Quick note: caciocavello is not horse milk cheese. It's a pasta filata cheese (stretched curd cheese) that is aged. It's formed into jug shaped cheeses with a string tied to the top to age it. Normally there are 2 cheeses tied to either end of the string and you hang them. It's called "cavello" (horse) because you could put it on horse back with one cheese on either side of the horse.
It's essentially a drier version of mozzarella, though (very similar to Italian provalone).
> A beautifully preserved thermopolium (cook shop), one of the places in #Pompeii where one could purchase hot and ready-to-eat food.
Most Romans resided in insulae and did not have facilities to cook at home and relied on thermopolia to buy their hot meals. (photo)
I would be completely unsurprised if there is an unbroken lineage from these shops (in other towns that were not obliterated by Vesuvius) through to Pizzerias in present-day Napoli.
In Lee Iacocca's memoirs, he recalls how kids in school bullied him and taunted him for eating pizza, calling it "Dago food". Now it's America's #1 food, but the change was within living memory.
"Some even had tomatoes on top. Only recently introduced from the Americas, these were still a curiosity, looked down upon by contemporary gourmets".
Well that settles it. Next time a pizza traditionalist blasts me for having pineapple on my pizza, I'll counter that he shouldn't have tomatoes on theirs.
This was done not for the taste, but so that the pizza could be prepared in advance of being served. The idea was that the tomato paste would not go bad or seep juices into the dough base. Its is actually a regression from a culinary standpoint.
That's like saying pickles and preserves and fermented foods are a "culinary regression" because they were created to prevent fresh food from going bad.
Something can be both practical and not a "regression."
As an Italian (not from Genoa though), pesto to me has always been just a pasta sauce, so I was very surprised to see it used on salads and pizzas abroad. But recently (in the last 2-3 years) I’ve seen quite a few Italian pizzerias (not the most traditional, of course) starting to use it as an alternative choice to the tomato sauce, or, sometimes, in place of the olive oil on top. Not sure if it’s a regional variation gone national or an influence from abroad... but if it’s the latter, no Italian would ever admit that :)
This is either lahmadjun or pide. They are close, but don't seem to have common origins, just independent discoveries. Same as flatbreads. And putting some topping on one is hardly a world shattering idea.
> Well that settles it. Next time a pizza traditionalist blasts me for having pineapple on my pizza, I'll counter that he shouldn't have tomatoes on theirs.
I don't think it's a matter of tradition. It's a matter of taste.
I'm curious but are you living somewhere far from a place with a tropical climate?
In Australia pineapple on pizza is a really common thing. The only person I've ever met who didn't like pineapple on pizza just doesn't like pineapple at all in any context. Over here it is also pretty common to have pineapple on burgers.
My Canadian born girlfriend (who mostly grew up here) has told me that when she visited Canada at 14 and was shown a mango over there she didn't recognise it as a mango because it was so small and weirdly coloured compared to the ones we get here.
I'm beginning to think the objection to pineapple on pizza comes from people not having access to halfway decent pineapple
It's a question of ingredient quality. Most Hawaiian pizza is made with canned pineapple and thick-cut deli ham. Fresh pineapple and also any other pork aside from that ham is a big, big upgrade.
There is a lot of mysticism over the origin of Pizza. In fact, it's probably a very straightforward kind of dish that probably has been invented multiple times, of course with varying toppings and maybe a few other differing ideals.
Basically if you have a wooden oven to bake bread, baking is risky. If the oven is too hot, the bread will become burnt before being thoroughly baked within, if you put it in too late, the heat will not be enough. So how do you, as a baker (or farmer baking for your own supply) test whether the oven has the right temperature? You trial-run with very thin patches of dough, that you can pull out easily and are always done inside, when the outside is nicely burnt: a kind of flat bread.
Putting stuff on top of the flat bread and making it your snack on baking day is just a logical conclusion.
In fact, around here, there are several regional dishes similar to a pizza serving this purpose. Flammkuchen from Alsace, and Denede from Swabia. The village where I work still has preserved (and renovated recently) a "Backhaus", a common oven of the village that would be fired regularly and then used by all villagers to bake their own bread. Did they triage the heat of the fired oven by putting in a small piece of dough? probably. Did they put stuff on top of that piece? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised.
This. My great-grandmothers all used to bake bread in the village Backhaus once a week, and the oven temperature was always checked by baking something pizza-like, for example a crude Salzkuchen [0], which is basically a very thin Quiche, or just a flat portion of dough which was eaten without or with a cold topping. I guess that basically every culture which developed baking skills has one or multiple dishes which resemble a Pizza.
Flatbreads are of course very, very common all over the world. Anywhere that people had access to grain they would have been standard, though yeasted ones mostly require wheat (or rye). Just from baking myself I would say that some of the appeal is not having to wait for multiple risings, punching down, and kneading - just mix flour, water, yeast, and throw it in a hot oven to have fresh bread in a few minutes.
I can think of a few contenders for best pizza that I have had (mostly in Italy) - but the worst was undoubtedly a ghastly slice of horror that I purchased at the big conference centre in Atlanta - the pizza topping had been burnt and this was remedied by heaping on more cheese and mystery meat to obscure this fact.
Worst pizza I've ever had was from a shop just off the Metro at the foot of Montmartre in Paris. Just a normal pizza, no weird toppings. I managed two bites (I was very hungry or bite two would not have been attempted).
Second worst was when I first had Imo's without knowing what provel was. I think I got through almost half a slice on that one. You must have to grow up eating it to find it edible.
The next few rankings after that, moving up the list, would be very cheap frozen pizzas. Like, the dollar or two a pie (on sale) kind.
The best pizza I've ever found was inside the Manhattan terminal of the Staten Island Ferry. This was over 50 years ago so who knows now. Growing up in the mid 50s and early 60s pizza was 15 cents a slice and a coke to go with it was a dime so my Mom would give my sister and I a quarter each and we would walk down the block to the local pizza parlor for a Saturday lunch treat. Large soft pretzels were a nickel each or 6 for a quarter from push cart vendors. It was a good time to grow up.
Maybe the best pizza in the United States. I'm Italian, the classic United States pizza could hardly be called "pizza" here, since it's not risen enough for being a pizza.
Pizza quality varies wildly in America. There are a lot of places where the only "fresh pizza" you will find is something from one of the big chains. And there are a lot of places that serve pizza that just serve terrible quick food in general, so not surprising the pizza will be bad too.
Having said that, there is a lot of good Pizza in the US, especially in areas with heavy Italian immigrations like the north east. Obviously its a different style than most Italian Pizza, but its still really good.
I have only been to Italy once for three weeks to visit my cousins, but I read a lot about pizza. From what I have read/watched from Italian sources, even Pizza in Italy was in somewhat of a rut ~20+ years ago.
Looks like a neapolitan style, which is maybe the third wave of pizza in the US. Lots of neapolitan style places have opened in in the last 15 years. I like that style, but I wouldn't say its my favorite.
I would probably put a well done Regina's pizza (Boston) or a Prince Street (NYC) spicy pepperoni square slice ahead of any neapolitan pizza, and I say that as someone who owns a pizza oven and makes a lot of neapolitan style pizza.
I agree with you, though nyc pizza is actually really good (thin crust which tastes good and good ingredients)!! Im no italian, but as a frenchy that loved to tell americans how bad their pizzas are, i must tell that shut me up.
Chicago pizza and its dip dish really on the other hand, was one of the biggest deception of my life ^^
But i’ll definitely agree - i find your typical usa pizza (HUGE crust, terrible ingredients) impossible to enjoy ;p
The true Chicago pizza that is more ubiquitous in the region than deep dish is Tavern style pizza. It is a cracker style crust, sweeter sauce, cheese to edge of the crust, and cut in squares. It also best well-baked. https://www.bonappetit.com/story/real-chicago-pizza-tavern-s... Check it out next time your in Chicago.
I went to a well-famed pizzeria with a few friends. Among them was a woman from Napoli who was in France for a few months. When we asked what she thought of her pizza she said:
> It's good. Nothing great, but once I stopped thinking of it as a pizza, I found it was good food.
Where in Italy are you from? I've spent quite a bit of time there. I've had pizza in Florence, pizza in Rome, pizza in Sorrento, pizza in Palermo and at a few Autogrills in between. I can't comment on the pizza in New Haven, but I can say for sure there's no standard dough in Italy.
Have you had pizza in Rome? Rome is a good example: Rome has a tradition of thin and crunchy pizza, which is far from the "standard" pizza (which is the Naples one). Rome pizza is pretty common in Rome, tough there are also many places serving Naples pizza. The point is: Italian people living in Rome and going out for a pizza usually distinguish between the two kinds of pizza: for example, I have lived in Rome for some years and, since I don't like Rome pizza ("pizza romana"), I always chose places serving Naples pizza.
In the rest of Italy is the same: you call it "pizza", but you distinguish between places that make good Naples pizza, bad Naples pizza, good not-Naples pizza, bad not-Naples pizza.
I have eaten those style of pizza. They are tasty. Not everything must be Neapolitan to be edible. I think it may depends on local ingredients - since Italy has amazing ones it is just a matter of putting simple toppings with minimal heat processing not to fuck them up and serve.
If there were no good local substitutes you have to pump up the grease and toast the ingredients a bit more to make it flavorful enough.
For cases like New Haven Style pizza and some of the original NYC pizza places like lombardi's, they use coal ovens which get really really hot but don't really have a flame like wood oven. So you end up cooking them longer than in a wood oven, which makes them crispier but also a little charred around the edges.
Given that these places served a lot of immigrants when they opened, I also wouldn't be surprised if it helped having a sturdier pizza that you could take to work with you.
Oh I know it can be tasty, I have eaten my fair share of greasy pizzas too. And I’m not saying neapolitan is the only possible pizza style, although in my opinion it’s the best one. Neapolitan is actually charred on the crust too, but it’s not that extreme - the crust from the pizza above is basically coal... Don’t get me wrong, I would eat it anyway (maybe skipping the crust), but it definitely doesn’t look like a “best in the world” pizza.
As for the ingredients, I’m not sure why Italy would have inherently better local ingredients. I can understand why northern Europe has shitty tomatoes (too cold to grow compared to, for example, southern Italy), but with its size, population and diversity of climates I imagine you can grow pretty much anything in the US at a decent quality, without the need to grease stuff to give it flavor.
The quality of American produce is surprisingly mixed. For a lot of it, you've got to shop around and maybe pay a little more to get the same as baseline normal quality in large parts of Europe. I don't know why, but that's how it is. OTOH we have lots and lots of very cheap, kinda bad produce. So there's that.
It's also possible to live among wheat fields and not be able to buy good bread for anything less than insane luxury food prices here. All I can figure is our ovens cost more to run? I mean I know it's not that but I can't figure out WTF else could be the problem.
Decent cheese is also a lot more expensive—but again, we have lots and lots of fairly bad but very cheap options. And the cheaper end of our wine market is (much) less consistently good than in, say, France.
PDO and PDI help a lot when it comes to providing excellent and consistent ingredients.
You could grow anything in the US and there are indeed great producers for everything. The problem is recognition.
PDO/DOP Parmigiano, prosciutto and olive oil and san marazano tomatoes are in the you cannot do wrong cathegory. They are always excellent.
A pizza maker in the US will have a lot harder time discovering great ingredients made in US. Not because they don't exist, but because anyone can label almost anything.
> I imagine you can grow pretty much anything in the US at a decent quality
I believe this is true, subject to the original source material (seeds?) being imported.
> but with its size, population and diversity of climates
This makes it tricky, as producing enough of the high quality ingredients in appropriate locations, that can survive the transportation distances, creates a whole new range of problems.
Solving this at Italy scale is a different matter to solving this at USA scale.
> Solving this at Italy scale is a different matter to solving this at USA scale.
Italian cuisine is all about letting the ingredients speak for themselves and success really depends on having high quality ingredients. So, yes, selecting for tomatoes that have long shelf life and trucking them long distances would violate Italian food sensibilities.
The Italian point of view would be to make the most of the ingredients that are available where you are. In other words, if you don't have fresh tasty tomatoes in the middle of winter, don't substitute subpar global-supply-chain tomatoes from the supermarket. Instead, use something else, like high-quality sundried tomatoes or don't use tomatoes at all. This is what happens in Italy, and it's why what visiting Americans might consider "iconic" Italian dishes aren't always present or recognizable.
imo what makes neapolitan pizzas so outstanding and difficult to reproduce is the quality and freshness of the tomatoes. there are lots of pizza joints with the same kinds of ovens that they use in naples. but the tomatoes in naples are grown in the volcanic soil of mt vesuvius, and iirc they don't use tomatoes out of a can; only fresh. neapolitan tomatoes are exported abroad (san marzanos) but they're canned and not as tasty.
It was partly a joke, it's somewhat of a touchy subject for those that love New Haven style pizza. People that don't care for that style often called it burned, and fans of new haven style pizza are quick to "correct" them.
With a coal fired pizza, the goal is to get a bit of black on the outside, a crispy crust with a fluffy inside.
Some places with a high heat brick oven will char a pizza. I like a pizza "well done" because a few burnt spots on the crust and topping is worth the extra crunchy crispy crust
I'm sorely disappointed about the English language Wikipedia article on Toast Hawaii. Yes, it was a post-war German invention, but it was also so much more than that. Just the fact that the German-language article [0] has a three-paragraph section "Reception" should tell you that.
It's a symbol of post-war economic growth that a household could afford both ham and cheese and exotic fruit for a single meal. It didn't matter that it taste that nice. Neither do many other meals that only serve to demonstrate the wealth of the host.
The paragraph goes into further detail that this was seemingly the first public appearance (so to say) on TV, but it might have been previously made by his mentor Hans Karl Adam.
So if the scene is set in '53 and mentions "Oh I just saw this on TV", then it would definitely be anachronistic, otherwise it's entirely in the realm of possibility.
Afaik this goes back to the Toast Hawaii, which was invented by Clemens Wilmenrod, a TV cook in 1950ies Germany, and quite an interesting figure. He had no training as a cook at all, but presented his strange creations as an exotic culinary experience. Basically, when you put cooked ham, pineapple, cheap cheese and a cherry on toast in the 50ies and 60ies in Germany, you presented yourself as a cosmopolitan. He welcomed the audience at the beginning of each show as his "dear friends in Lucullus" and gave simple dishes grandiose names (according to Wikipedia, a trivial recipe for a simple Schnitzel was called "Venetian Christmas Feast").
Oh, and when someone claimed that Wilmenrod stole the "recipe" of putting an almond into a strawberry, he threatened to kill himself on live TV [0]. (He actually killed himself a few years later, though it is speculated that he was diagnosed as having stomach cancer shortly before).
I recently saw this dish on a TV show set in 1950s Germany, and I had questions about it. Starting with "wat?" and "But why?" and "was that really a treat?"
Perfectly valid question. One thing that is true is that it is extremely easy to prepare for many people. When I was a child in the 90ies, we often ate Toast Hawaii at my grandparents at birthday parties. Just open a pack of toast, a can of pineapple, a pack of ham and a pack of cheese, place it on top of each other, put it in the oven, done.
> "was that really a treat?"
As a child, I never liked it, and even the generation of my parents did not really enjoy it and preferred a more sane toast topping. But the postwar generation swore on it. Keep in mind that the country was basically in ruins after WW2. That you were able to afford (or even get) canned pineapples in the 50ies again was kind of a sensation, so I guess they still ate it in the 90ies out of nostalgia.
In my childhood in the 90ies, we had a toast-hawaii night at home like once a month. My parents and my sister ate it, I stuck to toast with grilled cheese and ham as I didn't like pineapple (and still today I am not a fan)
Hawaiian pizza in Bolivia has pineapple, ham, cheese and glacé cherry. I always thought the cherry was a weird local innovation so it's interesting to learn it's "traditional".
It should be noted that the original idea for pizza is that anything available would be thrown on top. So the Germans may have popularized the tuna and corn, but in effect the original pizzas would have had those thrown on if they had been common in Naples at the time.
When I was a kid in the summer my dad would take me with him for the day on his sales route. One of my favorite places for us to stop for lunch was Detroit's first pizzeria.
When it opened in the late thirties pizza was totally unknown in Detroit. The founder was an immigrant from Naples. An Italian friend of my father's introduced him to the place and he took my Mother there on one of their first dates.
The owner and his wife were by then good friends of my Dad and it was almost like being in someone's kitchen, if things were slow they'd sit at the table with us.
Don't know how true it is, or whether it is a modern invention, but the story goes that the pizza created for Margherita of Savoy had basil, mozzarella and tomatoes to represent the 3 colours on the national flag of Italy (green, white and red).
When I was in Naples a few weeks ago I was told that the Margherita variant was created by the wife of the chef who added a single basil leaf onto the completed pizza. This pizza was served to the royal couple, where the queen (Margherita) was so taken by the creation that the chef decided to name it in her honour.
Also, the flag of Italy was only adopted in the mid 1940's, and Queen Margherita was around about 100 years earlier.
According to the original article, the Margherita pizza was invented after Italian Reunification: "All that changed after Italian unification. While on a visit to Naples in 1889..." I'm not a vexillologist (expert on flags) but looking at the historical flags at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Italian_flags#Unificat... there are many from 1889 that have the green, white and red, e.g. the state flag of the Kingdom of Italy from 1861. So I think the story is plausible, although that doesn't necessarily mean it is true or didn't come after the event.
Actually the link SamBam has provided, i.e. to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_colours_of_Italy , explains the tricolour better. It also says "An apocryphal story about the history of pizza holds that on 11 June 1889, Neapolitan pizzamaker Raffaele Esposito created a pizza to honour Margherita of Savoy, who was visiting the city. It was garnished with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil to represent the national colours of Italy, and was named 'Pizza Margherita'".
Pizza is the only thing all of my family can ever agree on to eat! To now know the history of pizza will be a good conversation starter next dinner together.
It's essentially a drier version of mozzarella, though (very similar to Italian provalone).
Edit: non-sensical sentence