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=                               Pizza                                =
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                             Introduction                             
======================================================================
Pizza (, ) is a savory dish of Italian origin consisting of a usually
round, flattened base of leavened wheat-based dough topped with
tomatoes, cheese, and often various other ingredients (such as
anchovies, mushrooms, onions, olives, pineapple, meat, etc.), which is
then baked at a high temperature, traditionally in a wood-fired oven.
A small pizza is sometimes called a pizzetta. A person who makes pizza
is known as a pizzaiolo.

In Italy, pizza served in formal settings, such as at a restaurant, is
presented unsliced, and is eaten with the use of a knife and fork. In
casual settings, however, it is cut into wedges to be eaten while held
in the hand.

The term 'pizza' was first recorded in the 10th century in a Latin
manuscript from the Southern Italian town of Gaeta in Lazio, on the
border with Campania. Modern pizza was invented in Naples, and the
dish and its variants have since become popular in many countries. It
has become one of the most popular foods in the world and a common
fast food item in Europe and North America, available at pizzerias
(restaurants specializing in pizza),  restaurants offering
Mediterranean cuisine, and via pizza delivery. Many companies sell
ready-baked frozen pizzas to be reheated in an ordinary home oven.

The 'Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana' (lit. True Neapolitan Pizza
Association) is a non-profit organization founded in 1984 with
headquarters in Naples that aims to promote traditional Neapolitan
pizza. In 2009, upon Italy's request, Neapolitan pizza was registered
with the European Union as a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed dish,
and in 2017 the art of its making was included on UNESCO's list of
intangible cultural heritage.


                              Etymology                               
======================================================================
The word "pizza" first appeared in a Latin text from the central
Italian town of Gaeta, then still part of the Byzantine Empire, in 997
AD; the text states that a tenant of certain property is to give the
bishop of Gaeta 'duodecim pizze' ("twelve pizzas") every Christmas
Day, and another twelve every Easter Sunday.

Suggested etymologies include:

Greek pitta bread and the Apulia and Calabrian (then Byzantine Italy)
'pitta,' a round flat bread baked in the oven at high temperature
sometimes with toppings. The word 'pitta' can in turn be traced to
either Ancient Greek πικτή ('pikte'), "fermented pastry", which in
Latin became "picta", or Ancient Greek πίσσα ('pissa', Attic πίττα,
'pitta'), "pitch", or πήτεα ('pḗtea'), "bran" (πητίτης 'pētítēs',
"bran bread").

coming from dialectal 'pinza' "clamp", as in modern Italian 'pinze'
"pliers, pincers, tongs, forceps". Their origin is from Latin
'pinsere' "to pound, stamp".

the English words "bit" and "bite"), which was brought to Italy in the
middle of the 6th century AD by the invading Lombards. The shift
b>p could be explained by the High German consonant shift, and it
has been noted in this connection that in German the word Imbiss means
"snack".


                               History                                
======================================================================
Foods similar to pizza have been made since the Neolithic Age. Records
of people adding other ingredients to bread to make it more flavorful
can be found throughout ancient history. In the 6th century BC, the
Persian soldiers of Achaemenid Empire during the rule King Darius I
baked flatbreads with cheese and dates on top of their battle shields
and the ancient Greeks supplemented their bread with oils, herbs, and
cheese. An early reference to a pizza-like food occurs in the Aeneid,
when Celaeno, queen of the Harpies, foretells that the Trojans would
not find peace until they are forced by hunger to eat their tables
(Book III). In Book VII, Aeneas and his men are served a meal that
includes round cakes (like pita bread) topped with cooked vegetables.
When they eat the bread, they realize that these are the "tables"
prophesied by Celaeno.

Modern pizza evolved from similar flatbread dishes in Naples, Italy,
in the 18th or early 19th century. Prior to that time, flatbread was
often topped with ingredients such as garlic, salt, lard, and cheese.
It is uncertain when tomatoes were first added and there are many
conflicting claims. Until about 1830, pizza was sold from open-air
stands and out of pizza bakeries.

A popular contemporary legend holds that the archetypal pizza, 'pizza
Margherita', was invented in 1889, when the Royal Palace of
Capodimonte commissioned the Neapolitan pizzaiolo (pizza maker)
Raffaele Esposito to create a pizza in honor of the visiting Queen
Margherita. Of the three different pizzas he created, the Queen
strongly preferred a pizza swathed in the colors of the Italian flag —
red (tomato), green (basil), and white (mozzarella). Supposedly, this
kind of pizza was then named after the Queen, although later research
cast doubt on this legend. An official letter of recognition from the
Queen's "head of service" remains on display in Esposito's shop, now
called the Pizzeria Brandi.

Pizza was brought to the United States with Italian immigrants in the
late nineteenth century and first appeared in areas where Italian
immigrants concentrated. The country's first pizzeria, Lombardi's,
opened in 1905. Following World War II, veterans returning from the
Italian Campaign, who were introduced to Italy's native cuisine,
proved a ready market for pizza in particular.


                             Preparation                              
======================================================================
Pizza is sold fresh or frozen, and whole or as portion-size slices or
pieces. Methods have been developed to overcome challenges such as
preventing the sauce from combining with the dough and producing a
crust that can be frozen and reheated without becoming rigid. There
are frozen pizzas with raw ingredients and self-rising crusts.

Another form of uncooked pizza is available from take and bake
pizzerias. This pizza is assembled in the store, then sold to
customers to bake in their own ovens. Some grocery stores sell fresh
dough along with sauce and basic ingredients, to complete at home
before baking in an oven.


File:Frozen pizza.jpg|A wrapped, mass-produced frozen pizza to be
cooked at home
File:Pizza 1 bg.jpg|Pizza dough being kneaded. After this, it is
typically left undisturbed and allowed time to proof.
File:Jupiter - Flickr - Joe Parks.jpg|Traditional pizza dough being
tossed
File:US Navy 070406-N-2959L-756 Members of USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76)
First Class Association prepare and put toppings on pizzas in the
galley as part of a special dinner prepared for the crew.jpg|Various
toppings being placed on pan pizzas
File:Neapolitan pizza.jpg|An uncooked Neapolitan pizza on a metal
peel, ready for the oven


 Cooking 
=========
In restaurants, pizza can be baked in an oven with stone bricks above
the heat source, an electric deck oven, a conveyor belt oven, or, in
the case of more expensive restaurants, a wood or coal-fired brick
oven. On deck ovens, pizza can be slid into the oven on a long paddle,
called a peel, and baked directly on the hot bricks or baked on a
screen (a round metal grate, typically aluminum). Prior to use, a peel
may be sprinkled with cornmeal to allow pizza to easily slide onto and
off of it. When made at home, it can be baked on a pizza stone in a
regular oven to reproduce the effect of a brick oven. Cooking directly
in a metal oven results in too rapid heat transfer to the crust,
burning it.  Aficionado home-chefs sometimes use a specialty
wood-fired pizza oven, usually installed outdoors. Dome-shaped pizza
ovens have been used for centuries, which is one way to achieve true
heat distribution in a wood-fired pizza oven. Another option is
grilled pizza, in which the crust is baked directly on a barbecue
grill. Greek pizza, like Chicago-style pizza, is baked in a pan rather
than directly on the bricks of the pizza oven.

When it comes to preparation, the dough and ingredients can be
combined on any kind of table. With mass production of pizza, the
process can be completely automated. Most restaurants still use
standard and purpose-built pizza preparation tables. Pizzerias
nowadays can even opt for hi tech pizza preparation tables that
combine mass production elements with traditional techniques.


File:Pizza im Pizzaofen von Maurizio.jpg|Pizzas baking in a
traditional wood-fired brick oven
File:Pizza baking in Wood-fired oven.jpg|A pizza baked in a wood-fired
oven, being removed with a wooden peel
File:New_York-Style_Pizza.png|A cooked pizza served at a New York
pizzeria


 Crust 
=======
The bottom of the pizza, called the "crust", may vary widely according
to style, thin as in a typical hand-tossed Neapolitan pizza or thick
as in a deep-dish Chicago-style. It is traditionally plain, but may
also be seasoned with garlic or herbs, or stuffed with cheese. The
outer edge of the pizza is sometimes referred to as the 'cornicione'.
Pizza dough often contains sugar, both to help its yeast rise and
enhance browning of the crust.

Dipping sauce specifically for pizza was invented by American pizza
chain Papa John's Pizza in 1984 and has since become popular when
eating pizza, especially the crust.


 Cheese 
========
Mozzarella is commonly used on pizza, with the highest quality buffalo
mozzarella produced in the surroundings of Naples. Eventually, other
cheeses were used well as pizza ingredients, particularly Italian
cheeses including provolone, pecorino romano, ricotta, and scamorza.
Less expensive processed cheeses or cheese analogues have been
developed for mass-market pizzas to produce desirable qualities like
browning, melting, stretchiness, consistent fat and moisture content,
and stable shelf life. This quest to create the ideal and economical
pizza cheese has involved many studies and experiments analyzing the
impact of vegetable oil, manufacturing and culture processes,
denatured whey proteins, and other changes in manufacture. In 1997, it
was estimated that annual production of pizza cheese was 1 e6MT in the
U.S. and 100000 MT in Europe.


 Italy 
=======
Authentic Neapolitan pizza ('pizza napoletana') is made with San
Marzano tomatoes, grown on the volcanic plains south of Mount
Vesuvius, and mozzarella di bufala Campana, made with milk from water
buffalo raised in the marshlands of Campania and Lazio. This
mozzarella is protected with its own European protected designation of
origin. Other traditional pizzas include 'pizza alla marinara', which
is topped with marinara sauce and is supposedly the most ancient
tomato-topped pizza,
pizza capricciosa, which is prepared with mozzarella cheese, baked
ham, mushroom, artichoke, and tomato, and pizza pugliese, prepared
with tomato, mozzarella, and onions.

A popular variant of pizza in Italy is Sicilian pizza (locally called
'sfincione' or 'sfinciuni'), a thick-crust or deep-dish pizza
originating during the 17th century in Sicily: it is essentially a
focaccia that is typically topped with tomato sauce and other
ingredients. Until the 1860s, 'sfincione' was the type of pizza
usually consumed in Sicily, especially in the Western portion of the
island. Other variations of pizzas are also found in other regions of
Italy, for example 'pizza al padellino' or 'pizza al tegamino', a
small-sized, thick-crust, deep-dish pizza typically served in Turin,
Piedmont.


 United States 
===============
13% of the United States population consumes pizza on any given day.
Pizza chains such as Domino's Pizza, Pizza Hut, and Papa John's,
pizzas from take and bake pizzerias, and chilled or frozen pizzas from
supermarkets make pizza readily available nationwide.


The first pizzeria in the U.S. was opened in New York City's Little
Italy in 1905.  Common toppings for pizza in the United States include
anchovies, ground beef, chicken, ham, mushrooms, olives, onions,
peppers, pepperoni, pineapple, salami, sausage, spinach, steak, and
tomatoes. Distinct regional types developed in the 20th century,
including Buffalo, California, Chicago, Detroit, Greek, New Haven, New
York, and St. Louis styles. These regional variations include
deep-dish, stuffed, pockets, turnovers, rolled, and pizza-on-a-stick,
each with seemingly limitless combinations of sauce and toppings.

Another variation is grilled pizza, created by taking a fairly thin,
round (more typically, irregularly shaped) sheet of yeasted pizza
dough, placing it directly over the fire of a grill, and then turning
it over once the bottom has baked and placing a thin layer of toppings
on the baked side. Toppings may be sliced thin to ensure that they
heat through, and chunkier toppings such as sausage or peppers may be
precooked before being placed on the pizza. Garlic, herbs, or other
ingredients are sometimes added to the pizza or the crust to maximize
the flavor of the dish.

Grilled pizza was offered in the United States at the Al Forno
restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island by owners Johanne Killeen and
George Germon in 1980. Although it was inspired by a misunderstanding
that confused a wood-fired brick oven with a grill, grilled pizza did
exist prior to 1980, both in Italy, and in Argentina where it is known
as 'pizza a la parrilla'. It has become a popular cookout dish, and
there are even some pizza restaurants that specialize in the style.
The traditional style of grilled pizza employed at Al Forno restaurant
uses a dough coated with olive oil, strained tomato sauce, thin slices
of fresh mozzarella, and a garnish made from shaved scallions, and is
served uncut. The final product can be likened to flatbread with pizza
toppings. Another Providence establishment, Bob & Timmy's Grilled
Pizza, was featured in a Providence-themed episode of the Travel
Channel's 'Man v. Food Nation' in 2011.


 Argentina 
===========
Argentina, and more specifically Buenos Aires, received a massive
Italian immigration at the turn of the 19th century. Immigrants from
Naples and Genoa opened the first pizza bars, though over time Spanish
residents came to own the majority of the pizza businesses.

Standard Argentine pizza has a thicker crust, called "media masa"
(half dough) than traditional Italian style pizza and includes more
cheese. Argentine gastronomy tradition, served pizza with fainá, which
is a Genovese chick pea-flour dough placed over the piece of pizza,
and moscato wine. The most popular variety of pizza is called
"muzzarella" (mozzarella), similar to Neapolitan pizza (bread, tomato
sauce and cheese) but made with a thicker "media masa" crust, triple
cheese and tomato sauce, usually also with olives. It can be found in
nearly every corner of the country; Buenos Aires is considered the
city with the most pizza bars by person of the world. Other popular
varieties include jam, tomato slices, red pepper and longaniza. Two
Argentine-born varieties of pizza with onion, are also very popular:
fugazza with cheese and fugazzetta. The former one consists in a
regular pizza crust topped with cheese and onions; the later has the
cheese between two pizza crusts, with onions on top.


                               Records                                
======================================================================
The world's largest pizza was prepared in Rome in December 2012, and
measured 1261 m2. The pizza was named "Ottavia" in homage to the first
Roman emperor Octavian Augustus, and was made with a gluten-free base.
The world's longest pizza was made in
Fontana, California in 2017 and measured 1930.39 m.

The world's most expensive pizza listed by 'Guinness World Records' is
a commercially available thin-crust pizza at Maze restaurant in
London, United Kingdom, which costs . The pizza is wood fire-baked,
and is topped with onion puree, white truffle paste, fontina cheese,
baby mozzarella, pancetta, cep mushrooms, freshly picked wild mizuna
lettuce, and fresh shavings of a rare Italian white truffle.

There are several instances of more expensive pizzas, such as the
"Pizza Royale 007" at Haggis restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland, which is
topped with caviar, lobster, and 24-carat gold dust, and the  caviar
pizza made by Nino's Bellissima pizzeria in New York City, New York.
However, these are not officially recognized by 'Guinness World
Records'. Additionally, a pizza was made by the restaurateur Domenico
Crolla that included toppings such as sunblush-tomato sauce, Scottish
smoked salmon, medallions of venison, edible gold, lobster marinated
in cognac, and champagne-soaked caviar. The pizza was auctioned for
charity in 2007, raising .

In 2017, the world pizza market was $128 billion, and in the US it was
$44 billion spread over 76,000 pizzerias.  Overall, 13% of the U.S.
population aged 2 years and over consumed pizza on any given day. A
Technomic study concluded that 83% of consumers eat pizza at least
once per month. According to PMQ in 2018 60.47% of respondents
reported an increase in sales over the previous year.


                           Health concerns                            
======================================================================
Some mass-produced pizzas by fast food chains have been criticized as
having an unhealthy balance of ingredients. Pizza can be high in salt,
fat, and food energy. The USDA reports an average sodium content of
5,101 mg per 14 in pizza in fast food chains. There are concerns about
negative health effects. Food chains have come under criticism at
various times for the high salt content of some of their meals.

Frequent pizza eaters in Italy have been found to have a relatively
low incidence of cardiovascular disease and digestive tract cancers
relative to infrequent pizza eaters, although the nature of the
association between pizza and such perceived benefits is unclear.
Pizza consumption in Italy might only indicate adherence to
traditional Mediterranean dietary patterns, which have been shown to
have various health benefits.

Some attribute the apparent health benefits of pizza to the lycopene
content in pizza sauce, which research indicates likely plays a role
in protecting against cardiovascular disease and various cancers.


                         National Pizza Month                         
======================================================================
National Pizza Month is an annual observance that occurs for the month
of October in the United States and some areas of Canada. This
observance began in October 1984, and was created by Gerry Durnell,
the publisher of 'Pizza Today' magazine. During this time, some people
observe National Pizza Month by consuming various types of pizzas or
pizza slices, or going to various pizzerias.


                            Similar dishes                            
======================================================================

pizza dough folded (calzone) or rolled (stromboli) around a filling.

regional dish made from chickpea flour, water, salt, and olive oil.
Also called 'socca' in the Provence region of France. Often baked in a
brick oven, and typically weighed and sold by the slice.

'Tarte flambée)' is a thin disc of dough covered in crème fraîche,
onions, and bacon.

shape and size, and made with similar dough. It is garnished with
melted butter, garlic, cheese, and sometimes bacon.

'lahmajoun'; also 'Armenian pizza' or 'Turkish pizza') is a
meat-topped dough round. The base is very thin, and the layer of meat
often includes chopped vegetables.

'laḥm bi'ajīn'; also 'Arab pizza') are dishes similar to pizza.

meat. It is usually oval-shaped with chopped meat on top of it.

slightly thicker crust and a topping of cooked onions, anchovies, and
olives.

pizzas.

which consists of bread, tomato sauce, cheese, and various toppings.
Homemade versions may be prepared.

in which the dough is shaped into stick forms, sauce and toppings are
added, and it is then baked. Bread dough may also be used in their
preparation, and some versions are fried.

to as "Japanese pizza".

Tanzania. It uses a dough much thinner than pizza dough, almost like
filo dough, filled with minced beef, onions, and an egg, similar to
Moroccan bestila.

usual pizza ingredients, baked in an oven.


                               Gallery                                
======================================================================
File:Chicago-style pizza.jpg|Chicago-style pizza — deep dish
File:Calzone04.jpg|A halved calzone
File:Tarte flambée alsacienne 514471722.jpg|A tarte flambée
File:Vegetarian pizza.jpg|A vegetarian pizza
File:Eataly Las Vegas - Feb 2019 - Stierch 12.jpg|Pizza Margherita
File:Garlic Fingers.jpg|Garlic fingers, the archetype of Canadian
pizza
File:Hamburger pizza at Kotipizza.jpg|A hamburger pizza served at a
Kotipizza restaurant in Finland
File:NewYorkSlices.jpg|Slices of New York-style pizza
File:Fugazzeta en pizzeria Guerrin, Buenos Aires.JPG|Argentine
fugazzetta.
File:Detroit Style Pizza from Calphalon Bread Pans.png|Detroit-style
pizza


                               See also                               
======================================================================



                           Further reading                            
======================================================================

Wood-fired, Generic boxed, New York, Neapolitan, Chicago, and New
Haven.



 License 
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza


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