Chef Ben Vaughn refers to pizza as the dish that conquered the world. While it is true there are many recipes that have made it all over the globe, pizza has a special place in the heart of food lovers. Pizza, notes Chef Ben Vaughn, is a simple and adaptable dish that is easily changed to suit the culture for which it is adopted. So, even though pizza is considered an Italian invention, you will notice, says Chef Ben Vaughn, that a modern Chicago pizza looks nothing like its traditional Italian counterpart. Except maybe that both are round. Here, Chef Ben Vaughn discusses a brief history of pizza.
In Italian, the word pizza is used for any type of baked or fried flat bread. Flat bread is a popular food in the Mediterranean. It is no coincidence, adds Chef Ben Vaughn, that the more Middle Eastern cultures of the Mediterranean developed a kind of flat bread that we call pita. Many cultures were using their own version of the easy to make flat bread as a staple of their diet. The flat bread would be used as a vehicle for all sorts of foods. But pizza as we know it, reports Chef Ben Vaughn, came from Naples. More precisely, continues Chef Ben Vaughn, pizza as we know it did not exist until tomatoes became widely cultivated and reached the Italian dinner table.
But the basic idea of pizza existed before the tomato, according to Chef Ben Vaughn. Starting as early as the year 1000, even before tomatoes, there are records of pizza in Italy. They were flat bread meals dressed with garlic and olive oil. Sometimes, adds Chef Ben Vaughn, the flat bread was dressed with cheese, anchovies, or other local fish. The Italians of that millennium called these pizza dishes laganae or picea. Chef Ben Vaughn reports that these flat bread meals were baked over an open fire. Sometimes they were folded over, to hold more filling, and thus the calzone, cousin to the pizza, was born.
So the next time you eat a pizza, suggests Chef Ben Vaughn, take a moment to consider just how long this masterpiece of the dinner table has been around. You’ll find that you are eating part of a long and distinguished history.