PizzaRap

Pizza is a round, open pie made with yeast dough and topped with tomato sauce, cheese, rounds of dough with various toppings can be found throughout the history of civilization. The Italians are also credited with coining the term pizza, although its origin is not clear. It could have derived from the Italian word for point, pizziare, meaning to pinch or pluck, or a verb meaning to sting or to season. Early toppings may have included cheeses, dates, herbs, olive oil, and honey. Tomatoes or tomato sauce were not introduced until the sixteenth century when New World explorers brought the red fruit back from South America. The wealthy classes regarded the tomato as a fruit to be avoided; indeed many thought it to be poisonous. But in the peasant neighborhoods of Naples, residents were enjoying it with the rounds of dough that constituted their primary staple. Just as the tomato made its way to Europe, the pizza traveled to the United States with the large influx of Italian immigrants in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

One of the earliest known pizzerias was opened by Gennaro Lombardi in New York City in 1905. The thin-crust pie served featured a layer of tomato puree, mozzarella cheese, and various toppings such as sausage and pepperoni. In 1943, Ike Sewell created a deep-dish version at his Chicago restaurant, Pizzeria Uno. The deep-dish pizza combines the sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, and such with the cheese, which is then poured into a high-sided crust.A layer of tomato sauce is then ladled over the top. Frozen pizzas were introduced in 1957. By the 1990s, one out of every 20 meals eaten American homes each week was pizza.

Pizza, a food of various origins and multiple styles, has played an important role in the diet of those who inhabited the land now called Italy. The dish has become popular in many different parts of the world. A shop or restaurant where pizzas are made and sold is called a "pizzeria". The phrases "pizza parlor", "pizza place" and "pizza shop" are used in the United States. The term pizza pie is dialectal, and pie is used for simplicity in some contexts, such as among pizzeria staff.