Pizza is the world’s favourite fast food. We eat it everywhere – at home, in restaurants, on street corners. From the Greeks to the Egyptians, from the Persians to the Indians, there have been incarnations of pizza served throughout history. We have been eating Pizzas in one form or the other. Flatbreads, naan, and plakountos are all early preparations that could be considered cousins to the modern pizza. 

It is during the medieval era of Italy food at gatherings and parties were served on a Trencher. Trenchers are tough loaves of bread cut into half and used as plates. It was believed that after the food has eaten the bread was either fed to the dog or given to the poor in alms. The trenchers, fortunately, absorbed sauces and gravy from the food that was served on top making it consumable by poor. There was also saying that “A man has to be really hungry to eat his own trencher”. Here we can see the concept of pizza.

Later in the late 18th-century Naples that the pizza as we now know today was first born. Decades after Tomatoes were introduced to Europe. Under the Bourbon kings, Naples was one of the largest cities in Europe and it was a growing economy. It will fulled by traders, peasants and laborers with its population shooting really high. There were also large number of Poor laborers that inhabited the city. They were called lazzaroni due to their ragged appearance.  These laborers worked the odd Jobs and they always wanted food that is cheap, easy to carry and eat. 

The street vendors would use the flat bread, top it with some topings in huge boxes. They would cut this pizza as per the request and budget of the customer. It was believed that two large slices of this was a good breakfast. The Simplest were topped with nothing more than garlic, pig fat and salt. The others included caciocavallo (a cheese made from horse’s milk), cecenielli (whitebait) or basil. Some even had tomatoes on top.  There were also pizzas that had pomodoro  pasta, fish and black pepper as toppings.

It was in 1889 the modern pizza was born, It was made by pizza maker Raffaele Esposito. King Umberto I and his consort Queen Margherita were on a visit to Naples, they were tired of the French food served to them in breakfast, lunch and dinner. They wanted something different form what they have been eating all this while. Pizza maker Raffaele Esposito was summoned to make pizzas for the royals. He cooked three pizzas one with lard, caciocavallo and basil; another with cecenielli; and a third with tomatoes, mozzarella and basil. The queen was very delighted and satisfied, her favorite among the three was the third one with tomatoes, mozzarella and basil, this was named Pizza Margherita in her honour. Pizza margherita is loved by all till date. Margherita’s seal of approval transformed the dish from a local into a truly national dish. 

But it was in America that pizza found its second home. By the end of the 19th century, Italian emigrants had already reached the East Coast; and in 1905, the first pizzeria – Lombardi’s – was opened in New York City. Soon, pizza became an American institution. Spreading across the country in step with the growing pace of urbanisation, it was quickly taken up by enterprising restaurateurs  and adapted to reflect local tastes, identities and needs. 

Shortly after the US entered the Second World War, a Texan named Ike Sewell attempted to make a ‘heartier’ version of the Pizza, with a deeper, thicker crust and richer, more abundant toppings – usually with cheese at the bottom and a mountain of chunky tomato sauce heaped on top of it. This attracted many customers to his Chicago pizzeria.

At about the same time, the Rocky Mountain Pie was developed in Colorado. it had a wider crust, which was meant to be eaten with honey as a desert. Meanwhile a Hawaiian version joined them, topped with ham and pineapple.

From the 1950s onwards, the rapid pace of economic and technological change in the US transformed the pizza even more radically, prompting the development of the frozen pizza. The tomato slices were replaced by tomato paste to avoid the drying of Pizza during oven cooking. There were also new types of cheese introduced to suit freezing.  

It was in 1960s The pizza was commercialized with availability of easy transport by cars, bikes etc. In 1960, Tom and James Monaghan founded ‘Dominik’s’ in Michigan and, after winning a reputation for speedy delivery, they spread nationwide and then spread internationally as “domino’s”. Soon many competeriors with their own recipes made pizza a household name, there is no place in the planet where Pizza is not to be found.