Pizza
Pizza is a popular dish in America that consists of a baked crust, typically between twelve and twenty inches in diameter, topped with a combination of tomato sauce, vegetables, meats, and melted cheese.
Originally an open-face tomato pie, pizza had long been a simple, cheap, and popular "workingman's food" in Italy. Although the dish had been baked since ancient times, the term "pizza" (meaning, "to pluck") started appearing in Italian dictionaries in the 1850s. The quintessential pizza is said to have been created by a baker, Raffaele Esposito of Naples, for the 1889 visit of the reigning king and queen of Italy. Inspired by patriotism, Esposito incorporated Italy's national colors into his creation—tomatoes for red, mozzarella cheese for white, and basil for green—establishing what would become the basic ingredients for the pizza. At the turn of the century Italian immigrants brought pizza to the United States, and Gennaro (or, Giovanni, depending on the account) Lombardi opened the first pizzeria in 1905 in New York City's Little Italy. Very rapidly, other Italians (many trained by Lombardi) opened their own shops, baking their pizzas in coal-or wood-burning brick ovens.
By the 1930s and 1940s, people running small local shops were making and selling pizzas in towns all across the country, enabled in part by new gas-heated ovens that made the baking safer, more efficient, and more reliable. Despite the improvements in technology, the real accelerator in making pizza a national fad came with the return of soldiers after World War II, who had developed a taste for the pizza of Naples. As a food of relative simplicity, pizza allowed for many ethnic and regional variations, making it a foodstuff readily able to please most Americans. Traditional Italian pizzas were round and had thin crusts, while Sicilian versions were square with thick, chewy crusts. Chicago was known for its "deep dish" style, while themidwest in general preferred pizza pies with thin crusts and spicy sauce, and the northeast opted for thick-crusted pizzas with a lot of sauce, extra cheese, and less meat. New Haven was known for its clam pie; California, for its thin crusts, gourmet toppings, and unusual combinations.
While some pizzerias were sit-down restaurants that served other Italian cuisine, the most successful businesses, founded in the later decades of the twentieth century, specialized in take-out and delivery service, making pizza a very mobile food that suited Americans' growing preference for home delivery of convenience meals. Delivery service combined this convenience and the desire for choice: people could call up a nearby pizza shop, place an order selecting as many "pies" with as many different toppings as they liked, and have the food delivered to their door within the hour.
As such, pizza enjoyed a reputation for being a casual food meant for informal occasions, and, indeed, defined these occasions as such. People commonly ate the slices of pizza with their hands, right out of the boxes they were delivered in, foregoing plates and eating utensils. Popular with all age groups and ethnicities, pizzas were commonly associated with children and teenagers, becoming familiar staples at parties and other casual gatherings in college dorm rooms and private homes, around the television and especially during media events like the Super Bowl. Specific occasions, called "pizza parties," were even organized around the food.
The love that Americans shared for pizza gave rise to many successful national chains. Shakey's, the first pizza franchise, began in 1954 in Sacramento. Pizzeria Uno, an Italian restaurant specializing in deep dish Chicago-style pizzas, was first opened in 1943 and had over 110 outlets nationally by the late 1990s. Pizza Hut, a pizza restaurant founded in 1958, grew to more than 10,000 businesses nationally by 1996. Domino's, offering delivery-only service (and promising their pizzas would reach one's doorstep within 30 minutes or the pizza was free), was started in 1960 and enjoyed sales of $2 billion at the end of 1986.
The growth of Americans' taste for pizza also sparked the development of frozen pizzas one could cook onesself. Rose and Jim Totino began one of the most successful of the frozen pizza enterprises in 1962; Totino's was quickly joined by other brands such as Red Baron, Celeste Pizza-For-One, and Stouffer's. In addition, other make-at-home pizza products were successful, including Ragu pizza sauce in a jar, Boboli ready-made pizza crust, and Robin Hood pizza dough mix.
In 1996, Americans ate 100 acres of pizza daily, or 350 slices per second, making it a $30 billion dollar industry. In that same year, 17 percent of all restaurants were pizzerias, many characterized by familiar red and white checkered tablecloths. The overwhelming popularity of pizza in America was mainly due to its convenience, versatility, and its association with pleasure, communal eating, and informality. In cities and suburbs, it was easy to grab a slice for lunch if one's time was limited. It could be made with an almost endless combination of ingredients on which the consumer decided (in the late 1990s pepperoni was the most preferred topping next to cheese), with thick, thin, or stuffed crusts. It could be delivered to one's home and eaten in front of the television set, or, it could be consumed in a restaurant. It could also be the product of a national chain operation or from a local "mom and pop" establishment.
The later decades saw such a proliferation of pizza that anything topped with tomato sauce and cheese was called "pizza," including pizza bagels, pizza English muffins, pizza french fries, and pizza burgers. Many snack foods, such as tortilla chips and snack crackers, also came in "pizza flavored" varieties.
Further Reading:
Asimov, Eric. "New York Pizza, the Real Thing, Makes a Comeback." New York Times. 10 June 1998.
Gabaccia, Donna R. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1998.
Gay, Kathlyn, and Martin K. Gay. Encyclopedia of North American Eating and Drinking Traditions, Customs, and Rituals. Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 1996.
Hanson, Gayles M.B. "Square, Stuffed, Thin, Frozen, Americans Just Adore Pizza." Insight on the News. Vol. 12, No. 25, 42.
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