Pizza time

Today I'm blogging with an empty stomach, so let's talk about many (young) people's favorite food: Pizza!

The precursors of pizza originated thousands of years ago when people just started placing things on top of pieces of bread, some oil here, some cheese there, but as we know it, pizza started in the Italian city of Napoli (Naples) in the medieval times. It was simply bread shaped as a disk, but what made it distinctively a "pizza" around the 16th century was the arrival of tomatoes from the newly found America, which became the first 'topping'. A food for the people, by the people, sold in stands on the streets, it was banned in royal courts. Who would dare to eat as the commoners?

Legend says Ferdinando I sneaked to the poor quarter disguised as a commoner to eat this dish, but he would not be the most famous royal to do so. In 1889 King Umberto I and his wife Margherita decided to try this popular food. Baker Raffaele Esposito was given the task of cooking the pizzas for the royalty. He presented three different pizzas for them, one of which had the three Italian flag colors: Basil leaves, Mozzarella and Tomatoes. It is said this was the favored one by the queen, and so is now known as Pizza Margherita and you can have it in any respectable pizzeria nowadays.

As you all know and tasted, pizzas are widespread today, initially to the Americas by Italian immigrants (mostly to the US and South American countries like Argentina) and traditions have been kept at some places, while others take a more liberal approach.

This, my friends, is a travesty.

Myself, I like the simple stuff. Bread, tomato sauce and cheese, maybe a slice of ham on top. I am against what's done in places like Pizza Hut where they put every single ingredient on top of the pizzas and then you can't hold a slice cos everything will slide off and fall cos of it's weight - and yes, pizzas are meant to be eaten with your hands, if you use a knife and fork, you're a heretic.









So there you have it, a short history of pizza.

Do you like pizza? Which ones?