PIZZA: The Real Story
Pizza. American love it so much, they consume 350 slices every second. When I was growing up, people said pizza wasn’t really Italian — it was an American invention. But then, no one I knew as a kid had actually been to Italy. In fact pizza has a long and honored tradition in Italy, where it’s the original fast food.
Folklore says that the modern pizza was created in Naples for visiting royalty, when Naples was still an independent kingdom. This classic pie was topped with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil leaves, the red-white-and-green color scheme being associated with the region — and ultimately becoming the flag colors for all of Italy. The pizza was named for Queen Margherita and is still called Pizza Margherita or Pizza Regina (regina meaning queen).
In Italy, you buy pizza from three different kinds of establishments. The simplest is the pushcart vendor, who roams the streets and parks. He’ll ask whether you want your pizza hot or cold. If you say hot, he’ll heat up your slice on a little hibachi-like grill he carries with him.
The second kind of place sells pizza by the slice to go, to eat as you stroll or shop. In these shops, pizza is baked in large rectangular (not round) pans. You order the kind of pizza you want, then make a gesture with your fingers to show what size piece you want them to cut. Your piece is put on a scale, and you pay by weight — a very reasonable approach to pizza marketing!
The third type of establishment is the pizzeria proper, a sit-down restaurant that specializes in pizzas. Admitttedly this is not considered fine dining, even in Italy. In the classic motion picture “The Bicycle Thief,” the protagonist goes into a restaurant and asks for bread and mozzarella. With great disdain, the waiter throws him out, saying, “This is not a pizzeria!” But if you’re lucky enough to visit Italy, don’t pass up the chance to enjoy pizza in its ancestral surroundings. My favorite pie — and pizzeria — was in a back street in Milan. The delicious pizza had cheese and truffles, and no tomatoes. When we entered, we were told only one table was available, but it wasn’t a very good one. They all looked the same to me, so we sat down and ordered. Our table turned out to be on top of a trap door to the pizzeria’s cellar, where supplies were kept. Several times during our meal, employees came — full of apologies — asking us to get up. Our table was moved to one side. A worker opened the trap door, scampered down a ladder, and retrieved something. Then, with more apologies, the door was closed and our table was put back into position.
A great pizza depends on many things. Unfortunately the brick oven can’t be duplicated at home. The other ingredients — a yeast-dough crust, homemade sauce, fresh mozzarella, your choice of toppings (please, no pineapple!) — should be of the highest quality you can find, just like the requirement for all other Italian recipes. At Brandi’s website — the Naples pizzeria which claims to have invented the Pizza Margherita — you can read about pizza’s history and even watch a video clip on hand-tossing the crust. Prima Pizza in New York will ship a fresh brick-oven pizza anywhere in USA: