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Say cheese: it is a pizza!

It started off as a staple bread item and a queen transformed it into a classic. Now the pizza is ubiquitous and shares elbowroom with our idlis and parathas

Photo: Murali Kumar K.

PIZZA FETISH Everyone loves to dig into this bread-and-toppings dish that the Greeks first made

Pizza is the most popular Italian preparation in the world people of all age groups universally love. The pizza has been on Indian menus for more than two decades now, and with every passing year, the number of people wolfing it down only seems to multiply a gazillion times.

The latest popular avatar that the pizza has taken on is the Italian thin crust pizza. These delicate pizzas require a special stone slab oven for baking — one that is fired by wood or gas or a combination of both, giving the final pizza a smoky flavour and an enhanced flavour. The temperature in the oven is maintained at a high — primarily to cook the base well — and get crisp crunchy edges in less than two minutes.

We all love our pizza but do we really know our pizza? If you look back, you'll be surprised to know that pizza had its origins in Greece, and not Italy. The early Greeks baked large, flat and round breads and topped it with vegetables, spices, olives and olive oil and had it just as we do today. It was only in the 18th Century that flat breads termed pizzas were sold in Italy. Interestingly they were eaten in their natural form without any topping. The all-time favourite — Pizza Margherita (with tomatoes, mozzarella and basil) — is named after Queen Margherita. She loved this freshly baked bread, so she asked her chef (named Rafaelle) to make it for her in her royal kitchens. The chef got a bit innovative and gave the bread a topping. To please the queen, he used the colours of the Italian flag — red, white and green: tomato, mozzarella and fresh basil. This became her favourite and rest, as they say, is history.

Pizza travelogue

From Italy the pizza travelled to U.S.A and from there to the rest of the world. It was the U.S. that adopted the pizza, experimented with it and today has the biggest, the most popular and the oldest pizzerias in the world. Americans eat approximately 100 acres of pizza each day, or about 350 slices per second. Pizza is a $30 billion-plus industry. Approximately three billion pizzas are sold in the U.S. each year. Pizza accounts for more that 10 per cent of all food service sales. Each man, woman and child in the U.S. eats an average of 46 slices of pizza per year. Italian food ranks as the most popular ethnic food in America. Children between the ages of 3 and 11 prefer pizza over all other food groups for lunch and dinner. And 94 per cent of the entire population of the U.S. eats pizza!

Around the world, pizza toppings vary greatly; reflecting regional tastes, indigenous foods and cultural preferences. February 9 is celebrated as International Pizza Day and the Guinness Book of Records states that the largest pizza ever made and eaten was created in Havana, Florida, and was 100 feet and 1 inch across! In India, pepperoni is the leader followed by the more exotic ones — parma ham and rocket, bacon and caramelised onion, smoked salmon and camembert, mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes, four cheese, artichoke and roasted asparagus. Of course, the all time favourite Indian flavours like chicken tikka with fresh mint, mirch paneer tikka and seekh kabab also abound. Today there are hundreds of variants or special pizzas that one will come across: Calzone — the half-moon-shaped closed pizza, the thin crust, the thick crust, the deep dish, the double crust, the bagel crust, the whole-wheat crust, the cheese crust, the multigrain, the pizza pot pie, the Japanese — topped with mayonnaise, potatoes and bacon, the Mexican — topped with chilli, guacamole and sour cream, the double Dutch — with double cheese, double onions and double beef, the Australian — with shrimp and pineapple, the fried pizza ....the list is endless.

The popularity of this preparation has been such that today we have ice-cream pizza, candy pizza and even a pizza cake. There are pizza-flavoured items as well such as potato chips and tortilla snacks! Thank you Queen Margherita!

BAKSHISH DEAN

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