In our rush to celebrate everything under the sun, folks in the
United States have run out of months to name. National History
Month and National Pizza Month are both celebrated in October, so
Lifestyles decided to have a little fun with the art of
convergence. Thus, we give you a brief history of pizza.
In our rush to celebrate everything under the sun, folks in the United States have run out of months to name. National History Month and National Pizza Month are both celebrated in October, so Lifestyles decided to have a little fun with the art of convergence. Thus, we give you a brief history of pizza.
The industry has changed a great deal since pies first burst onto the scene. As late as the 1960’s, pizza wasn’t considered to have long-term potential in the U.S.
“There was kind of a big debate as to how long pizza would be around,” said John Correll, owner of Correll Concepts in Canton, Mich. Correll got his start in pizza in 1967, when he went to work for the sixth location opened by a new chain called Dominoes. “Most people thought it was a fad. People thought of it as a night food. Pizzerias, most of them anyway, opened at 5 o’clock.
“The quality didn’t have to be that good. You could make bad pizza and still do well because the industry was expanding so fast. The pizzas that were made were not refrigerated, and on hot summer days the pepperoni would look like it was sweating because the oils were coming out. The bell peppers would be all shriveled and soft and the pizzerias got excruciatingly hot.”
While fluffy crusts piled high with tomato sauce and cheese are certainly a delicious dish, the meal didn’t start out anything like the pies we enjoy today. Cheese and tomatoes came along well after the meal’s basic shape was formed. Ultimately, a pizza is a round, flat bread disc capable of delivering other food and being consumed at the same time itself.
Nearly every Mediterranean culture of the pre-Christian era can claim to have done that, according to site authors at AboutPizza.com, so the answer of who was first may be moot. We do know that the Babylonians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans and Egyptians all had their own methods of preparing what would eventually become pizza.
Persian warriors cooked a flat bread on their shields in the sixth century B.C. and Cato the Elder, who authored Rome’s first history, wrote about a meal made of “flat round dough dressed with olive oil, herbs, and honey baked on stones,” according to Linda Stradley, author of “I’ll Have What They’re Having – Legendary Local Cuisine” and operator of the Web site WhatsCookingAmerica.net.
In 1522, tomatoes were introduced to Europe from the area that is now Peru, according to Stradley. They were avoided by most Europeans (who thought they were poisonous) but began to appear in peasant cuisine in Naples in the late 1600’s as an addition to traditional lard-based yeast breads. The taste, when encountered by soldiers in the area, launched a phenomenon – pizza.
For more than 200 years the dish remained a novelty for those outside of Naples, mostly sought out by tourists who would come to taste “pizzaioli.”
Pizza Chef Raffaele Esposito introduced cheese as a staple ingredient when, as the most popular chef in Naples, he was called upon to feed the king and queen of Italy. He created a patriotic pizzaioli, topped with red tomato sauce, white mozzarella cheese and green basil leaves – the colors of the Italian flag. The queen described Esposito’s pizzas as “delicious,” and word about “Pizza Margherita” soon brought it greater popularity across Italy.
Italian immigrants brought pizza to America in the last decade of the 19th century. At two cents per slice at the turn of the century, it was an economical way to fill up for residents of large cities like New York and Chicago.
Gennaro Lombardi opened the first U.S. pizzeria in 1905 at 53 1/2 Spring St. in New York, according to pizzajoe.co.uk. He didn’t add a seating area for more than two decades, but Lombardi made his pizzas the traditional Italian way. Innovations like Chicago-style deep-dish (invented in 1943) and stuffed crust (1999) were still years away.
Pizza’s appeal spread in the United States most firmly after WWII, when soldiers returning home from Europe went in search of the tasty dishes they’d tried while overseas, according to Niall.
Today there are about 62,000 pizzerias in operation around the U.S. according to Ed Zimmerman, president of Successfoods Marketing in Novato, Calif. Zimmerman specializes in pizza ingredients and marketing, counting the California Milk Advisory Board among his list of clientele.
“I think that pizza has matured as a category,” said Zimmerman. “If you go back 15 or 20 years ago, the East coast was plain and pepperoni, the West coast had vegetables and the Midwest they had this sort of traditional stuff.
“The biggest change was probably Hawaiian pizza. It was so un-authentic. Almost everything else that’s on a pizza you can see has some roots in a Mediterranean diet. It really broke the mold in the mind of the consumer that pizza was a Mediterranean dish and now you’re seeing barbecue chicken pizzas, Thai and Mexican styles. The idea of a pizza has become the form’s shape and the style in which it delivers a meal.”
Today, pizza-making is a timed science with pre-determined portion sizes for each topping and conveyor ovens that pop the pizza out when it’s done. While some of the art might have gone out of the process, consumers have benefited from quality and safety improvements. And while big business has come to dominate most areas of the restaurant business, “mom and pop” shops are still viable in the pizza industry.
“Fifteen or 20 years ago I thought they wouldn’t exist at this point, but a single-unit operator can be very successful if they serve a quality product,” said Correll.
In the next few years, said Zimmerman, consumers can expect to see even more changes. Innovations that could be on the way include breakfast and dessert pizzas as well as standardized sizing.
Other October Proclamations
Pizza and history are just two of the many things celebrated this month. Here’s a more comprehensive list of the things we all should be celebrating or especially aware of in October, according to the various interest groups behind these occasions:
Adopt-A-Pet
AIDS
Apple Jack
Auto Batteries
Breast Cancer
Car Care
Clocks
Communicating With Your Kid
Computer Learning
Consumer Information
Cookbooks
Cosmetology
Country Music
Cyber Security
Depression
Desserts
Disability Employment
Domestic Violence
Family History
Family Sexuality
Fire Prevention
Health Care Food Service
Hedgehogs
Hunger Awareness
Infertility
Kitchen and Bath
Liver Disease
Lupus
Marine Travel
Mental Illness
Polish Americans
Popcorn
Pork
Pretzels
Quality
Sarcastics
Seafood
Spectacle of the Geese
Spina Bifida
Stamp Collecting
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
UNICEF
Vegetarianism
Youth Against Tobacco
