Hello:
The Romans were eating a type of pizza in ancient times. Virgil has
left a recipe for moretum - a pizza shaped circle of unleavened dough
which ultimately became the pizza of naples. Here are more specifics:
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"........Versions of pizza were known in southern Italy since ancient
times. Made with unleavened dough they were eaten by both the Romans
and the Greeks, and thanks to the poet Virgil, we have a recipe for
moretum. It was a flat circle of unleavened dough and - like today's
schiacciata - eaten as bread, sometimes with oil and herbs, sometimes
with raw onions and garlic.
Though this early unleavened schiacciata was part of Italian life from
Roman times to the medieval period and beyond, historical records refer
to it again around the year 1000 A.D.. - a time when many people were
expecting the end of the world, but when Neapolitans were thinking about
food!. In that period in Naples, instead of schiacciata, people spoke
of lagano, a word coming from the Latin laganum and the Greek laganon.
The unleavened dough was roasted and cut into strips which were tossed
into a pot of vegetables or other ingredients cooking over the fire.
Laganon was, in short a kind of primitive Tagliatelle or noodle. (On
the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, Tagliatelle are still called
laganella.) ...........
........Although people in Naples spoke of lagano around the year 1000
A.D. , the word picea began to appear also. It might have been another
name for lagano or it might have indicated a new dish, a circle of dough
covered with various ingredients before baking. Shortly afterwards the
word piza came into usage. Yet it was sometimes later - when dough was
leavened, topped with simple ingredients and baked - that we have the
beginning of actual pizza and its near relation, today's round
pitta-like bread, schiacciata. ....
......Towards the end of the 18th century in Naples, pizza emerged as a
distinctive dish......
It was in the 18th century that pizza with tomatoes appeared. The first
pizzeria in Naples was opened in 1830....."
From The Artisan:
http://www.theartisan.net/faux_pas_the_seventh.htm
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While I was not there, I cannot imagine that the Roman army carried
ovens around with them, so one possibility at least is that they cooked
the dough over fires or on makeshift grills.
Again since pizza is basically a flatbread, it can be made many ways.
Certainly grilled pizza may not meet the criteria established by the
Association of VERA PIZZA NAPOLETANA who make the rules that each
pizzaiolo in Italy must follow in order for his or her product to be
considered authentic. Neverthless, grilled pizza is a form of pizza, and
as such is a bread product. So calling grilled pizza nothing but a
bread,or an open faced bread sandwitch can be considered redundant in
this sense.
Regards
Jerry @ The Artisan
http://www.theartisan.net
"anthonyd" > wrote in message
oups.com...
> It isn't as if you have a piece of toast and you just add toppings to
it and
> eat it. The dough isn't fully pre-cooked, it finishes cooking along
with the
> toppings. Either way, the sauce is absorbed into the dough, and the
cheese
> sticks to the dough. The end result is excellent, and frankly much
closer in
> look and taste and texture to the original pizza which is baked in a
brick
> oven than what people bake in their conventional ovens. I think it's
silly
> to suggest that it somehow isn't pizza.
I respectfully dissagree. Since this is the method I use, I can tell
you that the dough is pretty much, if not completely cooked through
before the flip (certainly on the flipped side to which the toppings
are applied). So, you are making bread and then putting toppings on.
You can call it pizza, and 90 out of a 100 people might do so at the
presentation, but strictly speaking it's not really pizza which is
defined as below:
Main Entry: piz·za
Pronunciation: 'pEt-s&
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian, perhaps of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German
bizzo, pizzo bite, bit, bIzan to bite -- more at BITE
an open pie made typically of flattened bread dough spread with a
savory mixture usually including tomatoes and cheese and often other
toppings and baked -- called also pizza pie