Pizza: what is this dish, features, interesting facts

Pizza has an ancient history. It was part of the daily diet of the inhabitants of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. Then pizza was prepared in the form of a baked flatbread, on top of which was vegetables and cheese. The first pizza in the modern representation was cooked for the first time in the Italian Naples in 1522. Since the XVII century, this dish was prepared both at home and in bakeries. Now pizza is among the most popular dishes in the world.

Features of pizza

This dish has such traditional features:

• Unleavened dough made of flour on natural sourdough starter and water, a little salt is used. According to the ancient technology, the dough rises for about 2 hours and becomes elastic. Formed tortillas were kept for about 8 hours. Now the technology is much simpler. Often for the preparation of flatbreads for pizza, industrial yeast is used. Pizza on sourdough is also prepared much faster than before.
• The dough was handled exclusively by hand without the use of a rolling pin. In some pizzerias, this tradition is still preserved to this day.
• The surface of the flatbread is smeared with tomato sauce of different recipes.
• Cheese is another mandatory ingredient of pizza. The other components of pizzaiola are added at their discretion. The toppings can be based on meat, chicken, seafood, sausage, bacon or mushrooms.
• In the past, pizza was baked in a wood-fired oven configured in the shape of a hemisphere. It took only 1.5 minutes to cook. Now pizzas are cooked in special ovens from 7 to 10 minutes.

Features of pizza in different countries:

• Italian pizza with thin dough. The classic toppings are cheese and spicy herbs. The famous Margherita pizza consists of tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil.
• American pizza has a thick and puffy dough base. The toppings on the crust are applied liberally. However, much less tomato sauce is used than in Italian pizza. Classic American pizza is made with pepperoni - smoked spicy sausage and pork or beef.
• Japanese Okonomiyaki pizza is special because of the unusual combination of toppings: mussels and eel, pineapples and bacon. The dough is made of egg noodles and cabbage. Popular cheeses are mozzarella and parmesan. A thick sauce based on mayonnaise with shrimp is added.
• In France, pizza with onions and pears is prepared on a puffy dough made of wheat flour. They combine onions, bacon and sour cream, as well as goose liver, tomato, mushrooms and rosemary.

Interesting facts about pizza

What unusual things are known about pizza:

• The largest pizza reached 40 meters in diameter. It was cooked in 2012 by five chefs. It was a gluten-free pizza.
• An Australian managed to fit 145 varieties of cheese on one pizza, using one gram of each type. He made it into the Guinness Book of World Records.
• The longest pizza reached 1930 m and weighed 12 tons. It was tasted by 63,000 people.
• The fastest pizza is prepared by a Canadian with the surname Longer. It takes him only 19 seconds to cook this dish.
• The most expensive pizza was made by Italian chef Renato Viola. Its toppings include lobster and lobster meat, shrimp, mozzarella cheese, buffalo and three types of caviar.The diameter of the pizza was 20 cm and the cost was 8,300 euros.
• In America, one in six food service establishments is a pizzeria.
• In 2001, pizza was delivered to the orbital station.

There are approximately 2000 varieties of pizza in the world. When preparing this dish at home, each hostess can experiment with the ingredients of toppings, sauces and types of cheese.