applied and the pizza is then cooked. The thickness of the crust depends on what the consumer prefers; many people consume pepperoni pizza with thick and thin crust.
• New York-style pizza is a style originally developed in New York City, where pizza is often sold in oversized, thin and flexible slices. It is traditionally hand-tossed, moderate on sauce, and moderately covered with cheese essentially amounting to a much larger version of the Neapolitan style. The slices are sometimes eaten folded in half, or even stacked, as its size and flexibility may otherwise make it unwieldy to eat by hand. This style of pizza tends to dominate the Northeastern states and is very similar to the basic style common through the United States and known simply as pizza. It is often referred to as pan-style pizza, but note that Pizza Hut’s “Pan Pizza” is a thick-crust variety. Many pizza establishments in the New York metropolitan area offer two varieties of pizza: “Neapolitan”, or “regular”, made with a relatively thin, circular crust and served in wedge-shaped slices, and “Sicilian”, or “square”, made with a thicker, rectangular crust and served in large, rectangular slices.
• Chicago-style pizza, or Chicago-style deep dish pizza, contains a crust which is formed up the sides of a deep-dish pan. It reverses the order of ingredients, using crust, cheese, filling, and then sauce on top. Some versions (usually referred to as “stuffed”) have two layers of crust with the sauce on top. Deep-dish pizza was purportedly invented and first served in 1943 at Pizzeria Uno, which is still operating along with its twin restaurant, Pizzeria Due, in the River North neighborhood.
• Chicago-style thin crust pizza has a thinner crust than Chicago-style deep dish, and is baked flat rather than in a deep dish pan. The crust is thin and firm enough to have a noticeable crunch, unlike a New York-style pizza, yet thick enough to be soft and doughy on the top. The crust is invariably topped with a liberal quantity of southern-Italian style tomato sauce, which is usually quite herbal or highly spiced, and typically contains no visible chunks of tomato. Next, a layer of toppings is added, and a layer of mozzarella cheese which frequently separates from the bottom crust due to the quantity of tomato sauce. Chicago-style thin crust pizzas are cut into three- or four-inch squares, also known as “party cut,” as opposed to a “pie cut” into wedges. The small size of the squares makes it unnecessary to fold the slices. Chicago-style pizza is prevalent throughout the Midwestern USA. Chains that are well known for Chicago-style thin crust pizza are Home Run Inn and Old Chicago.
• St. Louis-style pizza is a thin-crust style of pizza popular in and around St. Louis, Missouri. The most notable characteristic of St. Louis-style pizza is the distinctively St. Louisan Provel cheese used instead of (or rarely in addition to) the mozzarella common to Chicago-style thin crust. St. Louis-style pizza is customarily cut into squares.
• California-style pizza (often termed in the United States gourmet pizza) refers to pizza with non-traditional ingredients, especially those that use a considerable amount of fresh produce. A Thai-inspired chicken pizza with peanut sauce, bean sprouts, and shaved carrots is a popular variant in California-style pizza restaurants, as are pizzas that use chicken and barbecue sauce as toppings. The California Pizza Kitchen chain of restaurants was influential in popularizing this style.
• Greek pizza is a variation popular in New England; its name comes from it being typical of the style of pizzerias owned by Greek immigrants. It has a thicker, chewier crust and is baked in a pan in the pizza oven, instead of directly on the bricks. Plain olive oil is a common part of the topping. Variations in other parts of the country include using feta cheese, Kalamata olives, and Greek herbs such as oregano.
• Hawaiian pizza has Canadian Bacon and pineapple toppings with Mozzarella cheese. The Canadian Bacon can be substituted with slices of ham. This type of pizza is especially popular in the Western United States. Canadian Bacon and pineapple is also a popular topping combination in Australia, Canada and Sweden, but notably not in Hawaii. This type is also common within the EU as Pizza Hawaii
• Grilled pizza, invented in Providence, Rhode Island, uses a fairly thin crust cooked on a grill; the toppings are placed on the baked side after the pizza has cooked for a bit and flipped over.
• English muffin or French bread pizza and pizza bagel is a common convenience pizza made at home in an oven or toaster, usually with a simple topping of spaghetti sauce, sliced or shredded cheese, and perhaps pepperoni. French bread pizza is sometimes available commercially as a frozen meal.

History of Pizza

Origins

Bread is one of humankind’s oldest prepared foods and dates back at least to the neolithic. Records of people adding other ingredients to bread to make it more flavoursome can be found throughout ancient history. The Ancient Greeks, for example, had flat bread called “plakuntos” which was flavoured with various toppings like herbs, onion and garlic. It is also said that soldiers of the Persian King, Darius the Great (521-486 B.C.) baked a kind of bread flat upon their shields and then covered it with cheese and dates and in the 1st century BC, Virgil refers to the ancient idea of bread as an edible plate or “trencher” for other foods in this extract from the Aeneid:

Their homely fare dispatch’d, the hungry band

Invade their trenchers next, and soon devour,

Focaccia: an ancient Mediterranean flatbread.

To mend the scanty meal, their cakes of flour.

Ascanius this observ’d, and smiling said:

“See, we devour the plates on which we fed.”

These flatbreads, like pizza, are from the Mediterranean area and two examples of flat breads that survive to this day from the ancient mediterranean world are “focaccia” which may date back as far as the Ancient Etruscans and Greeks and “Pita”. Other flat breads with added toppings and ingredients are found throughout the world today like the Turkish “Pide“[1], the Indian “Paratha” and the German “Flammkuchen“.

The Pizza and Naples

The innovation which gave us the particular flat bread we call “pizza” was the use of tomato as a topping. For some time after the tomato was brought to Europe from the Americas in the 16th century, it was believed by many Europeans to be poisonous (as are some other fruits of the nightshade family). However, by the late 18th century it was common for the poor of the area around Naples to add tomato to their yeast-based flat bread and so the pizza was born. The dish gained in popularity and Pizza became a tourist attraction as visitors to Naples ventured into the poorer areas of the city to try the local specialty.

Until about 1830, pizza was sold from open-air stands and street vendors out of pizza bakeries. Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba in Naples is widely regarded as the world’s first pizzeria. They started producing pizzas for peddlers in 1738 but expanded to a pizza restaurant with chairs and tables in 1830 and still serve pizza from the same premises today. A description of pizza in Naples around 1830 is given by the French writer and food expert Alexandre Dumas, père in his work Le Corricolo, Chapter VIII. He writes that pizza was the only food of the humble people in Naples during winter, and that “in Naples pizza is flavored with oil, lard, tallow, cheese, tomato, or anchovies”.

The Neapolitans take their pizza very seriously. Purists, like the famous pizzeria “Da Michele” in Via C.Sersale (founded: 1870) consider there to be only two true pizzas – the “Marinara” and the “Margherita” and that is all they serve. The Marinara is the oldest and has a topping of tomato, oregano, garlic, extra virgin olive oil and usually basil. It was named “Marinara” not, as many believe, because it has seafood on it (it doesn’t) but because it was the food the fishermen ate when they returned home from fishing trips in the Bay of Naples. The Margherita is attributed to baker Raffaele Esposito. Esposito worked at the pizzeria “Pietro… e basta così” (literally “Peter… and that’s enough” which was established in 1780 and is still operating under the name “Pizzeria Brandi”). In 1889, he baked three different pizzas for the visit of King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Savoy. The Queen’s favorite was a pizza evoking the colors of the Italian flag – green (basil leaves), white (mozzarella), and red (tomatoes). This combination was named Pizza Margherita in her honor although the proprietors of Pizzeria Antica Port‘Alba maintain that the pizza Margherita had been around for a long time before it was named “Margherita” by Pizzeria Brandi.

The “Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana” (“True Neapolitan Pizza Association”), which was founded in 1984 and only recognises the Marinara and Margherita, has set the very specific rules that must be followed for an authentic Neapolitan pizza. These include that the pizza must be baked in a wood-fired, domed oven at 485C for no more than 60 to 90 seconds; that the base must be hand-kneaded and must not be rolled with a pin or prepared by any mechanical means and that the pizza must not exceed 35 cm in diameter or be more than a third of a cm thick at the centre. There are many famous pizzerias in Naples where these traditional pizzas can be found like Da Michele, Port’Alba, Brandi, Di Matteo, Sorbillo, Trianon and Luigi Lombardi Di Santa Chiara. Most of them are centred on the ancient historical centre of Naples. These pizzerias will go even further than the specified rules by, for example, only using “San Marzano” tomatoes grown on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius and only drizzling the olive oil in a clockwise direction. Another addition to the rules is the use of basil on the pizza marinara – it’s not in the “official” recipe but it is added by most Neapolitan pizzerias.

The pizza bases in Naples are soft and pliable but in Rome they prefer a thin and crispy base. Another popular form of pizza in Italy is “pizza al taglio” which is pizza baked in rectangular trays with a wide variety of toppings and sold by weight.

Pizza in the United States of America

Pizza first made its appearance in the United States with the arrival of Italian immigrants in the late 19th century. This was certainly the case in cities with large Italian populations, such as San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia where pizza was first sold on the streets of Italian neighborhoods. In late 19th century Chicago for example, pizza was introduced by a peddler who walked up and down Taylor Street with a metal washtub of pizzas on his head, crying his wares at two cents a chew. This was the traditional way pizza used to be sold in Naples, in copper cylindrical drums with false bottoms that were packed with charcoal from the oven to keep the pizzas hot. It wasn’t long until small cafes and groceries began offering pizzas to their Italian-American communities.

The first “official” pizzeria in America is disputable, but it is generally believed to have been founded by Gennaro Lombardi in Little Italy, Manhattan. Gennaro Lombardi opened a grocery store in 1897 which later was established as the first pizzeria in America in 1905 with New York’s issuance of the mercantile license. An employee of his, Antonio Totonno Pero, began making pizza for the store to sell that same year. The price for an entire pizza was five cents, but since many people couldn’t afford the cost of a whole pie, they could instead say how much they could pay and they were given a slice corresponding to the amount offered. In 1924, Totonno left Lombardi’s to open his own pizzeria on Coney Island called Totonno’s. While the original Lombardi’s closed its doors in 1984, it was reopened in 1994 just down the street and is run by Lombardi’s grandson.

Pizza was brought to the Trenton area of New Jersey very early as well with Joe’s Tomato Pies opening in 1910 followed soon by Papa’s Tomato Pies in 1912. In 1936, Delorenzo’s Tomato Pies was opened. While Joe’s Tomato Pies has recently closed, both Papa’s and Delorenzo’s have been run by the same families since their openings and remain among the most popular pizza’s in the area. Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana in New Haven, Connecticut, was another early pizzeria which opened in 1925 which is famous for its New Haven style Clam Pie. Frank Pepe’s nephew Sal Consiglio opened a competing store, Sally’s, across the street in 1938. Both establishments are still run by descendents of the original family. When Sal died, over 2000 people attended his wake, and the New York Times ran a half-page memoriam. The D’Amore family introduced pizza to Los Angeles in 1939.

Prior to the 1940s pizza consumption was limited mostly to Italian Immigrants and their descendants. The international breakthrough came after World War II. Allied troops occupying Italy, weary of their rations, were constantly on the lookout for good food. They discovered the pizzeria, and local bakers were hard pressed to satisfy the demand from the soldiers. The American troops involved in the Italian campaign took their appreciation for the dish back home, touted by “veterans ranging from the lowliest private to Dwight D. Eisenhower”.

According to an article in American Heritage, the modern pizza industry was born in the Midwestern United States. Ric Riccardo pioneered what became known as the deep dish pizza when, in 1943, he and Ike Sewell opened Pizzeria Uno in Chicago, and a generation later, Tom Monaghan launched what soon became known as Domino’s Pizza and introduced home delivery.

In 1948, the first commercial pizza-pie mix — ‘Roman Pizza Mix‘— was produced in Worcester, Mass., by Frank A. Fiorillo.

With its rising popularity, chain restaurants moved in. Leading early pizza chains were Shakey’s Pizza, founded in 1954 in Sacramento, California, and Pizza Hut, founded in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas. Later entrant restaurant chains to the dine-in pizza market were Bertucci’s, Happy Joe’s, California Pizza Kitchen, Godfather’s Pizza, and Round Table Pizza.

Today, the American pizza business is dominated by companies that specialize in pizza delivery. Besides Domino’s, this includes Little Caesar’s, Papa John’s Pizza, Giordano’s Pizza, Pizza Ranch, Mazzio’s and Godfather’s Pizza. Pizza Hut has also shifted its emphasis away from pizza parlors and toward home delivery. Another recent development is the take and bake pizzeria, such as Papa Murphy’s, at which raw pizzas are made from fresh ingredients and taken home to be baked in the customers’ own ovens.