This article talks about the history of how pizza became a widely eaten food.
Pizza came from the Greeks. They used to eat flat,
round bread with all different toppings on it. They came up with the idea of doing this because they decided that it would be a good idea to use the bread as the plate itself. This made it much easier for the poor people to eat their meals. It also made it cheaper, because then the poor didn't have to spend money on plates or silverware. They could just carry the pizza around and eat it, and when it was finished, they didn't have to put the plate away or clean it. So not only was it portable, but it was easy and quick to eat, so that they could easily eat and then go back to their everyday concerns and duties. It was also something that didn't have to be tended all day by the cooks of the house, so it freed up more of their time to do other chores and duties.
So how did it become so ingrained in our culture as more than a peasant's dish? Well when Queen Margherita went with her husband to look over his Italian kingdom in 1889, she saw so many of the peasants eating the flatbread, pizza, and she wondered what it tasted like. She tried it and loved it. So she would eat it all the time, even though most of the court did not like the taste at all and looked down on it because it was seen as a peasant's food.
Because the taste of pizza was disdained in court circles, she had to ask for a peasant who made the pizzas to come to the palace and bake all different kinds of the peasants' food for her. He came, and in honor of her he baked one named after her, which had tomato, mozzarella cheese, and basil on it. He used these ingredients to symbolize the Italian flag. She loved it and often ate it.
Because she was beloved by the people, they started to emulate her. Now that particular combination of toppings is so popular and people all around the world still eat Queen Margherita's namesake. The food came to America with the Italians as they colonized the Americas. Even though a pizzeria opened in New York City in 1905, there wasn't much of a demand for it until forty years later after World War II when the soldiers who had been stationed in Italy came home and wanted more of the delicious concoction that they had eaten in Italy.
Now there are so many different varieties, deep-dish, thin-crust, stuffed, pockets, turnovers, rolled, and in true American fashion, on-a-stick. What toppings people choose is even more varied. People have now put pineapple, anchovies, sausage, bacon, ground beef, pepperoni, bar-b-q chicken, you name it, you can put it on as a topping. More than that, there are even dessert varieties. Some people like it with a chocolate sauce and marshmallows or with fruit and whipped cream.
