Who invented pizza?

Answer 1

italians

Answer 2

Pizza is one of those foods for which we will never know a specific origin. For one thing, the definitions of pizza are many and varied. Putting stuff on flat bread as a meal certainly goes back as far as ancient Rome. The word "pizza" itself appears just before 1000 AD, in the area between Naples and Rome, meaning "pie."

There are traditional pizza-like dishes in Provence where bread (or sometimes a pastry) is topped with onion, tomato, anchovies, and olives. In the Middle East, lahma bi ajeen is a pizza base with minced onions, meat, and flavorings.

So we need to start with some definitions. Shall we confine our attention to American pizza, now found throughout the world? If so, no problem--it was invented in America in the 1950s. That's probably not the answer you were looking for, although the New World did make possible pizza as we know it today.

Instead let's define modern pizza as the tasty conjunction of flat bread, tomato sauce, and cheese. Most food historians point to Naples as the area of origin, and to Napoletana, the pizza of Naples, as the archetype of this type of pizza.

The word "pizza" itself is probably related to pitta (bread) so let's start with the crust. In ancient times, all bread was basically flat, and treated as a food in and of itself. The idea of bread as a carrier or holder of other food pretty much started in the Middle Ages, what we today might call an open face sandwich. It wasn't originally a new way of eating--the bread was a sort of place mat, to help keep the table clean during meals. Only the rich could afford plates, so a flat piece of (say) hard barley bread on the table was used to hold the meal, mostly meat and drippings. Bread was specially baked for that purpose. After the meal, sometimes the bread was consumed, and sometimes given to the dogs.

The closed sandwich has its origins in the 18th century, but that's a different story..

Answer 3

While certainly ancient, the earliest origins of pizza are not at all clear. One interesting legend recounts that the Roman soldiers returning from Palestina, where they had been compelled to eat matzoh among the Palestinian Jews, developed a dish called picea upon gratefully returning to the Italian peninsula.
Most sources, however, agree that an early form of pizza resembling what today is called focaccia was eaten by many peoples around the Mediterranean rim, e.g., by Greeks, Egyptians etc.
These dishes of round pita-like, cooked bread with oil and spices on top are the ancestors of pizza, but are not properly speaking pizza. The tomato was unknown and the Indian water buffalo had not yet been imported to Campania, the area around Naples.
With the discovery of the New World, the tomato made its way to Italy through Spain. It was considered a poisonous ornamental and so in the first centuries of its import was not eaten.
The Neapolitan people seem to be the first to wholeheartedly adopt the tomato into their cuisine, so that in our day the (plum) tomato is the most characteristic element of Neapolitan cuisine.
Over the centuries, a veritable tradition of pizza was developed among the Neapolitan poor. It is not surprising, then, that a modern pizza, that is, with mozzarella di bufala and tomato was made in 18711 in Naples for Princess Margherita of Savoia by Raffaele Esposito. This patriotic pizza, of basil, tomato and mozzarella, in honor of the new tricolor Italian flag's red, green and white, became the pizza alla Margherita. This form of pizza was then made known, popularized and adapted in all the world through waves of emigration from Naples in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The History of the American style pizza pie.
The United States is among the most pizza enthusiastic countries one can find today. How did this come about?
Italian immigrants to New York City began making a version of pizza when they arrived in their new American home at the turn of the 20th century. The first pizzeria in the U.S. was opened by an Italian immigrant in 1905.
In addition, American GI's returning from Italy gained a familiarity with the dish and it is in the post-WWII period that pizza really takes off in the United States.

Answer 4

While certainly ancient, the earliest origins of pizza are not at all clear. One interesting legend recounts that the Roman soldiers returning from Palestina, where they had been compelled to eat matzoh among the Palestinian Jews, developed a dish called picea upon gratefully returning to the Italian peninsula.
Most sources, however, agree that an early form of pizza resembling what today is called focaccia was eaten by many peoples around the Mediterranean rim, e.g., by Greeks, Egyptians etc.
These dishes of round pita-like, cooked bread with oil and spices on top are the ancestors of pizza, but are not properly speaking pizza. The tomato was unknown and the Indian water buffalo had not yet been imported to Campania, the area around Naples.
With the discovery of the New World, the tomato made its way to Italy through Spain. It was considered a poisonous ornamental and so in the first centuries of its import was not eaten.
The Neapolitan people seem to be the first to wholeheartedly adopt the tomato into their cuisine, so that in our day the (plum) tomato is the most characteristic element of Neapolitan cuisine.
Over the centuries, a veritable tradition of pizza was developed among the Neapolitan poor. It is not surprising, then, that a modern pizza, that is, with mozzarella di bufala and tomato was made in 18711 in Naples for Princess Margherita of Savoia by Raffaele Esposito. This patriotic pizza, of basil, tomato and mozzarella, in honor of the new tricolor Italian flag's red, green and white, became the pizza alla Margherita. This form of pizza was then made known, popularized and adapted in all the world through waves of emigration from Naples in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The History of the American style pizza pie.
The United States is among the most pizza enthusiastic countries one can find today. How did this come about?
Italian immigrants to New York City began making a version of pizza when they arrived in their new American home at the turn of the 20th century. The first pizzeria in the U.S. was opened by an Italian immigrant in 1905.
In addition, American GI's returning from Italy gained a familiarity with the dish and it is in the post-WWII period that pizza really takes off in the United States.

Answer 5

General Armando Von Pizza

Answer 6

The history of food items which may have served as the roots of modern pizza can be traced to the ancient Greek colony of Naples in Magna Graecia

Answer 7

Pizza is one of those foods for which we will never know a specific origin. For one thing, the definitions of pizza are many and varied. Putting stuff on flat bread as a meal certainly goes back as far as ancient Rome. The word "pizza" itself appears just before 1000 AD, in the area between Naples and Rome, meaning "pie."

There are traditional pizza-like dishes in Provence where bread (or sometimes a pastry) is topped with onion, tomato, anchovies, and olives. In the Middle East, lahma bi ajeen is a pizza base with minced onions, meat, and flavorings.

So we need to start with some definitions. Shall we confine our attention to American pizza, now found throughout the world? If so, no problem--it was invented in America in the 1950s. That's probably not the answer you were looking for, although the New World did make possible pizza as we know it today.

Instead let's define modern pizza as the tasty conjunction of flat bread, tomato sauce, and cheese. Most food historians point to Naples as the area of origin, and to Napoletana, the pizza of Naples, as the archetype of this type of pizza.

The word "pizza" itself is probably related to pitta (bread) so let's start with the crust. In ancient times, all bread was basically flat, and treated as a food in and of itself. The idea of bread as a carrier or holder of other food pretty much started in the Middle Ages, what we today might call an open face sandwich. It wasn't originally a new way of eating--the bread was a sort of place mat, to help keep the table clean during meals. Only the rich could afford plates, so a flat piece of (say) hard barley bread on the table was used to hold the meal, mostly meat and drippings. Bread was specially baked for that purpose. After the meal, sometimes the bread was consumed, and sometimes given to the dogs.

The closed sandwich has its origins in the 18th century, but that's a different story.

Next ingredient: cheese. Cheese itself dates back to prehistoric times and was probably discovered by accidental fermentation. Mozzarella, a soft, fresh cheese traditionally made from the milk of water buffalo, originated in 15th century Naples. Mozzarella nowadays is made from cow's milk. You can still find buffalo-cheese (or a blend of buffalo and cow cheese) in Salerno, but it's too expensive and delicate for pizza topping, we're told.

That brings us to tomato sauce--the New World's contribution to pizza, since the tomato was a New World plant. Initially Europeans regarded the tomato with suspicion and fear. It had a strange texture, was too acidic to eat green, and looked spoiled when ripe. It disintegrated when cooked, and was even suspected of being poisonous.

But eventually it caught on. New plants from America arrived in Iberia and spread throughout the Mediterranean. Italy probably got the tomato shortly after Spain--its soil and climate, similar to that of Central Mexico, helped the import thrive. The first written mention of the tomato in Italy is 1544; it was fried and eaten with salt and pepper.

By 1692, we have the first recipe for Italian tomato sauce, with chile peppers, so the modern pizza was just around the corner.

Alas, we shall never know the genius who first put together the bread, tomato sauce, and cheese. But that's how pizza (as I've defined it) came to be.

There are a many types of pizza, of course. Even in Naples, there is no consensus on what exactly constitutes a Neapolitan pizza. Burton Anderson writes that the most basic pizza is marinara--flat bread with oil, tomato, garlic, and oregano. It was stored on voyages so that sailors (marinai) could make pizza away from home. The pizza Margherita is just over a century old, named after the first queen of the united Italy, using toppings of tomato, mozzarella cheese, and fresh basil--the red, white, and green of the Italian flag. We also have calzone (pizza with an enclosed filling), pizza maniata (kneaded), pizzette (miniature) and pizza bianca (no toppings).

Italian immigrants brought pizza to the United States, in the early 1900s. However, it was the 1950s when pizza caught on outside the Italian-American community, and quickly spread throughout the U.S. and became an international food, now found in every country.

Answer 8

6th Century B.C.
In the Persian Empire, it is said that the soldiers of Darius the Great (521-486 B.C.), who were set to routine of long marches baked a kind of bread flat upon their shields and then covered it with cheese and dates.
Then somewhere around 3rd Century B.C, it probably went to Rome as the write Marcus Porcius Cato had mentioned something like "flat round of dough dressed with olive oil, herbs, and honey baked on stones."
It went to the Greeks later in 1st century A.D

Answer 9

The history of food items which may have served as the roots of modern pizza can be traced to the ancient Greek colony of Naples in Magna Graecia (southern Italy). Such products arguably have their first written mention in Book VII of Virgil’s 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.”
In the 3rd century BC, the first history of Rome, written by Cato the Elder, mentions a “flat round of dough dressed with olive oil, herbs, and honey baked on stones”[citation needed]; placenta was a “sheet of fine flour filled with cheese and honey and flavored with bay leaves”[1]. Further evidence is found in Pompeii, the city “frozen in time” since AD 79, where archaeologists have excavated shops that closely resemble modern pizzerias.

Though several kinds of flat bread made with flour, often cooked with oil and spices, were familiar to ancient Romans and popular in all the Mediterranean area, they were considerably different from pizza as it is known today. "Il sangue di Maiale" (literally meaning pig's blood) and honey were popular dough spreads until the tomato came about. The tomato was still unknown in Europe and the Indian water buffalo, whose milk is used to make the real mozzarella cheese, had not yet been imported to Campania, the area around Napoli. The crust of pizza is very similar to focaccia bread common in Italian cuisine today.

For some time after the tomato was brought to Europe from the Americas in the 16th century, it was believed by many Europeans to be poisonous (as are some other fruits of the nightshade family). By the late 18th century, however, it was common for the poor of the area around Naples to add tomato to their yeast-based flat bread, and the dish gained in popularity. Pizza became a tourist attraction, and visitors to Naples ventured into the poorer areas of the city to try the local specialty.

Until about 1830, pizza was sold from open-air stands and street vendors out of pizza bakeries. The world’s first true pizzeria, Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba, opened in Naples in that period. A description of pizza in Naples around 1830 is given by the french writer and food expert Alexandre Dumas 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".

Answer 10

Italians (region called Campania) and Napoli is the capitol of it and there where the PIZZA was invented!

Answer 11

It all depends on who you ask.Italians are known for there pizza,However turkish pizza has been around for just as long and in my opinion is heaps better.