Did you try the Google Doodle pizza slicing game today? Google Doodle is featuring the delicious flatbread as its hero, with an aim to celebrate its legacy through a pizza puzzle game. Google is celebrating Pizza as the culinary art of ‘Neapolitan Pizzaiuolo’ which was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
This trending pizza puzzle game, a part of today’s Google doodle, features beloved pizza toppings around the world. The game challenges the players to slice the pizza based on their choice and keep a close eye on the requested toppings and number of slices, as more accurate the order, the more stars you earn. The variety of pizzas in the game include Margherita (cheese, tomatoes, and basil); Pepperoni (cheese and pepperoni); White (cheese, white sauce, mushrooms, and broccoli); Paneer Tikka (paneer, capsicum, onion, and paprika); Teriyaki Mayonnaise (cheese, teriyaki chicken, seaweed and mayonnaise); Tom Yum (cheese, shrimp, mushrooms, chili peppers, and lime leaves); Calabrese (cheese, Calabresi, onion rings and whole black olives); Muzarella (cheese, oregano and whole green olives); Magyars (salami, bacon, onion and chili pepper); Hawaiian (cheese, ham, and pineapple); and Desserts.
In ancient civilizations from Egypt to Rome, this flatbread with toppings has been consumed for centuries, the southwestern Italian city of Naples is widely credited as the birthplace of the pizza known today (dough layered with tomatoes and cheese) in the late 1700s. It's here where the story of pizza begins: one that is baked together with centuries of global migration, economic development, and technological evolution.
Significance
On December 7, the United Nations granted the sought-after "Intangible Cultural Heritage" status to the art of the Neapolitan pizzaiolo or pizza maker. Every year, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) adds select "tangible" (artworks, monuments, coins, manuscripts, archaeological sites, and so on) and "intangible" (oral traditions, performing arts, and rituals) traditions to the cultural heritage of humanity.
When UNESCO added the Neapolitan pizzaiolo to the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the agency praised the ancient expertise required, calling the pizza makers "a living link" to the historic culinary practice.
The art of Neapolitan pizza making is central to Italian identity. Created in Napoli, true pizza Napolitano comprises dough kneaded by hand with wheat flour, aged for a set period, topped with the best ingredients (to be considered "Vera," or "true" the pizza can either be marinara with tomato, oil, oregano, and garlic or Margherita with tomato, oil, mozzarella, and basil), baked for three minutes in a blisteringly hot wood-burning oven, and enjoyed immediately.
History of pizza
The history of pizza begins in antiquity when various ancient cultures produced basic flatbreads with several toppings.
A precursor of pizza was probably the focaccia, a flatbread known to the Romans as panis focacius, to which toppings were then added. Modern pizza evolved from similar flatbread dishes in Naples, Italy, in the 18th or early 19th century.
The word pizza was first documented in A.D. 997 in Gaeta, and successively in different parts of Central and Southern Italy. Pizza was mainly eaten in Italy and by emigrants from there. This changed after World War II when Allied troops stationed in Italy came to enjoy pizza along with other Italian foods.
In Sardinia, French and Italian archaeologists have found bread baked over 7,000 years ago. According to Philippe Marinval, the local islanders leavened this bread. Foods similar to pizza have been made since antiquity. Records of people adding other ingredients to bread to make it more flavorful can be found throughout ancient history.
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In the 6th century BC, Persian soldiers serving under Darius the Great baked flatbreads with cheese and dates on top of their battle shields.
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In Ancient Greece, citizens made flatbread called plakous, which was flavored with toppings like herbs, onion, cheese, and garlic.
An early reference to a pizza-like food occurs in the Aeneid (ca. 19 BC), when Celaeno, the Harpy queen, foretells that the Trojans would not find peace until they are forced by hunger to eat their tables (Book III). In Book VII, Aeneas and his men are served a meal that includes round cakes (like pita bread) topped with cooked vegetables. When they eat the bread, they realize that these are the "tables" prophesied by Celaeno.
Innovation
The innovation that led to flatbread pizza was the use of tomato as a topping. For some time after the tomato was brought to Europe from the Americas in the 16th century, it was believed by many Europeans to be poisonous, like some other fruits of the Solanaceae (nightshade) family are. However, by the late 18th century, it was common for the poor of the area around Naples to add tomato to their yeast-based flatbread, and so the pizza began. The dish gained popularity, and soon pizza became a tourist attraction as visitors to Naples ventured into the poorer areas of the city to try the local specialty.
Today, an estimated 5 billion pizzas (350 slices per second in the U.S. alone) are consumed internationally each year. No matter how you slice it, pizza is here to stay!
