Crispy crust.Spicy sauce.Gooey cheese oozing over the sides in long, melty strings.Do you think that there’s nothing like the first bite of a fresh, hot slice of pizza?You’re not alone!
Bread with toppings? Not exactly a new concept.
Ancient Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks enjoyed early “pizza” (minus tomato sauce— tomatoes didn’t make it to Europe until the 1600s!). In a famous book by a Roman poet, written over 2,000 years ago, the characters talk about the earliest form of pizza, otherwise known as a “bread plate.” What does that mean? Poor people who couldn’t afford plates would pile their food onto a flat circle of bread. Then, they would either throw the “plate” away, or eat it. In the case of the poor characters in the book, after they finished eating, one character said, “Look! We’ve even eaten our plates!” Pizza as poetry and platter!
Fast-forward a couple thousand years to the 17-1800s, in Naples, Italy. The city was famous for crowds of poor workers who needed cheap food, fast. The solution? Flatbreads with tomatoes, cheese, oil, fish, and garlic, sold by street vendors. Snobby rich folks called this concoction “disgusting.”
Their uppity attitude changed when King Umberto I and Queen Margherita visited Naples in 1889. A well-known story tells how chef Raffaele Esposito created a special pie for the queen, topped with white cheese, red tomato sauce, and green basil — the colors of the Italian flag. The queen enjoyed the pizza so much, it was named Pizza Margherita in her honor.
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