Stamping
Around the Villages
Our
meeting
on Tuesday May
28
at 6PM will be held at the usual
place.
We are having PIZZA.
Please respond to me at geriidb@earthlink.net by SUNDAY MAY 26 3PM
so we know how many will be attending.
Who
invented pizza?
When it comes to the history of
pizza, Italians are credited with inventing modern pizza, but
a baked bread with toppings has many other ancestors in other
cuisines.
Italy’s version of the dish, especially from Naples, is the one
we are most familiar with, though pissaladière from
Provence, coca from Catalona, and lahmacun (among
other forms) from the Middle East all bear a remarkable resemblance
to pizza.
As the legend goes, modern pizza—an open-faced pie slathered in
tomato sauce and mozzarella—was given to us in the 18th century by
the baker Raffaele Esposito in Naples, Italy. In 1889, he made a
patriotic pie topped with mozzarella, basil, and tomatoes,
ingredients in the colors of the Italian flag, in honor of King
Umberto and Queen Margherita’s visit. It is rumored the Queen
enjoyed the pie, and thus, it became known as a Margherita.
In the US, Italian immigrants sold pizza in their stores, and the
first pizzeria (Lombardi’s) was opened in 1905 by Gennaro Lombardi
on Spring Street in New York City, but pizza did not truly not catch
on stateside until World War II. Stationed in Italy, many American
and European soldiers tasted pizza and brought an appetite for this
now ubiquitous
dish home with them. Today, you’ll find pizza sold in Italian food
restaurants and by street vendors around the world, which means
you’ll never need to look far if you’re craving a flatbread pizza
with crunchy crust baked with olive oil. Tasty!