Hey, everybody! Welcome to mid-March and to March Madness! If you don’t know exactly what that means, it is the annual NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Basketball Tournament, a 68-team single-elimination competition, where the first four teams start playing on St. Pat’s Day.
Keeping up with the games requires watching a lot of television over the rest of the month, and you’ll need lots of food to keep you energized. My basketball fans tell me the food of choice is pizza.
It’s common at sports watch parties, and it seems to be everywhere lately, including my own home. I got my husband an electric pizza oven for Christmas, so guess what I eat every weekend. Hence, I decided to give pizza some serious thought.
I’ve read that pizza wasn’t “invented”—that it evolved, and it’s been around forever. Flatbread may have been the start of the evolution of pizza when Persian soldiers (486 BCE) made flatbreads on their heated shields, with cheese and dates, making a form of pizza. Flatbreads were used instead of plates in Europe (160 BCE), where cooked food was put on them and the bread soaked up the juices and sauce. Pizza was first documented by name in 997 CE, from southern Italy when the son of a feudal lord pledged 12 pizzas to the local bishop as an annual homage.
The pizza we know today emerged in 18th-century Naples, where the surge of peasants from the countryside made feeding the population challenging, so street vendors provided something cheap and easy to eat—pizza sliced and priced to meet the customer’s budget. The toppings were as simple as garlic and salt, maybe some cheese and basil. Tomatoes were not common yet because Europeans, at this point in pizza history, were suspicious of night shades.
Enter the Neapolitan pizza, created in 1889 by Chef Esposito of Pizzeria Brandi in Naples. Neapolitan pizza is a style of dough and cooking—soft, charred, and hand-stretched. Chef Esposito made pizza for King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Savoy while visiting Naples, and added the topping combination of tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil to represent the colors of the Italian flag. Apparently, the queen loved it so much it got the name “Margherita” pizza.
Italian immigrants brought pizza to America during the 19th century, and the first U.S. pizzeria is Lombardi’s, opened in 1905 in New York's Little Italy neighborhood. They’re still open, and considered the oldest running pizzeria in the U.S.
What’s your pizza style? New York style—which has sugar and olive oil in the crust? Deep-dish, which was created in Chicago to stand out among the crowded pizzerias in Chicago’s Little Italy? Or it’s cousin, Detroit-style, which is rectangular, created in 1946 to mimic Sicilian pizza, which has focaccia as a base. Or go big with the supreme pizza, created as a branding exercise in 1970 that is classically American. It has an abundance of ingredients that starts with sausage, pepperoni, peppers, and onions.
By the way, Pizza Hut is the official pizza sponsor of March Madness. They say they will “own the dunk” with daily deals and an interactive Tail-gate Tipoff.
So, get your brackets started and enjoy March Madness with your favorite pizza. I’m having pizza from my kitchen. It’s the Noto Margherita Supreme. It’s pretty good.
Resources:
https://www.hellofresh.com/eat/history-of-food/history-of-pizza
https://www.gethistories.com/p/a-history-of-pizza
https://www.firstpizza.com/
https://www.ncaa.com/ncaa-corporate-champions-and-partners-activations
