RI.4.1- Informational Inference

Researchers disagree, but most say that pizza was invented a few thousand years ago when people in the Mediterranean figured out how to mix flour and water to make a simple flatbread. This bread was then cooked over hot stones and seasoned with oil and spices. Since they had no tomatoes or cheese, it wasn't really pizza yet, but it was a start!

Italy was one of the countries that made flatbreads, but it had no tomatoes or cheese until the seventh century when the water buffaloes arrived from India. Italians were able to use their milk to make the special cheese. About 1,000 years later there were still no tomatoes in Europe until early explorers brought them back from Peru in 1522. At first, Italians used the tomatoes as houseplants and were afraid to eat them. Almost everyone thought they were poisonous. Finally, Italian peasants were so hungry that they decided to give them a try. After peasants ate them and lived, the wealthy people decided to try them too and tomatoes became a key ingredient of pizzas.

For several hundred years, pizza was made in only one city in Italy, Naples. They were made in the small kitchens of many homes but weren't yet sold as a business. In 1738, this changed! The first pizza bakery was opened in Naples, and it made pizzas which were sold by street vendors. These street vendors were mostly boys who walked through the streets calling out for people to buy their pizzas. As they walked, they balanced "stuffas", tin stoves filled with pizzas on their heads. Working people all over Naples loved the cheap but filling pizzas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

The bakery did so well that in 1830, they opened the world's first official pizza restaurant called "Port Alba". One interesting thing about this restaurant is that it baked pizzas in a wood burning oven which was lined with lava rocks from a nearby volcano! The Port Alba pizzeria is still open today.