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A Surprising Story
From: "Il libro della pizza" (The pizza' s book) - Ediz. Fabbri Editori
by Vincenzo Buonassisi
Many thousands of years ago......man started working as a ploughman and reaped wheat : when he needed it, he pounded the grains and ate them...
He discovered that he could knead that dough milled as fine as possible with water and he could roast the disk-shaped dough on red-hot stones.
Those who first did so, paved the way to the conquest of bread, flat breads, pizzas and later on of lasagne and spaghetti. From a defenceless nomad, man grew into a hunter and a fisherman and afterwards he domesticated some animals since there was a kind of agreement of mutual support and with their help man became also a shephard...
What we can say is that bread, buns and so on are all together at the very root of our civilization. The flat breads of dough rosted on the stones, were later baked also in an easier way...
The following great step was the discovery of the leavening principle, then the first oven was invented. This happened about 6.000 years ago, in Egypt.
In the whole area of the near East, also called the fertile half-moon, from Nile to Euphrates, history had walked faster than in the surrounding lands. There had been someone who had noticed that the dough, for what was generically know as bread, was sometimes haunted by some misterious forces which made it swell and then deflate.
Someone considered the dough as impure and trew it away, some others, on the contrary, thought of taking advantage of the phenomenon : everything depended on the different religious beliefs.
Jews, for example, were among the most severe and always rejected the leavened bread. In fact, it wasn' t admitted to their rites (even today, in the Catholic Mass, they use, instead of bread, unleavened host).
Egyptians learnt, thus, to use that dough, to cook it and to keep a little piece so as to transmit the same rising force to other dough. Egyptians invented an oven, about which, the only certain information is that it was made in the shape of a cone.
The fire was put inside, outside they literally sticked the little loafs : when they fell down, it meant that they were cooked on one side, so they were sticked again on the other side so as to finish the baking. Only later someone had the idea to divide the oven into two parts, in order to put the fire below and over, to be cooked, the buns of dough and water already risen. This food had, in those times, a unique religiuos character; the point is that, certainly, there were some breads with ritual shapes, thousands of years ago, which were offered to the various gods in different occasions.......
We can still find some of them used in the different Italian regions as well as in other places around the world, even if their original votive meanings have been lost by the way. Among these types of breads, there also were those enriched with olives, fried scraps of pork fat, the forefathers of today's buns and rustic cakes; there also were some enriched with honey, raisin, pine-seeds, candied fruits, which have turned into the various panettoni, fruitcakes, sweetcakes and so on, of the different traditions......
Anyhow even some references of a linguistic character about the primitive flat breads which followed the Italian life from Roman times to Middleages and further, can be found at the very exciting passage of the year One Thousand, when many people were waiting for the End of the World.....
Coming back to Naples, around One thousand, they talk about "lagano", but the word "picea" appears as well, we don't know if it was used as an alternative, or in order to suggest a different preparation, in the sense of already having the disk of dough covered with tasty and coloured ingredients before putting it into the oven; and the word "piza" appears immediately after:
but it must not be forgotten that the word "pizza" indicates, today as well, in the south of Italy, Not only the classic pizza, i.e. the flat bread dressed and put into the oven, but also some disks of dough stuffed and fried, stuffed buns or similar preparations....
In the seventeen century, in a delightful Neapolitan Operetta, "Il Cunto de li Cunti", that is to say the tale of the tales; a series of stories lincked up one with the other in a chain, there is one entitled "Le due pizzelle" (the two little pizzas), but it' s impossible to understand exactly what they are, except for the fact that one, at least, is made in the shape of a disk of dough foundling over a stuffing.
It's only in the eighteen century that we see the pizza of the pizzas showing off, the one that has made the round of the world : pizza with tomatoe, made in different ways but always keeping its reddish immage.
The reason of such a tardy matching is the same that presides at the birth of spaghetti with tomatoe, which conquered Naples (where since then, in opposition to what many believe, the most common meal was a soup of cabbage and pieces of meat); and then they left at the conquestof the world.
The reason is that tomatoe didn't exist in Europe untill it was introduced from America; and it didn' t happen in a day. A century and a half went by before Europeans discovered the virtus of tomatoe in the kitchen and Neapolitans particularly made of it their culinary flag.
As you can see, only in very recent times, compared to the thousands of years we underlined before, pizza with tomatoe as well as spaghetti and tomatoe are born.
And this pizza in particular, as concerns our discussion, was what conquered such a great popularity everywhere; in one sense we are inclined to distinguish every pizza from any place around the world as a separate titbit.
Thus, towards the end of the eighteen century, in Naples people start, even if not really to eat, to distinguish in particular pizza, before it took wing to the world. And the red pizza with tomatoe is also the one that arouses interest, and draws attention to all the other pizzas, among which, the first were probably those ones with uncooked, or cooked, garlic and oil, the one with mozzarella cheese and salted anchovies, the one covered by very little fishes, called cicinielli, which seems also to be one of the most ancient.
Besides someone talks about a pizza refolded like a booklet, which perhaps was a kind of "calzone" (savoury roll), with its stuffing.
We still have to wait untill 1.830 to get sure news of the existence of a real pizzeria (since then pizzaioli only had some open-air stalls) which is to be considered the first one born in Naples, called Port'Alba, because it was located by the arch which from Piazza Dante introduced into Via Costantinopoli. It was a pizzeria with its good oven covered with firebricks and the fire stoked by wood.
Later, the oven, actually covered inside with lapilli from Vesuvio, was considered to be ideal, because they were even more suitable than bricks to reach the necessary high temperature and to obtain the best pizzas.
The pizzeria Port'Alba, a long time later, became a meeting-place for artists and famous writers; perhaps it was there that D'Annunzio, on the marble cover of one of the tables, wrote the verses of one of the most wonderful Neapolitan songs : A vucchella.
And among its eminent frequenters there was a certain Salvatore Di Giacomo, who many times dedicated to pizza his own verses.
However many are the poets, the writers, the musicians, who in modern times have dedicated to pizza some spark of their wit and their fancy.
Even the father of "The three Musketeers", Alexandre Dumas, dealt with it, in the course of a series of voyaje-writings, a kind of services as a special correspondent, collected in "Corricolo". Dumas put together keen observations and odd information.
For example, he wrote :" pizza is a kind of flat bread as they make it in St.Denis : it is round shaped and is worked with the same dough as bread. At first sight, it is a simple food : submitted for examination, it will look a complicated food".
He was right, and that reference to St.Denis' flat breads can confirm that a kind of pizza is a universal food...
Dumas also listed different types of pizza : The most common one, therefore, in the first half of the century; and namely with oil, fat, pork fat, cheese, tomatoe and little fishes ("cicinielli", precisely). And he quietly declared that there also was a pizza called "a otto" (a week from today) which was cooked a week before eating it.
He had made a blunder, in fact the pizza "a otto", an institution which lasted long, perhaps still in great favour nowadays, meant that you immediately ate the pizza but you could pay eight days later for it, even if this easy term actually cost something additional.
Finally, it is talken a great deal about pizza even in a famous work "Neapolitan uses and customs" by an author with a french name : De Boucard, who, however, was totally imbued with Neapolitan uses and customs and who eventually took advantage of the help of a superexpert - as we would call him today - Cavalier Emanuele Rocco.
Only towards the half of the 19th century, by then around 1850, I quote from the text : " Pizza cannot be found in the vocabulary of Crusca, because it is made from the flower (of flour) and because it is a speciality of the Neapolitans or rather of the city of Naples (pay attention to the very patriotic pride and the subtle polemical tone). take a piece of dough (bread-dough), widen it and roll it out by a rolling pin or beat it with the palm of your hands, top it with everything that fancies you, dress it with oil or fat, cook it inside the oven and you will understand what really pizza is. Buns and flat breads are something similar but they are only the embryo of art ".
Then I check and list the different kinds of pizza which were more in the custom . they are those with garlic and oil to which can be added origan and salt; with grated cheese, fat, basil; or with little fishes, others with mozzarella cheese, ham, clams; and finally tomatoe appears, but not related to a primary importance.
So we arrive at the end of the century, with a well-known episode which needs to be told in its real terms, we are exactly in 1889.
The King Umberto I and the Queen Margherita spent that summer in Naples, at Capodimonte royal palace, as a certain rule of the monarchy wanted, in order to put in an appearance in the ancient reign of "le due Sicilie". The queen got curious about pizza which she had never tasted and which she had perhaps heard talking about by some writers or artists admitted at court.
But she herself couldn't go to a "pizzeria", so the pizzeria went to her; then it was called in at palace the most renowned "pizzaiolo" of the time, don Raffaele Esposito, the owner of the famous pizzeria "Pietro, il pizzaiolo", which standed on Sant' Anna slope, at a few steps from via Chiaia.
Don Raffaele came, saw and won making use of the ovens of the royal kitchens, helped by his wife donna Rosa, who was the very pizza expert, the real maker of the classical ones, which were introduced to the sovereigners (the chronicles of the times have informed us about everything) : one with sugna, that is a sort of fat, cheese and basil; another one with garlic, oil and tomatoe and a third one with mozzarella, tomatoe and basil, that is to say with the colours of the Italian flag, which thrilled the queen Margherita particularly and not only for its patriotic reasons. Don Raffaele, as the good public-relator he was, seized the opportunity and called that pizza "Margherita"; the following day he put it on the list at his pizza-place and got, as you can immagine, innumerable requests....
And this is the real story; but the pizza in the Margherita way or pizza Margherita, as they started calling it, was supposed to be a novelty, a real invention, while, it is well-known, that it already existed before. It wasn' t considered among the more classical and important ones, but it was already made in Naples.
For example, they prepared it for another queen, the Bourbon Maria Carolina, who was so fond of pizza, that had wanted at court, at San Ferdinando palace, a suitable oven. Carolina loved very much the white, red and green pizza, but perhaps, if she had been able to immagine that those would have been the colours of Italy united under another dinasty, the one that would have thrown her own out, she wouldn't have been so highly satisfied with it... The two pizzas, which have gone further, are the so called "Neapolitan", similar to "Margherita" but with anchovies; and "Margherita" itself.
But historically, as we have seen, others preceed and claim rights to nobility, to Parthenopean autenticity.....
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