Bread was invented in the Neolithic; and ancient records reveal that many people include other ingredients in bread to enhance its flavor. In ancient Greece, a flatbread flavored with seasonings such as onion, garlic and herbs was very popular. Persian soldiers in uniform jackets under the command of Darius the Great would bake flatbread on their shields, then top them with dates and cheese. The word pizza is a medieval Latin term first used in AD 997 to refer to a flatbread pancake.

IN pizza it was simply a piece of dough that bakers used to test the temperature of their ovens, and was sold to poor people who couldn’t afford to buy real bread. In the 16th century, white sauce was used for the first time to cover pizza; and later oil, cheese, or fish were used as toppings. The innovation that gives pizza its unique place in culinary history is the use of tomatoes as a topping. Tomatoes were introduced to Europe from the Americas in the 16th century; but at first they had the false reputation of being poisonous (since they belong to the Solanaceae family). However, in the late 18th century, the poor of Naples added tomatoes to their flatbread; and thus pizza was born. The dish grew in popularity, sold on the streets of Naples from open-air stalls and by street vendors who sourced their pizzas from bakeries.

The oldest pizzeria in the world is the one in Naples Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba, which in 1738 began producing pizzas for street vendors in chef’s smocks, and which became a pizza restaurant in its own right in 1830 (and is still in business on the same premises now). Alexandre Dumas the elder, writing in 1830, explained that pizza was the staple food of the poor in Naples during the winter, and that this pizza was flavored with oil, suet, lard, cheese, tomatoes, or anchovies. In 1889, to honor the Italian queen consort Margherita of Savoy, chef Rafaele Esposito created the “Pizza Margherita”: this pizza was garnished with mozzarella cheese, tomatoes, and basil to symbolize the colors of the Italian flag.

Pizza came to the United States with chef-jacketed Italian immigrants who began arriving in the late 1800s. American cities with large Italian populations, such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco, featured street pizza vendors in their Italian neighborhoods selling their goods in cylindrical copper drums with false bottoms filled with charcoal (from the pizza oven ) to keep the pizzas warm. Soon grocery stores and small cafes in Italian neighborhoods began offering pizza. A full pizza pie costs five cents; but as this was too expensive for many people, the slices sold for a penny each. The first pizzeria in America is believed to have been Gennaro Lombardi’s grocery store in the Little Italy section of New York City, which opened as a pizzeria in 1905.