Pizza

Did you know that 93 % of Americans consume at least one slice of pizza a month? Americans are the biggest consumers of pizza with billions of slices of pizza eaten every year. Very few people do not enjoy pizza, and even then it sometimes because of medical conditions such as allergies to the ingredients used. There are many different components that can go into a pizza; it may differ depending on a specific culture, when and where it is served. The evolution of pizza has come a long way, all the way from the Roman times until the present.

The exact origin of pizza is unknown; most people would say that pizza originated in Italy. However, Greek civilizations talked about a food called Maza, which was a flat pie that included toppings. Even the world’s most famous navigator brought back flat bread from China in the1300’s. In the Middle Ages, milk used from water buffalos was formed in a way to make mozzarella cheese. Spanish explorers went to Mexico and found the fruit known to be tomato; they brought it back to Spain. They originally thought that the fruit was poisonous, however an Italian chief ate a tomato, and realized that it was not poisonous, it then was included into the formation of a pizza.

Production of the pizza as we know of it today was made in Naples, Italy, during the nineteenth century. Even though there were many different variations of it, the official modern pizza was made for Her Majesty the Queen Margherita by Esposito. Raffaele Esposito, an Italian owner of a restaurant called Pizzeria di Pietro e Basta Cosi, made a pizza to resemble the Italian flag. His pizza had mozzarella cheese, tomato sauce, and instead of using garlic, he used fresh basil to give the pizza a greenish color, hence the colors of the Italian flag, red, green, and white.

With the new found cuisine, it was no surprise that it would spread to the Americas. In 1905 the first pizza parlor opened up in New York City. Italian immigrants brought the dish over from Italy and everyone loved it. The spread of the newest food on the “block” evolved into one of America’s favorite things to eat. Pizzerias are popular in almost every part of the world. There are pizzerias in South America, Asia, Caribbean Islands, Europe, and Arab countries. Depending where you may go, there are different toppings that are favored more than others, such as in Japan they put squid on their pizza, green beans are favored more in Brazil, Australia likes pineapple, India with ginger and coconut in Costa Rica. However the most popular topping in North America is pepperoni, over 36% of pizza orders are pepperoni orders.

No one really knows what the original pizza