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I love pizzas and so does a major part of the world. And so out of sheer fondness for the food, I wanted to dig a little deeper into the history to know how this amazing food came into existence and who all are responsible for its birth. Turns out, there is no one specific thing that you can call the Mother of Pizza but, there sure are many documented stories that give clues about how and where pizza came into this world. And yes, one sure shot thing that I understood from this little research is that Italians must be given a whole lot of credit for this amazing creation.
So enjoy a slice of interesting history of pizza and some of the other interesting facts revolving around this most awesome food ever.
1. It is older than the eldest of people you have known in your family!
In some or the other form, pizza has been around since the stone age. Yes it is that old. The earliest known form of this ever popular treat was a crude flat bread cooked beneath the stones of fire. Greeks preferred their round flat bread baked with assortment of toppings, and they used it as a plate to sop up the broth and gravies.
Some stories from the peak phase of the Persian Empire in the 6th century BC talk about the soldiers of Darius the Great, baking a flat bread on their shields and topping it with cheese and dates.
2. The pizza as we know today was born in Naples
In the 18th or early 19th century, flat-bread dishes were quite a thing in Naples, Italy. And it were these dishes that evolved over the centuries into the modern pizza as we know today. While ingredients such as garlic, salt,  cheese, and basil were the popular toppings back then, the trend caught further air when the tomatoes were introduced to the dish. It is believed that tomatoes were first added somewhere around 1700s.
3. There was a bit of Mt. Vesuvius in the pizzas of Naples 😀
The first of pizzerias opened up in Naples and they used lava stones from Mt. Vesuvius to cook pizzas in the wood-fired brick ovens!
4. Chefs did not want to popularize pizza as they perceived it as poor people’s food!
This is quite weird in terms of India because here no matter how awesome or pathetic one’s finances may be, pizza is preferred as a weekend fun food. Back then though, chefs did not want to give it much importance. But the combination of round flat bread with tomatoes, stirred curiosity even in the royal palace of Naples. Soon after, pizza established itself as a simple and economical food that could be enjoyed by all people.
5. From Queen Margherita to Pizza Margherita
Everyone’s favourite Pizza Margherita came into existence in around 1889 when a Neapolitan pizza maker was commissioned by the Royal Palace of Capodimonte to prepare pizza for the visiting queen. The pizza maker made three pizzas and out of those, queen preferred the one striped in the colours of the Italian flag. It had red of tomato, green of basil and white of mozzarella. Due to Queen Margherita’s strong liking of the preparation, this particular kind of pizza came to be known as Pizza Margherita!
6. And soon enough, cupid struck the US with the “love Pizza” arrow and now it is one of the staple diets of the Americans!
In the late nineteenth century, Italian immigrants started spreading the pizza culture in the USA and some of the early pizzerias started opening up there. Today, pizza is no less than a staple food of the Americans with 350 slices being enjoyed each second. And not just the USA, today almost every country enjoys pizzas by incorporating in it, their own specific flavours. Like in India, paneer tikka pizza is the desi one.
7. The largest pizza ever, weighed a staggering 51,257 pounds!
A team of five Italian chefs collaborated to prepare a 131 foot gluten-free pizza, which was named Ottavia (after the Roman emperor Octavia Augustus). It took them 48 hours just to get the dough ready. But the team’s consistent efforts paid off and they managed to break the previous record of the world’s largest pizza which was made in 1990 by Norwood Pick’n Pay hypermarket in South Africa.
8. Most expensive pizzas in the world have edible gold in them!
Sure pizzas are a great thing to have ever happened in the history of culinary but there are certain people who value it far more than you and I. So much so that one of the world’s most expensive pizzas named “Pizza Royale 007” contains caviar, lobster, and 24 carat gold dust as ingredients! It is available at a staggering cost of 4,200 pounds at Haggis Restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland. There is another one in this league made by a restaurateur Domenico Crolla, which also contained edible gold as one of the main ingredients. This particular one was auctioned for charity in 2007 and raised 2,150 pounds.
9. For the love of pizza, they celebrate National Pizza Month!
National Pizza Month is observed in the month of October every year in America and in some parts of Canada. This observance month was brought into existence by Gerry Durnell, publisher of Pizza Today magazine, in October of 1984.
10. In 2008, the Italian Americans competed in a pizza making contest and came in second and this was definitely a bad news for Italy’s then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
In 2005 it so happened that the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi insulted the Finish cuisine and their common dish of marinated reindeer. But Mr. Prime Minister had to taste his own bitterness when in America’s Plate International pizza contest, Finish pizza containing smoked reindeer with other key ingredients came in first and the Italian pizza bagged the second spot. And so the winning Finnish pizza was named Pizza Berlusconi in order to mock the Italian Prime Minister.
11. The frequent Pizza eaters in Italy run lower risks of  battling cardiovascular diseases than the infrequent eaters. Mummas out there, are you frowning?
Although the exact science behind this remains unclear but it has been observed that the regular eaters of pizzas suffer with lower risks of contracting cardiovascular diseases and digestive tract cancers!
12. North Korea got its first pizzeria in 2009! 2-freaking-1000-9!
There is South Korea where people go to the extent of adding apples, pistachios and brie on their pizzas and then there is their neighbour North Korea, a country that was allowed to open its doors to the pizza culture just about 6 years ago when Kim Jong-il decided that the North Koreans should try the world’s best foods. And so, he sent the chefs to Italy to learn the art of pizza making.
13. There exists a mathematical theorem called Pizza Theorem!
It is named so because it resembles a traditional pizza slicing technique. It depicts that if two people shared pizza in the way showed in the image, then each would get to eat the equal amount of pizza.
14. Saturdays are the most popular days to binge on pizzas!
“Treat me like a Saturday Night”
Let’s order now! 😀
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