Cuisine is an important cultural element for many countries around the world, and one of the most famous is the Italian kitchen. Their traditional dishes have become more and more popular all around the world, due to their versatility and delicious taste. However, when they order a Celbridge pizza in the restaurants, few people actually know some obvious facts about this famous dish, considered to be Italian. You may wonder why the phrase “said to be”, but this can be easily explained. It is commonly believed that Italians were the ones who invented pizza, but actually, its origins can be related to the Middle East (Egyptian, Greek and Roman) cuisine. This depends on how you define pizza. When we refer to ancient pizza, we are speaking bout that flat piece of bread with other ingredients (tomatoes, salami or cheese), which was eaten by many cultures unleavened in mud ovens. Thousands of years ago, ancient cultures ate bread tapped only with olive oil and various spices, the assortment called nowadays “focaccia”. This was the initial and most basic manner in which pizza has appeared during years in its first records, but many people argue that this is not true.

Italians claim that they have invented the first pizza pie, and that the product has been always considered peasant’s traditional meal. On the other hand, since the basic product consisted in bread, olive oil and spices, food specialists have concluded that similar dishes were consumed by people from countries all around the Mediterranean Sea, including Greece and Egypt. To the initial version, Italians have also added other ingredients (tomatoes, cheese and toppings), creating a product similar to the one we often eat nowadays. For this reason, their version is the most common and popular, so that everybody is associating the dish with Italian culture.

It is said that pizza was created by Raffaele Esposito, an Italian baker from Naples, and due to its exquisite taste, the food become immediately famous. For this reason, the cook was asked to make pizza for King Umberto and Queen Margherita, during their visit to Italy, in 1889. Apparently, the Queen likes the simpler version, consisting only in tomato sauce and cheese, so this assortment was named after her surname. After this, the receipt has expanded and more and more cooks started to prepare it, adding or removing ingredients, which makes pizza Leixlip exist in so many forms nowadays. The first shop where pizza was sold was opened in 1830 also in Naples, but because of its popularity, the business expanded to the rest of the Europe and also to America. The dish’s popularity increased considerably after the World War II. During the war, because the occupation of many Italian territories, soldiers from different parts of the world got the chance to experience traditional food, so they took back to their countries. Italian immigrants also helped the spreading process, because they started to sell their traditional dish in the places they settled, so in America the first pizzeria was opened by Gennuardo Lombardi, in 1905. Nowadays, a pizza store can be found in almost every city of the world.

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