All About Pizza

Pizza is a flatbread dish of Italian origin baked quickly at high heat.History of PizzaAncient origins began in places like Greece and Rome, where people baked flat dough with simple toppings like cheese, oil, and herbs. Naples became the birthplace of modern pizza in the 1700s and 1800s, where street vendors sold flatbreads with garlic, lard, and cheese to the working poor. Tomatoes arrived from the Americas in the 1500s and transformed pizza once Neapolitans started cooking them into a sauce. Pizza Margherita was created in 1889 by chef Raffaele Esposito for Queen Margherita, featuring tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil to match the Italian flag. Global expansion happened when Italian immigrants brought pizza to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leading to the first pizzeria, Lombardi's, in New York City in 1905.