How did the pizza come about?

Question from the reader – Felipe Pinheiro

The pizza we eat today, round with tomato sauce and topped with cheese, appeared in NaplesItaly, around the 18th century. However, the oven-baked, topped disc-shaped dough is a much more refined creation. old. Everything started 6 thousand years ago with a thin layer of dough known as «Abrahão’s bread» or «piscea», consumed by Hebrews and Egyptians. Three centuries before Christ, the Phoenicians added meat and onion topping. The idea was absorbed by the Turks and, during the Crusades, in the 11th century, their thin round bread arrived at the port of Naples. The Neapolitans perfected the recipe with better quality wheat and new toppings such as cheese. Only later, in the 16th century, the tomato, coming from america, was incorporated into the pizza. But the worldwide popularization of the round happened even with the North Americans (always them), at the end of the 2nd World War.

Around 1 million pizzas are consumed per day in the city of São Paulo alone

SOURCES Associação Pizzarias Unidas and book Food Historyorganized by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari