Customer Reviews

Pizza: A Global History (Reaktion Books - Edible)

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I bought this as a gift for my brother and his wife, they are food crazy. Their hobby is cooking, therefore I was looking for a cook book with a difference. This was a perfect gift, not only did it have some great recipes, it also contained some fascinating history of pizzas.

I would highly recommend this book.

This tiny book is a short history of pizza. Perhaps the most interesting part was the first 30 pages or so, which explains the history of pizza. Pizza existed in the 1700s (if not earlier) in Naples, where it was a street food for the poor: basically just flatbread with some sort of topping. The cheapest form of pizza had just garlic, salt and lard- more expensive versions had cheese, basil, fish and/or tomato. But until after WW II, pizza was not popular outside Naples (let alone outside Italy). But after WW II, immigrants from southern Italy spread both to northern Italy and the northern United States- selling pizza in both places. And from there, pizza spread to the rest of the world.

What makes pizza so popular worldwide? Cheapness and adaptability. Because it is always basically a flatbread with toppings, it is an easily comprehensible "comfort food" - yet the infinite variety of possible toppings mean that the basic recipe can be adapted to fit local tastes or altered to be a little different every day.