Geography Project Part 3 Italy: Pizza

Geography Project Part 3

Italy: Pizza

Since Christian Dior died in Tuscany, I'm linking this to Italy.

Italy has a population of 58 million and the geographic size is 116,000 square miles. In northern Italy, temperatures can reach below freezing during the winters, with snow in the northern most areas. Southern Italy has a warmer, more moderate climate.

From evidence gathered, pizza seems to date back to ancient times. Egyptians and other ancient Middle Eastern cultures used to flat, un-leaven bread that had been cooked in mud ovens. The bread was like a pita, still commonly used in Greece and the Middle East today. It is known that ancient Mediterranean people like the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians were eating the bread, topped seasoned with olive oil and native spices. 

The familiar pizza that we know today is said to have first being served in Naples, Italy. In the late 1800s a Italian baker named Raffaele Esposito, created a dish for royalty. According to the story the Italian monarch King Umberto and his consort, Queen Margherita were visiting the area. In order to impress them, Raffaele served the Queen flat-bread topped with the colours that represented Italy, [red:tomato, white:mozzarella and green:basil]. The King and Queen were so impressed that news began to spread. To honour Raffaele's idea people called the pizza a 'Margherita'.


By the beginning of the 1900's pizza made it's way to the inner cities United States, thanks to Italian immigrants, mostly New York and Chicago, due to those cities having large Italian populations. Small cafes were the first to start selling the Italian dish. 


The bottom of the pizza, called the "crust", varies widely according to style—thin as i a typical hand-tossed pizza or Roman pizza, or thick pan pizza. It is normally plain, but can be seasoned with garlic, herbs, or stuffed with cheese. In restaurants, pizza can be baked in an oven with stone bricks, an electric deck oven, or, like in more expensive restaurants, a wood- or coal-fired brick oven. On deck ovens, the pizza can be slid into the oven on a long paddle, called a peel, and baked directly on the hot bricks or baked on a round metal grate.


Due to Italian immigrants in America, the U.S have developed many regional forms of pizza. Chicago has its own style of deep-dish, Detroit also has its twice baked style, with cheese all the way to the crust and New York has developed its own distinct thin crust styles. Below is a video on how to make a traditional Margherita pizza.

Picture Sources:
http://cdn.solidrecipe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Margherita-Pizza-Photos-2.jpg
http://i.infoplease.com/images/mitaly.gif