Pizza
Pizza (from the Latin verb pìnsere, to press) is a world-popular dish of Italian origin, made with an oven-baked, flat, generally round bread that is often covered with tomatoes or a tomato-based sauce and mozzarella cheese. Other toppings are added according to region, culture, or personal preference.
Originating as a part of Italian cuisine, the dish has become popular in many different parts of the world. A shop or restaurant where pizzas are made and sold is called a “pizzeria.” The phrases “pizza parlor,” "pizza place," and "pizza shop" are used in the United States. The term "pizza pie" is dialectal, and "pie" is used for simplicity in some contexts, such as among pizzeria staff.
Preparation
The bottom base of the pizza (called the “crust” in the United States and Canada) may vary widely according to style: thin as in hand-tossed pizza or Roman pizza, thick as in pan pizza or Chicago-style pizza. It is traditionally plain, but may also be seasoned with butter, garlic, or herbs, or stuffed with cheese.
In restaurants, pizza can be baked in an oven with stone bricks above the heat source, an electric deck oven, a conveyor belt oven or, in the case of more expensive restaurants, a wood- or coal-fired brick oven. On deck ovens, the pizza can be slid into the oven on a long paddle called a peel and baked directly on the hot bricks or baked on a screen (a round metal grate, typically aluminum). When making pizza at home, it can be baked on a pizza stone in a regular oven to imitate the effect of a brick oven. Another option is grilled pizza, in which the crust is baked directly on a barbecue grill. Greek pizza, like Chicago-style pizza, is baked in a pan rather than directly on the bricks of the pizza oven.
Neapolitan pizza
"Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana," which was founded in 1984 and only recognizes the marinara and Margherita types, has set the very specific rules that must be followed for an authentic Neapolitan pizza. These include that the pizza must be baked in a wood-fired, domed oven at 485°C for no more than 60 to 90 seconds; that the base must be hand-kneaded and must not be rolled with a pin or prepared by any mechanical means (i pizzaioli—the pizza makers—make the pizza shape with their hands by rolling it with their fingers), and that the pizza must not exceed 35 centimeters in diameter or be more than a third of a centimeter thick at the center. The association also selects pizzerias all around the world to produce and spread the verace pizza napoletana philosophy and method.
Neapolitan pizzerias will go even further than the specified rules by, for example, only using "San Marzano" tomatoes grown on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius and only drizzling the olive oil and adding tomato topping in a clockwise direction. Another addition to the rules is the use of fresh basil leaves on the pizza marinara—it's not in the "official" recipe but it is added by most Neapolitan pizzerias to garnish it.
The pizza bases in Naples are soft and pliable, but in Rome they prefer a thin and crispy base. Another popular form of pizza in Italy is "pizza al taglio," which is pizza baked in rectangular trays with a wide variety of toppings and sold by weight.
History
Pizza has a long, complex, and uncertain history that often inspires heated debate. The first recorded use of the word "pizza" dates from 997 C.E. This comes from a Latin text from the town of Gaeta in Southern Italy, stating that a tenant of certain property was to give the bishop of Gaeta duodecim pizze, "twelve pizzas", every Christmas day, and another twelve every Easter Sunday.[1].
The origin of the word pizza has been suggested to be Germanic, related to the English word "to bite." Italy was subject to domination by two Germanic-speaking peoples, the Goths and the Lombards (Langobards). Pizza could derive from a Lombardic word similar in form to the Old High German bizzo or pizzo, related to words meaning "bite." This word originally meant "mouthful" (what you obtain by "biting"), then later "piece of bread" (the typical content of a mouthful).[1]
Bread is one of the oldest prepared foods and dates back at least to the neolithic. Records of people adding other ingredients to bread in order to make it more flavorful can be found throughout ancient history. The Ancient Greeks, for example, had a flat bread called plakous, which was flavored with various toppings like herbs, onion, and garlic. It is also said that soldiers of the Persian King, Darius the Great (521-486 B.C.E.) baked a kind of bread flat upon their shields and then covered it with cheese and dates, and in the first century B.C.E., Virgil refers to the ancient idea of bread as an edible plate or trencher for other foods in this extract from the Aeneid:
- Their homely fare dispatch’d, the hungry band
- Invade their trenchers next, and soon devour,
- To mend the scanty meal, their cakes of flour.
- Ascanius this observ’d, and smiling said:
- “See, we devour the plates on which we fed.”
These flatbreads, like pizza, are from the Mediterranean area and other examples of flat breads that survive to this day from the ancient Mediterranean world are "focaccia," which may date back as far as the Ancient Etruscans; "coca," which has sweet and savory varieties from Catalonia and the Balearic Islands; and the Greek "Pita" or "Pide" in Turkish. Similar flat breads in other parts of the world include the Indian "Paratha" , the South Asian "Naan," and the German "Flammkuchen."
Modern pizza originated in Naples in the Campania region of Italy, but the exact sequence through the many flavored flatbreads of the ancient and medieval Mediterranean to the dish we now call pizza is not fully understood. Since the late-nineteenth century, pizza has spread throughout the world.
The pizza and Naples
The innovation which gave us the particular flat bread we call “pizza” was the use of tomato as a topping. For some time after the tomato was brought to Europe from the Americas in the sixteenth century, it was believed by many Europeans to be poisonous (as are some other fruits of the nightshade family). However, by the late-eighteenth century it was common for the poor of the area around Naples to add tomato to their yeast-based flat bread, and so the pizza was born. The dish gained in popularity, and soon Pizza became a tourist attraction as visitors to Naples ventured into the poorer areas of the city in order to try the local speciality.
Until about 1830, pizza was sold from open-air stands and street vendors out of pizza bakeries. Pizzerie keep this age-old tradition still alive today. It is possible to enjoy a delicious pizza wrapped in paper and a drink sold from open-air stands outside the premises. Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba in Naples is widely regarded as the world's first pizzeria. [1]They started producing pizzas for peddlers in 1738, but expanded to a pizza restaurant with chairs and tables in 1830, and still serve pizza from the same premises today.
A description of pizza in Naples around 1830 is given by the French writer and food expert Alexandre Dumas, père in his work Le Corricolo, Chapter VIII [2]. He writes that pizza was the only food of the humble people in Naples during winter, and that "in Naples pizza is flavored with oil, lard, tallow, cheese, tomato, or anchovies."
The Neapolitans take their pizza very seriously. Purists, like the famous pizzeria “Da Michele” in Via C.Sersale (founded: 1870) [4] consider there to be only two true pizzas— the “marinara” and the “Margherita”—and that is all they serve. The marinara is the oldest and has a topping of tomato, oregano, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, and usually basil. It was named marinara not, as many believe, because it has seafood on it (it doesn't), but because it was the food the fishermen ate when they returned home from fishing trips in the Bay of Naples. The Margherita is attributed to baker Raffaele Esposito. Esposito worked at the pizzeria "Pietro... e basta così" (literally "Peter... and that's enough"), which was established in 1780 and is still operating under the name "Pizzeria Brandi." In 1889, he baked three different pizzas for the visit of King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Savoy. The Queen's favorite was a pizza evoking the colors of the Italian flag—green (basil leaves), white (mozzarella), and red (tomatoes). This combination was named Pizza Margherita in her honor.
Today, there are many famous pizzerias in Naples where these traditional pizzas can be found like Da Michele, Port'Alba, Brandi, Di Matteo, Sorbillo, Trianon, and Umberto (founded: 1916). Most of them are found in the ancient historical center of Naples.
Pizza in the United States
Pizza first made its appearance in the United States with the arrival of Italian immigrants in the late-nineteenth century. This was certainly the case in cities with large Italian populations, such as San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia where pizza was first sold on the streets of Italian neighborhoods. In late-nineteenth century Chicago for example, pizza was introduced by a peddler who walked up and down Taylor Street with a metal washtub of pizzas on his head, crying his wares at two cents a chew. This was the traditional way pizza used to be sold in Naples, in copper cylindrical drums with false bottoms that were packed with charcoal from the oven to keep the pizzas hot. It wasn't long until small cafes and groceries began offering pizzas to their Italian-American communities.
The first "official" pizzeria in America is disputable, but it is generally believed to have been founded by Gennaro Lombardi in Little Italy, Manhattan. Gennaro Lombardi opened a grocery store in 1897 which later was established as the first pizzeria in America in 1905 with New York's issuance of the mercantile license. An employee of his, Antonio Totonno Pero, began making pizza for the store to sell that same year. The price for an entire pizza was five cents, but since many people couldn't afford the cost of a whole pie, they could instead say how much they could pay and they were given a slice corresponding to the amount offered. In 1924, Totonno left Lombardi's to open his own pizzeria on Coney Island called Totonno's. While the original Lombardi's closed its doors in 1984, it was reopened in 1994 just down the street and is run by Lombardi's grandson.
Pizza was brought to the Trenton area of New Jersey very early as well with Joe's Tomato Pies opening in 1910, followed soon by Papa's Tomato Pies in 1912. In 1936, Delorenzo's Tomato Pies was opened. While Joe's Tomato Pies has closed, both Papa's and Delorenzo's have been run by the same families since their openings and remain among the most popular pizzas in the area. Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana in New Haven, Connecticut, was another early pizzeria which opened in 1925 (after the owner served pies from local carts and bakeries for 20 to 25 years), and is famous for its New Haven-style clam pie. Frank Pepe's nephew Sal Consiglio opened a competing store, Sally's, on the other end of the block, in 1938. Both establishments are still run by descendants of the original family. When Sal died, over 2,000 people attended his wake, and the New York Times ran a half-page memoriam. The D'Amore family introduced pizza to Los Angeles in 1939.
Prior to the 1940s, pizza consumption was limited mostly to Italian immigrants and their descendants. The international breakthrough came after World War II. Allied troops occupying Italy, weary of their rations, were constantly on the lookout for good food. They discovered the pizzeria, and local bakers were hard-pressed to satisfy the demand from the soldiers. The American troops involved in the Italian campaign took their appreciation for the dish back home, touted by "veterans ranging from the lowliest private to Dwight D. Eisenhower."[5]
According to an article in American Heritage[5], the modern pizza industry was born in the Midwestern United States. Ric Riccardo pioneered what became known as the deep dish pizza when, in 1943, he and Ike Sewell opened Pizzeria Uno in Chicago, and a generation later, Tom Monaghan launched what soon became known as Domino's Pizza, credited by some for popularizing free home delivery.
In 1948, the first commercial pizza-pie mix—‘Roman Pizza Mix‘—was produced in Worcester, Mass., by Frank A. Fiorillo.
With its rising popularity, chain restaurants moved in. Leading early pizza chains were Shakey's Pizza, founded in 1954 in Sacramento, California, and Pizza Hut, founded in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas. Later entrant restaurant chains to the dine-in pizza market were Bertucci's, Happy Joe's, Monical's Pizza, California Pizza Kitchen, Godfather's Pizza, and Round Table Pizza.
Today, the American pizza business is dominated by companies that specialize in pizza delivery, such as Domino's, Brooklyn Pizzeria, Little Caesar's, Papa John's Pizza, Giordano's Pizza, Pizza Ranch, Mazzio's, and Godfather's Pizza. Pizza Hut has also shifted its emphasis away from pizza parlors and toward home delivery. Another recent development is the take and bake pizzeria, such as Papa Murphy's.
Nutrients
Some pizzas can be very high in salt and fat and concerns have been raised about the negative effect these pizzas can have on people’s health.[6] Pizza Hut has come under criticism for the high salt content of some of their meals which were found to contain more than twice the daily recommended amount of salt for an adult.[7]
However, it should also be noted that commercially made fast-food pizza is very different from well-made Italian pizza, particularly from a good restaurant which is concerned with using only good ingredients, or even more so in a homemade pizza. The salt and saturated fat content of a homemade pizza is usually far less if using original recipes. Mozzarella cheese is not as fatty as many other cheeses, and should be used judiciously in any event. Feta cheese, which has an even lower saturated-fat content, is often used in homemade-pizza recipes. There is the added bonus of being able to include other healthy ingredients as well, such as fresh tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, spinach, courgettes (vegetable marrow or zucchini), and aubergine (eggplant), as just a few examples.
Cultural significances
In Italy there is a bill before Parliament to safeguard the traditional Italian pizza,[8] specifying permissible ingredients and methods of processing[9] (e.g., excluding frozen pizzas). Only pizzas which followed these guidelines could be called “traditional Italian pizzas,” at least in Italy.
Italy has also requested that the European Union safeguard some traditional Italian pizzas, such as “Margherita” and “Marinara”.[10] The European Union enacted a protected designation of origin system in the 1990s.
Regional variations
Italian types of pizza
Neapolitan pizza (pizza napoletana)
Authentic Neapolitan pizzas are made with local ingredients like San Marzano tomatoes, which grow on the volcanic plains to the south of Mount Vesuvius, and Mozzarella di Bufala Campana, made with the milk from water buffalo raised in the marshlands of Campania and Lazio in a semi-wild state (this mozzarella is protected with its own European protected designation of origin). According to the rules proposed by the Associazione vera pizza napoletana, the genuine Neapolitan pizza dough consists of Italian wheat flour (type 0 or 00, or a mixture of both), natural Neapolitan yeast or brewer’s yeast, salt, and water.
For proper results, strong flour with high protein content (as used for bread-making rather than cakes) must be used. The dough must be kneaded by hand or with a low-speed mixer. After the rising process, the dough must be formed by hand without the help of a rolling pin or other mechanical device, and may be no more than three millimeters thick. The pizza must be baked for 60 to 90 seconds in a 485 °C (905 °F) stone oven with an oak-wood fire. When cooked, it should be crispy, tender, and fragrant. Neapolitan pizza has been given the status of a “guaranteed traditional specialty” in Italy. This allows only three official variants: pizza marinara, which is made with tomato, garlic, oregano, and extra-virgin olive oil (although most Neapolitan pizzerias also add basil to the marinara); Margherita, made with tomato, sliced mozzarella, basil, and extra-virgin olive oil; and pizza Margherita extra, made with tomato, buffalo mozzarella from Campania in fillets, basil, and extra-virgin olive oil.
Lazio style
Pizza in Lazio (Rome), as well as in many other parts of Italy is available in two different styles: (1) Take-away shops sell pizza rustica or pizza al taglio. This pizza is cooked in long, rectangular baking pans and relatively thick (one to two centimeters). The crust is similar to that of an English muffin, and the pizza is often cooked in an electric oven. It is usually cut with scissors or a knife and sold by weight. (2) In pizza restaurants (pizzerias), pizza is served in a dish in its traditional round shape. It has a thin, crisp base quite different to the thicker and softer Neapolitan style base. It is usually cooked in a wood-fired oven, giving the pizza its unique flavor and texture. In Rome, a pizza napoletana is topped with tomato, mozzarella, anchovies, and oil (thus, what in Naples is called pizza romana, in Rome is called pizza napoletana).
Other types of Lazio-style pizza include:
- Pizza romana (in Naples): tomato, mozzarella, anchovies, oregano, oil;
- Pizza viennese: tomato, mozzarella, German sausage, oregano, oil;
- Pizza capricciosa (“capricious pizza”): mozzarella, tomato, mushrooms, artichokes, cooked ham, olives, oil (in Rome, prosciutto raw ham is used and half a hard-boiled egg is added);
- Pizza quattro stagioni (“four seasons pizza”): same ingredients for the capricciosa, but ingredients not mixed;
- Pizza quattro formaggi (“four cheese pizza”): tomatoes, mozzarella, stracchino, fontina, gorgonzola (sometimes ricotta can be swapped for one of the last three);
- Sicilian-style pizza has its toppings baked directly into the crust. An authentic recipe uses neither cheese nor anchovies. “Sicilian” pizza in the United States is typically a different variety of product made with a thick crust characterized by a rectangular shape and topped with tomato sauce and cheese (and optional toppings). Pizza Hut’s “Sicilian Pizza,” introduced in 1994, is not an authentic example of the style as only garlic, basil, and oregano are mixed into the crust;
- White pizza (pizza bianca) uses no tomato sauce, often substituting pesto or dairy products such as sour cream. Most commonly, especially on the east coast of the United States, the toppings consist only of mozzarella and ricotta cheese drizzled with olive oil and spices like fresh basil and garlic. In Rome, the term pizza bianca refers to a type of bread topped with olive oil, salt and, occasionally, rosemary leaves. It’s also a Roman style to top the white pizza with figs, the result called pizza e fichi (pizza with figs);
- Ripieno or calzone is a pizza in the form of a half moon, sometimes filled with ricotta, salami, and mozzarella; it can be either fried or oven baked.
Non-Italian types of pizza
In the twentieth century and onward, pizza has become an international food and the toppings may vary considerably in accordance with local tastes. These pizzas consist of the same basic design but include an exceptionally diverse choice of ingredients.
United States styles and specialties
Due to the wide influence of Italian and Greek immigrants in American culture, the United States has developed quite a large number of regional forms of pizza, many bearing only a casual resemblance to the Italian original. During the latter half of the twentieth century, pizza in the United States became an iconic dish of considerable popularity. The thickness of the crust depends on what the consumer prefers; both thick and thin crust are popular. Often, "Americanized" foods such as barbecued chicken and bacon cheeseburgers are used to create new types of pizza. Mexican pizza, or taco pizza, is also popular in the U.S., popularized by the Taco Bell chain.
Ingredients
American pizza often has vegetable oil or shortening (often, but not always, olive oil) mixed into the dough; this is not as common in Italian recipes (for example, the pizza dough recipe in the influential Italian cookbook Il cucchiaio d'argento does not use oil). This can range from a small amount in relatively lean doughs, such as New York style, to a very large amount in some recipes for Chicago-style deep-dish dough. In addition, American pizza (at least thin-crust) is often made with a very high-gluten flour (often 13 to 14-percent protein content) of the type also used to make bagels; this type of flour allows the dough to be stretched rather thinly without tearing, similar to strudel or phyllo dough.
Various toppings may be added, most typically:
- Tomato sauce usually replaces the tomato mixture used on Italian-style pizzas, and is usually a fairly heavily seasoned, smooth sauce with a low water content. On some variants without tomatoes, pesto, alfredo, and barbecue sauce are also used.
- Cheese, usually mozzarella but also provolone, cheddar, parmesan, or a blend of other cheeses.
- Fruits and vegetables such as garlic, artichoke hearts, eggplant, olives, capers, onions, spinach, tomatoes, bell peppers, green chili peppers, jalapeños, banana peppers and pineapple.
- Fungi, usually Mushrooms and rarely truffles.
- Meat, such as sausage (pepperoni, salami or Italian sausage), ham, bacon, ground beef, and chicken.
- Seafood such as anchovies, tuna, salmon and shrimp.
- Herbs and spices such as basil, oregano, and black pepper.
- Nuts such as cashews, pistachios, and pine nuts.
- Oils such as olive oil, walnut oil, and truffle oil.
In some pizza recipes the tomato sauce is omitted (termed “white pizza”), or replaced with another sauce (usually garlic butter, but sauces can also be made with spinach or onions). In the Philadelphia area, there are also tomato pies—sauce only, or sauce with ripe Roma tomatoes and spices but no cheese—and upside-down pizzas, i.e., the cheese on the bottom and topped with sauce. Pizza is normally eaten hot (typically at lunch or dinner), but is sometimes eaten as cold leftovers for breakfast.
Variations
New York-style pizza is a style originally developed in New York City by immigrants from Naples, where pizza was created. It is often sold in generously sized, thin and flexible slices. It is traditionally hand-tossed, moderate on sauce, and moderately covered with cheese essentially amounting to a much larger version of the Neapolitan style. The slices are sometimes eaten folded in half, or even stacked, as its size and flexibility may otherwise make it unwieldy to eat by hand. This style of pizza tends to dominate the Northeastern states, and is very similar to the basic style common through the United States and known simply as pizza. Many pizza establishments in the New York metropolitan area offer two varieties of pizza: “Neapolitan,” or “regular,” made with a relatively thin, circular crust and served in wedge-shaped slices, and “Sicilian,” or “square,” made with a thicker, rectangular crust and served in large, rectangular slices. Another type of pizza, more popular on Long Island but can be found, albeit rarely, in Queens and Manhattan is Grandma pizza. It is cooked in a square pan like Sicilian, but it is much thinner. It has a thin, crispy crust, usually has tomato chunks in addition, or in exception, to the sauce. Generally, it will contain less cheese than regular slices, and sometimes has extra spices or oils baked into the crust.
New Haven-style pizza, also known as apizza, popular in southern Connecticut. It has a thin crust that varies between chewy and tender, depending on the particular establishment. The default version is a “white” pizza topped with only garlic and hard cheeses; customers who want tomato sauce or mozzarella cheese have to ask for them explicitly. Apizza has a very dark, “scorched” crisp crust that offers a distinctive bitter flavor, which can be offset by the sweetness of tomatoes or other toppings.
Greek pizza is a variation popular in New England; its name comes from it being typical of the style of pizzerias owned by Greek immigrants. It has a thicker, chewier crust and is baked in a pan in the pizza oven, instead of directly on the bricks. Plain olive oil is a common part of the topping, as well as being liberally used to grease the pans and crisp the crust. Variations in other parts of the country include using feta cheese, Kalamata olives, and Greek herbs such as oregano.
Chicago-style pizza, or Chicago-style, deep-dish pizza, contains a crust which is formed up the sides of a deep-dish pan. It reverses the order of some ingredients, using crust, cheese, filling, then sauce on top. Some versions (usually referred to as "stuffed") have two layers of crust with the sauce on top. The invention of deep-dish pizza occurred in America and transcends a single ethnic origin. Deep-dish pizza was invented by Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo and first served in 1943 at Pizzeria Uno, which is still operating along with its twin restaurant, Pizzeria Due, in the River North neighborhood.
Chicago-style thin-crust pizza has a thinner crust than Chicago-style deep dish, and is baked flat rather than in a deep-dish pan. The crust is thin and firm enough to have a noticeable crunch, unlike a New York-style pizza, yet thick enough to be soft and doughy on the top. The crust is invariably topped with a liberal quantity of southern-Italian style tomato sauce, which is usually quite herbal or highly spiced, and typically contains no visible chunks of tomato. Next, a layer of toppings is added, and a layer of mozzarella cheese which frequently separates from the bottom crust due to the quantity of tomato sauce. Chicago-style thin-crust pizzas are cut into three-to-four-inch squares, also known as “party cut,” as opposed to a “pie cut” into wedges. The small size of the squares makes it unnecessary to fold the slices. Chicago-style pizza is prevalent throughout the Midwestern U.S.. In fact, most of the neighborhood pizza parlors in Chicago and the rest of the Midwest serve Chicago-style thin crust, not deep dish as is commonly assumed. Chains that are well known for Chicago-style, thin-crust pizza are Aurelio's Pizza, Home Run Inn, and Rosati's Pizza.
St. Louis-style pizza is a thin crust variant that is popular in and around St. Louis, Missouri. The most notable characteristic of St. Louis-style pizza is the distinctively St. Louisan Provel cheese used instead of (or rarely in addition to) the mozzarella common to Chicago-style thin crust. The toppings usually consist of fresh, never frozen, ingredients sliced instead of diced. It is common for the pizza to be topped with large pieces of onion, round slices of bell pepper, and full strips of bacon. If ordered with sausage or hamburger, the meat is squeezed off by hand into marble-sized chunks. The crust is thin enough that it becomes very crunchy in the oven and is sometimes compared to a cracker. Even though the crust is round, it is always cut into small squares.
California-style pizza refers to pizza with non-traditional ingredients, especially those that use a considerable amount of fresh produce. A Thai-inspired chicken pizza with peanut sauce, bean sprouts, and shaved carrots is a popular variant in California-style pizza restaurants, as are pizzas that use chicken and barbecue sauce as toppings. The style was invented by Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, and popularized by the California Pizza Kitchen chain, along with Wolfgang Puck’s various fine dining and casual restaurant chains and retail products.
Hawaiian pizza has Canadian bacon (or sliced ham) and pineapple toppings with Mozzarella cheese. This type of pizza is especially popular in the western United States, and is also a popular topping combination in Australia, Canada, and Sweden, but notably not in Hawaii. This type is also common within the EU, where it is known as "pizza Hawaii."
Taco pizza has ingredients usually associated with tacos, such as; lettuce, shredded beef or hamburger, chopped tomatoes, avocados, corn chips, cheddar cheese, sour cream, and taco sauce.
Grilled pizza, invented in Providence, Rhode Island, uses a fairly thin crust cooked on a grill; the toppings are placed on the baked side after the pizza has cooked for a bit and been flipped over.
English muffin, French bread pizza, and pizza bagels are common convenience pizzas made at home in an oven or toaster, usually with a simple topping of tomato sauce, sliced or shredded cheese, and perhaps pepperoni. French bread pizza is sometimes available commercially as a frozen meal.
Australia
Pizza is popular in Australia, where a significant percentage of the population is of Italian descent. The usual Italian varieties are available, but there is also the "Australian," or "australiana," which has the usual tomato-sauce base and mozzarella cheese with bacon and egg (seen as quintessentially Australian breakfast fare). Prawns are also sometimes used on this style of pizza.
In the 1980s, Australian pizza shops and restaurants began selling "gourmet pizzas," essentially pizzas with upmarket ingredients such as salmon, dill, bocconcini, tiger prawns, and even such toppings as kangaroo, emu, and crocodile meats. Wood-fired pizzas, cooked in an impressive-looking ceramic oven heated by wood fuel, are also popular.
India
Pizza is a fast-emerging fast food in Indian urban areas, and has become extremely popular among youth in India.
Pizza outlets serve pizzas with several Indian-based toppings, such as Tandoori chicken and cottage cheese (Known as Paneer in India). Indian pizzas are generally more spicy compared to their Western counterparts, in order to suit Indian taste. Along with Indian variations, more conventional pizzas are also available.
Frozen and ready-to-bake pizzas
Pizza is also found as a frozen food in grocery stores and supermarkets. Some popular brands of these in the U.S. are Tombstone pizza, DiGiorno's, Red Baron, and Home Run Inn. A considerable amount of food-technology ingenuity has gone into the creation of palatable frozen pizza. The main challenges include preventing the sauce from combining with the dough and producing a crust that can be frozen and reheated without becoming rigid. Modified corn starch is commonly used as a moisture barrier between the sauce and crust. Traditionally, the dough is somewhat pre-baked and other ingredients are also sometimes pre-cooked. More recently, frozen pizzas with completely raw ingredients have also begun to appear, as have those with “self-rising” crusts. Many grocery stores and supermarkets also sell fresh, ready-to-bake pizzas.
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Martin Maiden, Pizza is a German(ic) Word! Linguistic Wonder Series, YourDictionary.com, 2008. Retrieved January 23, 2009.
- ↑ Alexandre Dumas > Le Corricolo > Chapitre VIII
- ↑ Avpn - Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana
- ↑ Antica Pizzeria "Da Michele" dal 1870
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 American Pie. American Heritage Magazine (April/May 2006).
- ↑ Food Standards Agency - Survey of pizzas
- ↑ BBC NEWS | Health | Fast food salt levels 'shocking'
- ↑ Bill for traditional Italian pizza
- ↑ Permissible ingredients and methods of processing
- ↑ Più vicina la tutela europea per la pizza, from an Italian government website
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Karmel, Elizabeth, and Blumer, Bob. Pizza on the Grill: 100 Feisty Fire-roasted Recipes for Pizza & More. Newtown, Conn. Taunton Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1600850066
- Katz, Solomon H., and Weaver, William Woys. Encyclopedia of Food and Culture. New York: Scribner, 2003. ISBN 978-0684805689
- McNair, James. Pizza. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1987. ISBN 978-0877014812
- Puck, Wolfgang, and Rothfeld, Steven. Wolfgang Puck's Pizza, Pasta and More! New York: Random House, 2000. ISBN 978-0679438878
- Stucchi, Lorenza De' Medici, and Williams, Chuck. Pizza. Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1993. ISBN 978-0783502298
External links
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