Pizza's History and Other Fun Facts

Pizza has become an American fast food icon; you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't love this item(Well, maybe my brother Mike). What is it about pizza?The common belief is that pizza is an Italian food, but ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Israelites, and other Middle Eastern cultures were already eating a variation of this product.

The word "pizza" may be a derivative of the Latin word "picea", a Roman word used to describe the blackening of bread in an oven. The word "pizza", in its current spelling, emerged some time in the Middle Ages. It was used to describe BOTH the sweet and salty pies that was becoming popular among Italian aristocracy. Another theory is that the word evolved from the Old Italian word "a point", which became "pizziare", which means "to pinch" or "pluck." And it also means "pie".Pizza took the form that we're now familar with in pre-Renaissance Naples, and was originally a peasant dish. Street vendors(usually young boys)walked around the city with small tin stoves on their heads, calling out their wares. The world's first pizza parlor evolved from this in 1830 and is still in business today.