14 DAY TRIAL // Pizza is a baked pie, believed to be of Italian origin, consisting of a shallow dough-crust covered with tomato sauce, cheese, and different other toppings such as sausage or olive. It is said that the word pizza comes from the Old Italian word “pizzicare,” which means “to pluck” and refers to pizza being plucked quickly from the oven.
However, food experts did not come to a conclusion about who invented the very first pizza pie. Historians agree that pizza-like dishes were eaten by many peoples in the Mediterranean area including the Greeks and Egyptians. So the history of pizza might have started in any of these countries, according to About.com.
In one of its many forms, pizza has been a regular meal in Italy for centuries, basically since the Stone Age. The earliest form of pizza was a crude bread baked beneath the stones of the fire and seasoned with a variety of different toppings. It served as a plate for broth or gravies.
However, the flat bread pizza appeared when people started to use tomato as a topping. When the tomato was first brought to Europe in the 16th century, it was believed to be poisonous.
But later on, it was common for the poor of the area around Naples to serve their pizzas with tomato. In the 18th century the dish gained in popularity and became a tourist attraction, so visitors were going to the poorer areas of the city to try the local specialty.
However, modern pizza has been attributed to baker Raffaele Esposito of Naples, who owned a restaurant called the Pizzeria di Pietro. In 1871, he prepared what he called “pizza” especially for the visit of Italian King Umberto I and Queen Margherita.
Pizza was introduced to the United States with the arrival of large waves of Italian immigrants in the late 19th century. The first pizzeria in North America was opened in 1905 by Gennaro Lombardi at 53 Spring Street in New York City.
In 1957, frozen pizzas started to be sold in local grocery stores and quickly became the most popular of all frozen meals. The first was marketed by the Celentano Brothers.
Americans eat approximately 350 slices of pizza per second. Pepperoni is the favorite pizza topping in the United States, as 36 percent of consumers choose this topping for their meals.
In 2009, the European Union issued a ruling to protect the Neapolitan pizza, so the recipe is now part of Europe's food heritage.