Easy Italian Recipes

Romans baked a flat bread known as picea; centuries later it was still popular, but had changed from a plain bread to something similar to the pizza we know today.

Ferdinand II, the Bourbon monarch, loved the pizzas of famous pizzaiolo Don Domenico Testa so much that he made him a monzu (from the French word monsieur), which in 18th-century Naples was an honour normally reserved for the great French chefs who cooked for the rich. Ferdinand even had pizza ovens built in his garden so that he and guests could enjoy this Neapolitan delight.

In the book Usi e costumi di Napoli e contorni, published in 1858, Emanuele Rocco wrote that pizza, as it was called by then, could be finished with an assortment of toppings, such as basil, fish, cheese and oil. If you were to fold this over it would be known as pizza calzone.
In 1861, Umberto I, from the House of Savoy, came to the throne of Naples and visited the city. His wife Margherita was presented with a pizza by the chef Raffaele Esposito which was topped with ingredients in the colours of the -unified Italy - red tomatoes, white mozzarella and green basil - hence the Pizza Margherita.

Pizza, like everything else, differs across the country. In Naples, the crust is thicker than elsewhere in Italy. This helps keep the filling inside the parameters of the circle of dough. They are also more generous with their toppings in Naples. In Rome, the pizzas have thinner bases or are often made as tray pizzas.

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