The modern pizza is so pervasive in American culture that it’s practically as American as apple pie. But did you know that there’s evidence that some form of pizza has been around for more than 2,000 years? Here’s a quick, basic history of pizza as we know it.
- Around 500 B.C., soldiers from the Persian Empire cooked flat bread on their shields that they covered with cheese and dates.
- Evidence from the ruins of Pompeii suggests that a flat flour bread was widely cooked and eaten before the ashes of Mount Vesuvius buried the city around 79 A.D.
- In the 16th century, poverty beget a version of pizza that begins to look more like modern pizza. The staples of the poor in Italy were the staples of pizza: flour, olive oil, lard, cheese, herbs and tomatoes. (Side note: When tomatoes first arrived in Europe from Peru, it was thought that they were poisonous!)
- Legend has it the classic Margarita pizza was named after Queen Margherita di Savoia in the 19th century after she declared she liked the tomato, cheese and basil topped pizza best because it had the colors of the Italian flag.
- When pizza fist came to the U.S., it’s believed it was called “tomato pie” and was built upside down: crust, cheese, toppings then sauce.
- Gennaro Lombardi claims to have opened the first pizzeria in the U.S. It was opened in 1905 in New York City, of course.
- The Chicago deep-dish style pizza was created by Chicago resturaunteru Ike Sewell in 1943.
- Pizza finally solidified it’s popularity in America around in the 1950s when celebrities of Italian origin like Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio and Dean Martin (literally with “That’s Amore”) sung the praises of pizza.