Description
Pizza is the Italian food that has conquered the world: from Brussels to LA, from Beijing to Buenos Aires, pizzas and pizzerias can be found everywhere today. But what are the origins of this food and how did it rise from its humble beginnings to become the world’s best-loved dish?
The story begins in the narrow alleys of Naples where, in the late eighteenth century, the city’s impoverished inhabitants lived in a state of constant hunger. Pizza was born as a street food to assuage the hunger of Naples’ poor. Cheap and versatile, it remained anonymous for more than a century – the few outsiders who encountered this strange flatbread, “more burned than cooked,” either loved it or hated it. Gradually pizza spread to other parts of Italy and then, with the mass migration of Italians to the New World, it landed in the United States, where it enjoyed unprecedented success, invigorated by new ingredients, new recipes, and new tastes. Today, Americans are the biggest consumers of pizza in the world, at 13 kilos per head per year.
The renowned culinary historian Luca Cesari retraces the story of pizza’s rise from the backstreets of Naples to a global industry now worth more than $200 billion a year. He describes how pizzas were made, the ingredients used, and the reactions of travelers, critics, and consumers. Richly illustrated with recipes from different times and places, The History of Pizza will transform your view of Italy’s most iconic food.
Table of Contents
Introduction: A global history of the world’s most-loved dish
Prologue: Naples or New York?
Part One: In Naples
The origin of a myth
Hunger in Naples
Neapolitan pizzaioli and pizzerias
Key players and bakeries
Deeds and misdeeds of Neapolitan pizza
The first mentions of pizza
The true history of the Pizza Margherita
A regal history story
The mystery of the Neapolitan recipe
What the sources don’t say
Beyond Naples
The historic “first wave” in Italy
Part Two: Pizzas or not
Pizza before there were pizzas
From Aeneas’s bread to the piadina
Pizzas that aren’t pizza
Sweat, Flakey, Rustic, and Fried
Part Three: Planet Pizza
Pizza’s overseas voyage
Pizzaioli and pizzerias in the United States
The first Neapolitan pioneers
Pizza from San Francisco to Buenos Aires
An itinerary through the Americas
Global recipes
Pizzas from one end of the world to the other
The return trip
Pizza heads back to Italy
The invention of tradition
…and the phenomenon of the ‘pizza effect’
Hamburgers and hot dogs
How a dish becomes American
The invasion of the Old Continent
When pizza went global
Appendices
The legend about water
How you eat a pizza
Pizza at the movies
Conclusion
The pizza of the future
Acknowledgements
Notes
