Any Way You Slice It

     As you might suspect pizza is a very popular item in Italy.  It's on almost every menu, from the casual eatery to the fine dining establishments.  On one occasion I counted 46 different kinds of pizzas being offered at a single restaurant!


     Pizza probably got its start as a step up from the common focaccia, or flat bread that was baked in an oven.  There are documented accounts of the word appearing as far back as 997AD in Gaeta, Italy.  And remains of Italian flat bread has been calculated to be over 7,000 years old.

     But the pizza as we know it is a more recent invention.  In the late 18th Century the poor residing around Naples began to add tomatoes to their yeast baked bread and hearing of this new creation visitors began to arrive to give it a taste.  And that's when different toppings began to proliferate in an attempt to please diverse palates.  But to the purist there are really only 2 styles of pizza:  Marinara and Margherita.

     The older of the two, Marinara, is very basic, having only tomato, olive oil, garlic and oregano topping the flat bread.  The name is derived from the wives (la marinara) of sea farers who would bake the pizzas upon their husband's return to the Bay of Naples from the open sea.

     Margherita pizzas use a more modest amount of tomato topped with mozzarella cheese and fresh basil.  It is said that Raffaele Esposito baked one for the Queen Margherita of  Savoy in 1880.  She liked it because it reminded her of the tri-color flag of the fledgling nation with its red, white and green panels.

There are also some regional variants to pizza style, too.  Those baked around Naples tend to be soft and pliable, while those in Rome are thin and crispy.  Pizza al taglio is baked in rectangular trays and is sold by weight.