The history of pizza is long, complex and uncertain. Origins afflicted by other origins, inaccuracies and antecedents that bring us back to the first uses of bread by humanity and to the cuisine of ancient peoples such as Greek.
to pizza ... Most are blurred by understanding when talking about it, letting go of the throat. We think of our favorite, with that grilled meat, that barbecue sauce, the real mozzarella or even the pineapple, which tastes the colors. And or we take the phone to call our favorite pizzeria looking for a table or a command at home, or we get to work in our kitchen.
Because today it is not necessary to take a plane to Naples to enjoy a good pizza or an authentic one, even if talking about the origins of this delicacy with an Italian label is an endless story. We could talk for days and days, ask the most esteemed connoisseurs of this dish, investigate various documents and we will not reach a clear or unanimous conclusion. Because, as on many other occasions, it is practically impossible to accurately tell the story and origins of such a global and pre-eminent preparation. Even if we are going to try it.
Pizza, as old as the use of bread
Taking into account the fact that the tomato reached European soil in the sixteenth century and until the end of the 17th century the population did not accept it as food, the birth of the most basic pizza, consisting essentially of bread dough, cheese and tomato sauce, it could never have taken place before the seventeenth century. Most likely in Italy and more precisely in the city of Naples. But its most primary birth, leaving aside the tomato, can go back centuries and centuries in time. As much as its own processing of bread and its use by humanity.
The ancient peoples such as the Greek, for example, used to prepare tortillas. Masses of cereals of different sizes spread like a pizza, a focaccia or a Mediterranean coca, to which they added different ingredients. The example of plakous is known, bread to which aromatic plants, garlic and onion have been added
It is also said that Persian soldiers at the time of the third king of the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia, Darius I the Great, were fed with a flat bread. In this cheese it melted and, finally, the dates were added. Or that other troops, in this case the Romans, consumed with great joy some old focaccia, of Etruscan origin. In fact, among the ruins of Pompeii, the city of Ancient Rome devastated by the eruption of Vesuvius, a round bread was found cut into eight portions that inevitably remind us of pizza. And Marcus Gavius Apicius, author of the only surviving Roman cookbook, De re coquinaria, described the making of "seasoned focacce" with ingredients like parsley, oregano or olive oil. Similar, similar.
They would be bread like the so-called spruce, previously known as laganae, which has all the cards to be the ancestor of pizza, in addition to squash, piadina, farinata and panelle. Also the etymology of the term "pizza" helps us. Because the word refers to that way of making pasta, extending it, since it comes from "grip", past participle of the Latin verb "pinsere", which means "to crush", "to press" or "to crush".
But if we stick to the more rigid base of the dish, the baked pasta, the tomato and the cheese, we will travel in time to the poorest suburbs of Naples until the eighteenth century. It would be at that time when it is believed that all these ingredients come together definitively giving rise to the pizza. The humble populations of these areas overcame the fear of the red fruit, which would arrive in Italy in Spanish vases considered poisonous, and added it to those saucers that they prepared.
From the now famous "white pizza", based on those masses with garlic, parsley and olive oil similar to the recipe Apicius spoke of and which was also made in the most populated city of southern Italy at that time, to contemporary pizza. The beginning of everything.
The key: the combination of baked pasta, tomato and cheese
Although the processing without some of these concomitants can be considered basic, as we have said, the pizza itself in its most basic version was nothing more than a baked pasta, a tomato and a cheese. An evolution, some historians say, of that "white". The pioneers in the use of tomatoes in these areas would have been the sellers of spaghetti, according to some scholars, and sellers of "white pizzas" would have simply emulated the practice in their products to counter the novelty of the competition. The rivalry would have been the trigger.
In the first half of the same century, Alexandre Dumas, the father, described in one of his works the diversity of ingredients with which at that time began to prepare pizza for these popular classes: "In Naples it was made with olive oil, bacon , cheese, tomato and salted anchovies. "It was the food that the poorest and most needy ate practically at all hours, as breakfast, as food and as dinner.The famous marinara pizza, topped with tomato, garlic, oregano and olive oil. 'olive, a great Neapolitan classic, was also created in the first half of the eighteenth century.A pizza that according to purists can only be made in a wood oven, at 485 degrees for no more than 60 to 90 seconds, with a base made by hand, a diameter of no more than 35 centimeters and a thickness in its center of not more than one centimeter.
World War II helped spread the pizza
After so many coming and going, little by little and without hesitation, the pizza began to spread throughout Italy and to transcend the most humble people. The Neapolitans, with their migration, brought with them to other parts of the planet. And the aristocratic class, with the gradual adoption of the dish, ended up making it popular. So, just before the outbreak of the Second World War, pizza would have passed from being considered a regional preparation of the environment of Naples, to a national dish throughout Italy.
A consideration that would end up being strong with the increase in the migration of its people once again. If the Neapolitans were the first, now the rest of the Italians were coming. The delicacy that once served as support for the most humble classes became a global preparation with a thousand and one interpretation that, without going further, we find within Italy itself.
Authentic Neapolitan pizzas, the only ones recognized by the True Neapolitan Pizza Association, like the marinara and the margherita; the latter is attributed to the alleged first pizzeria, Port'Alba, currently existing, and to the election of a queen, Margherita Teresa de Saboya, wife of King Umberto I, for its resemblance to the flag of the country. We also go to Italian pizzas like the Roman one, made with a thinner and crunchy dough on which only olive oil, salt and rosemary are put. Or the wide variety of processing that can be found in the rest of Europe, in the United States, in Latin America, in Asia, in Oceania and almost everywhere.