We all think we know where Pizza came from. No, it wasn’t from Melbourne, much as we might like to claim it. The true origin of the pizza seems to be up for debate. Given the popularity of the dish the world over, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many cultures and peoples claim the fame. So Melbourne Pizza Delivery set out on a quest to work out who really holds the rights, though it will probably always remain to be seen.

Pizza History

For starters, to decide who really holds claim to the invention of the pizza, you need to define what you mean by the word. Generally, historians and culinary enthusiasts consider a pizza to be a dish that starts with a round, unleavened bread (the dough!) which is then covered with layers such as a sauce and a cheese layer—today’s most typically, of course, being a tomato-based sauce layered with cheese and then various toppings.

Using this as a loose guide, we can trace today’s pizza ancestors back to several cultures and cousins. A few of those include:

• A flat bread covered with cheese and dates that is said to have been baked on the shields of Persian soldiers in sixth century BC.
• Early Greek creations consisting of flat, round breads covered with oil, herbs and spices, and dates. Sensing a trend?
• 19th century flat-breads (served plain) on the streets of Italy, sold cheap to peasants, which became a favorite of the then Queen of Italy, Queen Margherita, who had a pizza named after her (guess which one).

The Pizza Queen

Queen Margherita, who discovered her street-pizza in 1889, is the one most often credited with the modern version of pizza as it exists today. It was Queen Margherita who summoned Chef Rafaelle Esposito to court to cook for her (perhaps we should credit her with the notion of Pizza Delivery, too?), creating for her a pizza topped with tomatoes, cheese, and basil, among other versions. The tomato and cheese-topped version of the plain flat bread came to be a favorite food of the Queen, and the rest, as they so often say, is pizza history.

Aussie Pizza Connoisseur
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