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A History of Pizza

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Re: A History of Pizza

#51

Post by mackey »

ReptileMan wrote: post #14
zeitg3ist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pizza on that page looks extremely greasy and - most importantly - burned! Hope it's not representative of New Haven pizza in general.

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.

Re: A History of Pizza

#52

Post by mackey »

zeitg3ist wrote: post #9
dr_dshiv wrote: post #8

Boo, no mention of New Haven's early contribution. Not that I'm biased (I am, they have the best pizza in the world, objectively speaking, of course) http://www.ctvisit.com/articles/new-haven-apizza-history

The pizza on that page looks extremely greasy and - most importantly - burned! Hope it's not representative of New Haven pizza in general.

It's not burned, its charred. And that is New Haven style. It's pretty good.

Re: A History of Pizza

#53

Post by SamBam »

dotancohen wrote: post #30
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the use of tomato paste or sauce underneath, rather than sliced tomato on top, seems to be an even later innovation.

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."

Re: A History of Pizza

#54

Post by SamBam »

manojlds wrote: post #18
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many varieties of Italian pizza are "white pizza" / "pizza blanca" and have no tomatoes.

Like pesto ones too right.

Pesto is very rare on pizzas in Italy, as is chicken and many of the other things that are found in the US.

(It's not bad, it's just that if you were looking for tomato-less pizza in Italy, you wouldn't find pesto.)

Re: A History of Pizza

#55

Post by shantly »

arethuza wrote: post #10
dr_dshiv wrote: post #8

Boo, no mention of New Haven's early contribution. Not that I'm biased (I am, they have the best pizza in the world, objectively speaking, of course) http://www.ctvisit.com/articles/new-haven-apizza-history

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.

Re: A History of Pizza

#56

Post by SamBam »

L_226 wrote: post #50
m-i-l wrote: post #48

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 y…

The red, white and green were commonly used as the Italian colors from the end of the 1700s.[1] Queen Margherita was born in 1850.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_colours_of_Italy

Re: A History of Pizza

#57

Post by shantly »

zeitg3ist wrote: post #26
ReptileMan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 “…

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.

Re: A History of Pizza

#58

Post by m-i-l »

L_226 wrote: post #50
m-i-l wrote: post #48

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 y…

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.

Re: A History of Pizza

#59

Post by wirrbel »

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.

Re: A History of Pizza

#60

Post by mackey »

izietto wrote: post #13
dr_dshiv wrote: post #8

Boo, no mention of New Haven's early contribution. Not that I'm biased (I am, they have the best pizza in the world, objectively speaking, of course) http://www.ctvisit.com/articles/new-haven-apizza-history

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.

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