Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of Pizza (Encore)

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

There is a good chance that sometime in the last few days, weeks, or months, you might have enjoyed a slice or two of pizza. Pizza has become a near-ubiquitous food which can be found in almost every country.  However, there is no one pizza. There are vehement disagreements about what pizza is best and what sort of toppings are acceptable.  Learn more about pizza, where it came from, and its variations on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Sign up for ButcherBox today by going to Butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily at checkout to get $30 off your first box! Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Ben Long & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, this is Gary. This week, I'm going on my first proper vacation in several years, and the first since I launched this podcast almost four years ago. As I'm going to be away from the microphone this week, I've lined up some shows from the archives that most of you haven't heard, and if you did, it'll be a good refresher. I'll be back again with new episodes on September 9th. There's a good chance that sometime in the last few days, weeks, or months, you may have enjoyed a slice or two of pizza. Pizza has become a near ubiquitous food, which can be found in almost every country. However, there is no one pizza. There are vehement disagreements about what pizza is best and what sort of toppings are acceptable. Learn more about pizza, where it came from, and its variations on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day and tonight. and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thulein podcast from NPR. The history of pizza can be difficult to pin down because it isn't clear where a piece of flat bread with something on it ends and a pizza begins.

Most of you can probably identify a pizza if you see one, but if you start changing or removing sauces, toppings and the type of bread, when does it cease being a pizza? There are records of ancient bread-making culture. that served flat pieces of bread with toppings on it. Let's call these dishes Proto pizzas. There are reports of Persian soldiers in the 6th century BC who would cook bread on the top of their shields with cheese and dates. The Greeks were known to cook flat bread with olive oil, herbs, and cheese. Flatbread with cooked vegetables on top were mentioned in the epic poem the Aeneid. There are actually examples of flat bread from all over the world, including China and India,

so the idea of putting things on top of a flat piece of bread isn't an innovation that is unique to any one culture. Pizza, however, comes from Italy, and as with many other ancient people, the Romans had their own proto pizza. They had a flat bread dish, which was known as Panus Foccius, which is the origin of the Italian bread known as Fokosha. There was a fresco discovered in the rooms of Pompeii in one of the villas, and on it there was a depiction of a still-life scene of various foods. One of the items was a round object, which, if you didn't know any better, you would swear was a pizza. This was probably just an image of a Pannas Focaccius with cheese and fruit on the top. But I think that most of us would agree that a fukasha-based bread or some open-faced sandwich

is not the same thing as a pizza. The first mention of something called pizza was published in the year 997 in the town of Gata, Italy. It came from a bookkeeping record that documented the demand for 12 pizza, to be delivered on Christmas Day and 12 pizzas to be delivered on Easter. However, while it uses the word pizza, it doesn't actually say anything about what a pizza was at the time. The word pizza has ambiguous origins, and there are several different theories as to where it came from. The first is that it comes from the Byzantine Greek word pita, which is also the origin of the word for the flatbread known as pita bread. Another theory holds that it's derived from the Italian word Pinsa, which refers to a clamp or a pair of pliers.

Another theory is that it came from the word in the Lombardic dialect, Pizzo, which means mouthful. Regardless of where the word pizza originated, the modern dish that we know as pizza came from the city of Naples in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Naples at the time was its own kingdom, as Italy hadn't unified yet. There had been flat breads called a pizza that had been sold to Naples since at least the 16th century, and these were mostly served to poor people by street vendors. The contents of pizza, beyond the bread that it was served on, usually consisted of cheese, lard, salt, garlic, and any other foods that may have been available. What we don't know is when tomatoes were first added to pizza.

They certainly couldn't have been added before the 16th century because that was when tomatoes were brought to Europe. If you remember back to my episode on tomatoes, one of the first ones, one of the first of the first of the first century, the first cookbooks that mentioned tomato recipes was published in 1692 in Naples, Italy. So at least by the end of the 17th century, tomatoes were a thing in Naples and may have appeared on pizzas, but we really don't know how commonly they were consumed. By the late 18th century, Naples was experiencing a population boom. People from the countryside had flocked to Naples for work. These people were often quite poor and were known locally as Lazaroni, which is because they wore tattered clothing and looked like Lazarus from the Bible. The Lazzaroni often lived in packed

one-room apartments or homes and didn't have the facilities to cook, so they often ate on the streets. One of the popular dishes that was sold by street vendors was pizza. Pizza at the time was mostly a street food. People would walk around with boxes holding pizzas and then they could cut slices out of them based on what a customer wanted and what they could afford. As of 1807, there were 54 registered pizzerias in Naples. In 1843, the writer Alexander Dumas noted in his travelogue about his trip to Naples, Le Coricolo, that a pizza slice would cost two liards and made for a good breakfast, and that you could buy a whole pizza for two sous that could feed a family. A liard was a small French coin about the value of a penny, and that was worth one quarter of a sou. By this time,

we knew that tomatoes were appearing on pizzas in Naples, and the primary reason was that they were so cheap. By the start, second half of the 19th century, pizza had become well known as a Neapolitan dish. More pizzerias began appearing, now allowing people to actually eat pizza off the street. A major moment in the history of pizza occurred in 1889, after the unification of Italy, when King Umberto and Queen Margarita visited Naples. What happened next is shrouded in legend, but supposedly, the king and queen had grown tired of the French cuisine they were being served and wanted to sample some of the local Neapolitan pizzas.

Raphaelie Esposito, a pizza maker, an owner of a local tavern, was summoned and asked to make some pizzas for the king and queen. He made three different pizzas, and the one that the queen enjoyed was the one that had the colors of the Italian flag, red, green, and white. The red was tomato sauce, the white was mozzarella cheese, and the green was basil. The pizza was named after the queen and became known as the margarita pizza. Rafael Esposito is considered by many to be the father, of the modern pizza. I should note that the other two pizzas that he supposedly made didn't have tomato sauce. They used lard. The approval of the queen was a huge step for pizza as it changed its perception from that of a food for poor people to something more respectable. Moreover, it allowed

pizza to be identified as more than just a Neapolitan dish, but rather as an Italian dish. However, that wasn't the event that truly spread pizza. Beginning in the 20th century, Neapolitans and other Italians began immigrating to the United States in large numbers. The first pizzeria in the United States was Lombardy's, which opened in New York City in 1905. As with pizza in Naples, Lombardies mostly sold pizzas to factory workers. Originally, they weren't even sold as pizzas because Americans had no idea what that was. They were sold as tomato pies. Lombardies, by the way, still exists today with its original oven, albeit at a different location.

As more Italian immigrants settled throughout the United States, more pizzerias opened, but it was still considered to be a niche ethnic dish. You could find pizzerias in many communities, but it hadn't yet achieved widespread popularity. What changed the status of pizza was the Second World War. American troops who served in Italy regularly ate pizza and brought their love of the dish back home. Tourists to Italy after the war began requesting pizza everywhere they went in Italy, and more restaurants across the country began carrying the Neapolitan dish. Back in the United States, restaurants, often not even Italian, began experimenting with pizza.

In Chicago in 1943, two men by the name of Ike Sewell and Rick Ricardo created a deep-dish version of pizza at their new restaurant, Pizzeria Uno. In the 1950s, the popularity of pizza exploded. Veterans from the war, including President Dwight Eisenhower, were fans of pizza. There was even an episode of I Love Lucy about pizza. Americans who had no cultural ties to Italy began experimenting even further with pizza. Hawaiian pizza was developed, which had pineapples as a topping, which was something that absolutely no one had ever asked for. In Colorado, the Rocky Mountain Pie was developed that didn't have quite as deep a crust as the Chicago Deep Dish Pizza, but had a wider crust and inverted the cheese and tomato.

The cheese was on the bottom, and chunky tomatoes were on the top. Chain pizza restaurants were created in the 1950s. the first of which was Shakey's pizza, founded in 1954 in Sacramento, California. Pizza Hut was established in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas, Little Caesar's Pizza was founded in 1959 in Garden City, Michigan, and Domino's Pizza, originally called Dominic's Pizza, was created in 1960 in Yipsalanti, Michigan. The trend towards quick and convenient home foods also saw the creation of frozen pizzas. Frozen pizzas were fully prepared pizzas that could be taken home and then cooked in an oven. While the United States saw a great deal of innovation in pizzas due to the influx of Italian

immigrants, it wasn't the only country. Argentina also had many Italian immigrants, and they developed their own style of pizza. Argentine pizza is characterized by a thicker, doughier crust compared to traditional Italian or American pizzas, and often features a variety of toppings, including ham, cheese, olives, and other ingredients with a strong influence from Italian and Argentine cuisine. As pizza spread around the world, many countries develop their own twists on the dish, usually in the form of toppings. In just the course of my travels, I've seen kernels of corn, tuna, fried eggs, kimchi, potatoes, pickles, and even bake beans as a pizza topping. Currently, the global market for pizza is estimated to be $145 billion annually, and in the United States alone,

it's a $45 billion business with over 76,000 pizzerias. An estimated 13% of all Americans eat pizza every day. In 2001, the world's longest pizza delivery took place. Pizza Hut delivered a pizza to the International Space Station. They had to create a specially designed pizza that would work in zero gravity and could be reheated in the ISS oven. Since then, pizza has actually been a regular part of food deliveries to the space station. Pizza has also become very official.

In 2004, the city of Naples passed an ordinance giving the entire recipe for authentic Neapolitan pizza. In 2017, UNESCO added the art of making Neapolitan pizza to their list of intangible cultural heritage. And I'll close with one particular fact that I found fascinating and demonstrates the popularity of pizza. In 1973, Iceland codified the Icelandic language, removing many of the influences from other languages. that had seeped in. One of the changes was totally removing the letter Z, or Z, from all Icelandic words. However, they made one exception. The only word in the Icelandic language that is legally allowed to use the letter Z is pizza. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever.

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