The history of the Neapolitan pizza

The realization of the first pizzas goes up again to ancient times, when they already consisted in a base preparation of pure pasta, covered with the guarnitura and refolded in two, crush on heated stones: he treated in short; of a pant.

Thousand of years ago the man became agriculturist and picked up the grains of wheat; when it had need it crushed these grains of it and it fed. It also discovered that you/he/she could mix more elegantly that grinded wheat the possible with water, and to roast that I mix, to form of disk on red-hot stones. The first ones that did this opened the road to the conquest of the bread, of the squeezings, of the pizzas, and subsequently of the lasagnas and of the spaghetti. From nomadic unarmed it became hunter and fisherman, then he/she still tamed some animals because there was a kind of pact, of mutual support and with their help the man shepherd also became. What we can say and' that bread, pizza, pizza breads and street saying I am together, to the origin in the same root of our civilization. Those squeezings of pasta roasted on the stones were cooked, as soon as also in more comfortable way. The great following footstep was when the principle of the lievitazione was discovered, and the first oven was invented. This happened ago around seimila years: in Egypt. In the whole zone of the near East, also called the fertile crescent, from the Nile to the Euphrates, the history had walked more in hurry that in the surrounding earths. There had been who had noticed that I mix him, for what generically had called the bread, you/he/she was invaded at times by mysterious strengths which made him/it inflate and then to spoil. Some considered impure that pasta and they threw her/it away, some, thought instead about exploiting the phenomenon: everything was conditioned from the religious conceptions. The Hebrews, were for example among the most rigid, and they always refused the raised bread and in their rites you/he/she was not admitted (still today, in the Catholic Mass, the non raised wafer is used as bread). The Egyptians learned, therefore, to use that pasta, to cook her/it and to preserve some bit of it to transmit to other pasta the same strength of "growth ". The Egyptians invented the oven, of this we have certain information, that was to form of cone. The fire put on inside, out they literally clinged the panettis: when they fell he/she wanted to say that they were cooked on one side, but riappiccicatis came from the other to complete the cooking. Only in a second time idea came to divide in two the oven to put under the fire and above, to cook, the squeezings of pasta and water leavened. This food, meanwhile, had an unique religious character, the point and' that there were certainly breads in ritual forms, thousand of years ago, as offered to the various divinities and in various circumstances .......... we still find many of it in use in various regions of Italy and in other parts of the world, even if they are lost for by the meanings dedicate native. Among this bread us n'erano also of those enriched with olives, ciccioli of pig, ancestors of the pizza breads and the rustic cakes of today; us n'erano also of those enriched with honey, uvetta, pinoli, candied, that have become the various panettonis, pangiallo, pandolce, and street saying, of the different traditions. As that is, some reference also of linguistic character on those and primitive squeezings that accompanied the Italian life from the age' Roman to that medioevale and over, we find him/it really to the exciting passage of the year Thousand, when in so many they waited for the end of the World. The actual form of the pizza goes up again to the beginning of the XIX century, moment in which the tomato became the protagonist of this dish, even if many other types of farcitura were experimented beginning from the end of the Seven hundred one. To Naples, the pizzas were prepared and sold for the itinerant pizzaioli road. The first ovens were built in bricks, then in volcanic stone, the only materials that allowed to reach essential temperatures to the good result of the pizza.

Origins of the pizza: Egypt, Greece, Rome.

All the civilizations, can be said, you/they have known different forms of pizza breads, you crush and similar that saw in I mix him among flour of cereals of various kind, water and the most varied seasonings a source of fundamental nourishment in the human feeding. The antiquity to us near, that that he/she saw the bloom some civilizations that leaned out on the Mediterranean Sea offers therefore an ample harvest of examples of those that you/they can consider him the ancestors of the pizza which we know her/it to us. From Egypt to classical Greece to the ancient Rome and Pompeii it is therefore everything a to proliferate of foods that recall in the composition and in the cooking the pizza.

In ancient Egypt it was custom to celebrate the birthday of the Faraone consuming a squeezing seasoned by aromatic grass, Erodoto it hands down different Babylonian recipes and in the VII sec. B.C. Archiloco, the poet-soldier, in some verses it informs us about to have in the lance his" "mixed pizza bread ", the principal food of the soldier. Greece classical show therefore a vast harvest of examples that you/they bring us to the pizza, or at least to one version of his for so to say "archetipale": squeezings and pizza breads of various kind appear diffused and popular food in the whole classical antiquity.

Numerous they are the testimonies of writers Greek concerning different types of "pizza", the so-called one "maza" in Greek ancient: testimonies that we punctually find again in the Latin world and in the ancient Rome where among the other raised versions and not of this pizza bread we find her/it "placenta" and the "offa", prepared with water and bowline, the cereal at the base of the feeding of the Latin people.

The pizza, not wanting here to give credit to other fanciful hypotheses on his/her origin, he introduces as a food typical of the cultures that have historically leaned out on the basin of the Mediterranean. It is in one of the queens of the Mediterranean Sea, Naples, it will find his/her country and the point of departure of a diffusion that it is able well to tell him planetary.

Middle Ages

Numerous they are the traces of this food, that goes approaching more and more himself/herself/itself to the actual form during the centuries, also in medieval and Renaissance epoch, rippling between aristocratic taste and popular consumption between the regal banquets and the cafeteria of the poor man: the word" "pizza"" you/he/she is already attested in epoch altomedievale and in the following centuries varied local forms of this term pointing out culinary variations are recovered on the theme, from the dessert to the salty, and different methods of cooking.

The longobardis lowered in southern Italy after the fall of the Roman empire had brought with itself the bufala that, ambientatasi between the Lazio and Campania, will furnish once the milk for the manufacture of the mozzarella. It is in modern epoch the discovery of the New World it will bring in Europe an element prince of the pizza that is almost impossible to imagine deprived of it: the tomato. After the initial distrust, the tomato made its triumphal entry in the Italian cuisine, and in that Neapolitan particularly. The pizza will be beneficiary illustrious of it approaching more and more himself/herself/itself to the form that we today know.

The pizza among '700 and '800.

But it is among '' 700 and '' 800 that the pizza he always affirms more as one of the dishes of the Neapolitan kitchen preferred of the people. In the '' 700 the pizza is manufactured in firewood ovens to be sold therefore for the roads and the alleys of the city: a labourer of shop that brought in equilibrium on the head the heater, directly went to the buyers the pizzas, you already manufacture with different ingredients and seasonings after having told them some his/her own arrival with sonorous and characteristic calls. To horse among the '700 and the 800 start to affirm him the habit to also taste the pizza near these ovens over that for road or in the house, sign of the increasing favor that he/she met this food entered by now the feeding of the Neapolitan people to full title: the pizzeria is born in the form that we know and also go defining himself/herself/itself the characteristics for so to say "physics" and "environmental" of the pizzeria which we know her/it to us. The firewood oven, the counter of marble where the pizza is manufactured, the shelf where in beautiful show are the ingredients that will go to compose the different varieties of pizza, the tables where the buyers consume her/it the external exposure of pizzas sold to the passers-by: all elements that still find again him in the pizzeries Campane.si it begins, if not to eat, to distinguish in particular way the pizza, to Naples, before you detach his/her flight in the world. And the redhead pizza of tomato is also that that gives back interest, and it recalls the attention on all the other pizzas, among which the first ones had probably been those with garlic and oil to raw, or to cooked, that with mozzarella and salty anchovies, that cover of minute pesciolini, said cicinielli, that also seems one of the most ancient. And it still speaks of a pizza refolded to book that perhaps it was a sort of pant with his/her stuffing. The first ovens were dressed again of refractory bricks and the fire fed to firewood. Subsequently it was considered ideal the oven dressed again to the inside with lapilli vesuviani straight, more proper still of the bricks to touch the tall in demand temperature and to get the best pizzas. Artists and famous writers described the pizza; Of announcement, he/she wrote the verses of one of the most stupendous Neapolitan songs: To vucchella. Savior of Giacomo, has devoted more times to the pizza his/her verses. After all they are so many the poets, the writers, the musicians that have devoted some spark of their talent and their fancy in modern epoch to the pizza. It widely occupied also the father of the Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas, during a series of his/her writings of trip: a sort of services of special envoy, picked in the "Corricolo." Dumas put together, on the pizza, acute observations and bizarre information. He/she wrote, for instance, that "the pizza is a kind of squeezing as they do to St. Denis: it is of form rotunda, and he works with the same pasta of the bread. At first sight it is a simple food: submitted to examination, a complicated food will appear. It had reason and that reference to the squeezings of St. Denis confirms that a sort of pizza is universal food: while a certain way to cook and to garnish the disk of pasta is instead everything Neapolitan, and it is what has conquered the world. Dumas also remembered the various types of pizza: the more communes, therefore, in the first halves the XIX century; and that is to the oil, to the lard, to the lard, to the cheese, to the tomato, to the pesciolinis (the ciciniellis, note). And it declared, quietly, that was also a sort of pizza he/she dictates "to eight" that he/she was cooked a week before eating her/it. You/he/she had taken a big corner, the pizza to eight, institution remained for a long time, perhaps still in top to our days, he/she wanted to say that the pizza immediately ate but it was paid to eight days of distance, even if this facilitation cost in true a some surcharge. Finally it also speaks a lot of pizza to a famous work, "Uses and customs in Naples" of an author of French name: the De Bourcard, that however it was entirely napoletanizzato and that he was worth some help of a superesperto however - we would say today - the cavalier Emanuele Rocco. We are toward halves the XIX century, by now, toward 1850, I quote from the text: "The pizza is not found in the dictionary of the Bran, because it does him with the flower (of flour) and because it is a specialty of the Neapolitans. You take a piece of pasta (from bread), widen him/it or stretch him/it with the matterello or striking him/it with the palms of the hands, put us above how much it comes in head, season him/it of oil or melted, cook him/it to the fire, eat him/it, and you will know what the pizza is. The pizza breads and the squeezings are alcunché of similar, but I am the embryo of the art." Then also this text enumerates the varieties of more pizza in use: and they are those with garlic and oil, to which oregano and salt are added; with grated cheese, melted, basil; or with minute fish; others still with mozzarella, with ham, mussels; and best man, but not in operation of primary importance, the tomato. This way we arrive at the end of the century with a famous episode, that also needs to tell in his/her true terms. We are, exactly, in 1889. That summer the king Umberto I with Queen Margherita spent her/it to Naples, in the palace of Capodimonte, as he/she wanted a certain rule of the monarchy to make action of presence in the ancient kingdom of the two Sicilies. The queen was incuriosita from the pizza that you/he/she had never eaten and of which had felt perhaps to speak from some writer or artist admitted to court. But you/he/she could not go her to pizzeria, the pizzeria went to her; using the ovens of the real kitchens, they were him prepared the pizzas, one with lard, that is a sort of lard, cheese and basil; one with garlic, oil and tomato, both of a bystander with mozzarella, tomato and basil, that is with the colors of the Italian flag, that Queen Margherita particularly thrilled, and not only for patriotic motives. Fù this the occasion for which it called this pizza to the Margherita. Then the history him riseppe also out Naples and the pizza to the Margherita it spread, furoreggiò some wherever. And this is true history; only that the pizza to the daisy wheel or pizza daisy wheel, as it was begun to call her/it, it passed for a novelty, a real invention, while he/she is being known that it existed before already. It was not considered among the most classical and important, however to Naples he already did. For example, for another queen, the borbonica Maria Carolina, that was greedy of pizzas, so much that had wanted to court, in the building of St. Ferdinando, a special oven. Carolina loved a lot that white pizza, redhead and green; but perhaps, if you/he/she had been able to imagine that those would have been the colors of Italy united under another dynasty, that his would have chased, you/he/she would not have been as of it enthusiastic. Certainly it is that the daisy wheel has contributed not few to spread the Neapolitan pizza in the north of Italy and then before anywhere in the world. The two pizzas that have done more road I am the so-called Neapolitan, equal to the daisy wheel but with the anchovy; and the same daisy wheel. However historically we have seen him, others precede and they boast of patent of nobility, of authenticity partenopea. All this, beninteso, without takings of position in a sense or in the other: the pizzas by now they are of as kinds, and they are all thrilling ones.