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!