Pizza is an Italian dish typically consisting of a flat base of leavened wheat-based dough topped with tomato, cheese, and other ingredients, baked at a high temperature, traditionally in a wood-fired oven. The term pizza was first recorded in AD 997, in a Latin manuscript from the southern Italian town of Gaeta, in Lazio, on the border with Campania. Raffaele Esposito is often credited with creating the modern version of pizza in Naples at the end of the 19th century. In 2009, Neapolitan pizza was registered with the European Union as a traditional speciality guaranteed (TSG) dish. In 2017, the art of making Neapolitan pizza was included on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage. Pizza and its variants are among the most popular foods in the world. Pizza is sold at a variety of restaurants, including pizzerias, Mediterranean restaurants, via delivery, and as street food. In Italy, pizza served in a restaurant is presented unsliced, and is eaten with the use of a knife and fork. In casual settings, however, it is typically cut into slices to be eaten while held in the hand. Pizza is also sold in grocery stores in a variety of forms, including frozen or as kits for self-assembly. Store-bought pizzas are then cooked using a home oven. In 2017, the world pizza market was US$128 billion; in the US, it was $44 billion spread over 76,000 pizzerias. Overall, 13% of the US population aged two years and over consumed pizza on any given day.
Etymology The oldest recorded usage of the word pizza is thought to be from May 997 AD, appearing in the Codex diplomaticus Caietanus, a notarial Latin document from the town of Gaeta, then still part of the Byzantine Empire. The text states that a tenant of certain property is to give the bishop of Gaeta duodecim pizze (lit. 'twelve pizzas'), a pork shoulder and kidney annually on Christmas Day, and twelve pizzas and a couple of chickens annually on Easter Sunday. Suggested etymologies include:
Byzantine Greek and Late Latin pitta > pizza, cf. Modern Greek pita bread and the Apulia and Calabrian (then Byzantine Italy) pitta, a round flat bread baked in the oven at high temperature sometimes with toppings. The word pitta can in turn be traced to either Ancient Greek πικτή (pikte), 'fermented pastry', which in Latin became picta, or Ancient Greek πίσσα (pissa, Attic: πίττα, pitta), 'pitch', or πήτεα (pḗtea), 'bran' (πητίτης, pētítēs, 'bran bread'). The Etymological Dictionary of the Italian Language explains it as coming from dialectal pinza, 'clamp', as in modern Italian pinze, 'pliers, pincers, tongs, forceps'. Their origin is from Latin pinsere, 'to pound, stamp'. The Lombardic word bizzo or pizzo, meaning 'mouthful' (related to the English words bit and bite), which was brought to Italy in the middle of the 6th century AD by the invading Lombards. The shift b→p could be explained by the High German consonant shift, and it has been noted in this connection that in German the word Imbiss means 'snack'. A person who makes pizza is known as a pizzaiolo. The word pizza was borrowed from Italian into English in the 1930s; before it became well known, pizza was called "tomato pie" by English speakers. Some regional pizza variations still use the name tomato pie.
History
Records of pizza-like foods can be found throughout ancient history. In the 6th century BC, the Persian soldiers of the Achaemenid Empire during the rule of Darius the Great baked flatbreads with cheese and dates on top of their battle shields and the ancient Greeks supplemented their bread with oils, herbs, and cheese. An early reference to a pizza-like food occurs in the Aeneid, when Celaeno, queen of the Harpies, foretells that the Trojans would not find peace until they are forced by hunger to eat their tables (Book III). In Book VII, Aeneas and his men are served a meal that includes round cakes (such as pita bread) topped with cooked vegetables. When they eat the bread, they realize that these are the "tables" prophesied by Celaeno. In 2023, archeologists discovered a fresco in Pompeii appearing to depict a pizza-like dish among other foodstuffs and staples on a silver platter. Italy's culture minister said it "may be a distant ancestor of the modern dish". The first mention of the word pizza seemingly comes from a notarial document written in Latin and dating to 997 AD from Gaeta, demanding a payment of "twelve pizzas, a pork shoulder, and a pork kidney on Christmas Day, and 12 pizzas and a couple of chickens on Easter Day".
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