Nobody invented pizza, at least not in the way someone invented the telephone. Flatbreads baked with something on top are as old as bread ovens. But pizza as the world knows it, a soft, blistered disc spread with tomato and eaten hot, took shape in Naples in the 18th and 19th centuries, the work of generations of pizzaioli whose names are almost all lost. The famous tale that a pizza maker created the Margherita for a queen in 1889 is a lovely story. It is also, as we'll see, a doubtful one.
Before pizza: breads you could eat your plate with
The Mediterranean has always baked flat. Greeks, Etruscans and Romans ate breads seasoned or topped with oil, herbs and cheese. In Virgil's Aeneid, written in the 1st century BC, the exhausted Trojans land in Italy, pile their food onto flat wheat cakes and then eat the cakes as well. Aeneas's son jokes that they are eating their tables, and a prophecy is fulfilled. None of this was pizza, but it was the family pizza grew out of.
The word itself turns up surprisingly early. A Latin lease drawn up in Gaeta, on the coast between Rome and Naples, in 997 requires a tenant to hand over a quantity of pizze on feast days. What those pizze looked like, nobody can say. Where the word comes from is argued over too. Candidates include the Latin pinsere (to press or pound), the Byzantine Greek pitta and a Lombard word for a bite or mouthful.
Naples: fast food for a crowded city
By the 1700s Naples was one of the largest cities in Europe, and a great many of its people were poor, working and living much of their lives on the street. They needed food that was cheap, hot and could be eaten on the move. Pizza fitted perfectly. It was baked in wood-fired ovens and sold from stalls and by vendors walking the alleys, often folded into quarters a portafoglio, like a wallet, so it could be eaten standing up. Neapolitans still describe a custom called pizza a oggi a otto: eat today, pay in eight days.
Those early pizzas weren't red. Toppings were whatever was cheap: lard, garlic, olive oil, grated cheese, small fish, a few basil leaves. The white pizza has never really gone away.
The tomato had reached Europe from the Americas in the 16th century, but Neapolitans only took it up in earnest in the 18th. Once they did, tomato and dough turned out to be made for each other. The pizza marinara, with tomato, garlic, oregano and oil, dates from this period. Despite the name, it contains no seafood. The story goes that it was the pizza of sailors or fishermen, though nobody really knows why it was called that. In the 1840s the French novelist Alexandre Dumas described Neapolitan pizza and the astonishing range of things spread on it, from oil and lard to cheese, tomato and tiny fish.
Street stalls became shops with tables. Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba says it began as a stall in 1738 and became a pizzeria with seating in 1830, and it is often called the oldest in the world. It is a claim worth enjoying rather than swearing by.
1889: the queen, the pizza maker and the letter
The story goes like this. In June 1889 King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Savoy were visiting Naples. A celebrated pizza maker, Raffaele Esposito, was summoned to bake for the queen and made three pizzas. Her favourite was topped with tomato, mozzarella and basil, the red, white and green of the young Italian flag, and Esposito named it after her. His pizzeria, now Pizzeria Brandi, still displays a letter from the royal household, dated June 1889, thanking him.
What the records show is murkier. Pizzas topped with tomato, mozzarella and basil were already being described in Naples decades earlier, notably by the Neapolitan writer Emanuele Rocco in the mid-19th century, so the combination was not new in 1889. Historians have also questioned the letter itself. In a 2014 study, the historian Zachary Nowak argued that the Margherita tale looks like an invented tradition, polished and promoted long after the event. The queen may well have tasted pizza in Naples, but the Margherita was almost certainly not born that summer. Think of the story as Naples' favourite origin myth: charming, patriotic, and not to be taken as fact.
How pizza conquered the world
Between the 1880s and the 1920s, millions of southern Italians emigrated, many of them to the United States, and they took their ovens with them. Lombardi's in New York is often called America's first licensed pizzeria, opened in 1905, though historians have questioned that date. In America, pizza grew into new forms: the big, foldable New York slice, the thick deep-dish pies of Chicago and many more.
Oddly, for the first half of the 20th century pizza stayed largely a southern Italian speciality, even within Italy. It spread north and around the globe mainly after the Second World War, carried by migration, tourism and, later, restaurant chains. Naples eventually moved to protect its version. The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, founded in 1984, set out rules for genuine Neapolitan pizza. The EU registered pizza napoletana as a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed in 2010, and in 2017 UNESCO added the art of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. UNESCO listed the craft, meaning the skills, gestures and songs of the pizza maker, rather than the pizza itself.
Making pizza at home, the Neapolitan way (almost)
A Neapolitan wood oven runs at around 430–480°C and bakes a pizza in 60 to 90 seconds. A home oven can't match that, but it can get surprisingly close:
- Give the dough time. A slow rise in the fridge for 24 to 72 hours builds flavour and makes the dough easier to stretch. Take it out an hour or two before shaping.
- Heat something heavy. Put a pizza stone or steel on a high shelf and heat the oven at its maximum for at least 45 minutes. An upturned heavy baking tray is the next best thing.
- Stretch, don't roll. Press from the centre outwards with your fingertips and leave a rim. The air trapped in that rim is what puffs up into the cornicione, the airy crust.
- Dry your mozzarella. Tear it and leave it in a sieve for 20–30 minutes, or it will flood the pizza with water.
- Top lightly. A few spoonfuls of tomato and a little cheese are enough. Overloaded pizzas turn soggy in a home oven.
- Protect the basil. Add it after baking, or tuck it under the cheese so it doesn't scorch.
From our books
The pizza pages of The Vegetarian Kitchen begin exactly where Naples would want them to, with the Classic Margherita Pizza with Homemade Dough. The White Pizza with Ricotta, Garlic & Rocket goes back to pizza before tomato, and the Calzone with Ricotta, Spinach & Mozzarella folds it all into a half-moon. The Focaccia Pizza Traybake with Tomatoes is for nights when you'd rather not stretch dough at all. To see every pizza across our twelve books, try the recipe finder. For the pantry behind all of this, from good tinned tomatoes to olive oil, start with our Mediterranean kitchen starter guide.
Questions people ask
When was pizza invented?
There is no single date. The word pizza appears in a document from Gaeta in 997, and flatbreads with toppings are far older. The tomato pizza we know today developed in Naples during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Why is it called Margherita?
It is named after Queen Margherita of Savoy, Italy's queen from 1878 to 1900. The popular story says a Neapolitan pizza maker named it for her in 1889. Historians doubt the details, and pizzas with the same toppings existed earlier, but her name is the one that stuck.
Is pizza Italian or American?
Pizza was born in Italy, in Naples. Italian emigrants took it to America, where it developed new styles and eventually spread worldwide. Its birthplace is Italian; much of its global fame was built in America.
What makes a pizza Neapolitan?
A soft, thin centre, a puffy, leopard-spotted rim, a few simple toppings and a very short bake, around 60 to 90 seconds, in an extremely hot wood-fired oven. The details are set out in the rules of the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana and the EU's specification for pizza napoletana.