Pizza is a flat, baked, yeasted dough topped with sauce, cheese, and other ingredients. The modern tomato-and-cheese pizza traces directly to Naples, Italy, in the late 18th century, although the word ‘pizza’ itself appears in Italian Latin documents as early as 997 CE. The dish moved with Italian immigrants to the United States in the early 20th century (Lombardi’s in New York, 1905) and from there became one of the most-eaten foods in the world. UNESCO inscribed ‘The Art of the Neapolitan Pizzaiuolo’ on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2017.
Why pizza became a global staple
Three turns of history made pizza the dish it is.
The first is the Spanish import of the tomato. The tomato is native to the Americas; Hernán Cortés brought it to Europe in the 1520s, but it took 200 years to overcome the European fear that it was a poisonous nightshade. By the late 18th century, the poor of Naples had begun to use ripe tomatoes as a sauce on the existing flat yeasted bread eaten as a street food. The fundamentally simple combination of dough, tomato, and cheese created a dish that was cheap, nutritious by the standards of the urban poor, and almost infinitely variable.
The second is post-1880 emigration. Italian unification in 1861 and the agricultural collapse of the southern Mezzogiorno that followed pushed roughly 4 million Italians out of the country between 1880 and 1924. Most of those emigrants came from southern Italy and Sicily; New York, Boston, Chicago, Buenos Aires, and São Paulo were the main destinations. The first US pizzeria, Lombardi’s, opened in 1905 in Manhattan’s Little Italy. The dish remained a working-class Italian-American food until World War 2, when US servicemen returning from Italy brought home a taste for it. Pizza Hut (1958), Little Caesars (1959), and Domino’s (1960) were founded within 3 years of each other, in different US cities, by Americans who saw the post-war demand and built chains to meet it.
The third is chain-driven globalization. From the 1970s onward, Pizza Hut and Domino’s expanded internationally to countries with no Italian immigrant tradition. Today both chains operate in more than 80 countries, and pizza ranks among the top 10 fast-foods almost everywhere they go. Indian Pizza Hut menus include paneer-tikka pizza; Korean menus add bulgogi; Japanese menus carry corn-and-mayo. The Italian original now coexists with hundreds of regional adaptations.
Key pizza facts
- First documented use of the word. A 997 CE rental contract from Gaeta, in southern Italy, requires a tenant to pay ‘duodecim pizze’ (12 pizzas) per year to the local bishop.
- Modern tomato pizza origin. Naples, late 18th century. Mozzarella was added later, completing the Margherita.
- Margherita pizza origin story. Popularly credited to Raffaele Esposito on June 10, 1889, for Queen Margherita of Savoy, although Neapolitan records describe a similar tomato-mozzarella-basil pie as early as 1796 to 1810. The thank-you letter from the queen has been shown to be a forgery.
- UNESCO recognition. ‘Art of the Neapolitan Pizzaiuolo,’ inscribed in December 2017 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Recognition is for the craft (4 phases: knead, rest, stretch, wood-fired bake), not the food itself.
- EU TSG status. ‘Pizza Napoletana’ was awarded EU Traditional Specialty Guaranteed status in 2010, restricting use of the name within the EU to pizzas made with specified ingredients and methods.
- Top US pizza chains by 2024 sales. Domino’s: $9.5 billion. Pizza Hut: $5.09 billion. Little Caesars: $4.93 billion. Papa John’s: $3.8 billion.
- First US pizzeria. Lombardi’s, New York City, 1905. The original closed in 1984 and reopened in 1994 at a different address; the continuous-operation title now belongs to Papa’s Tomato Pies in Trenton, NJ (1912).
- Chicago deep-dish. Pizzeria Uno, 1943. Founded by Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo. Cheese on the dough, sauce on top, baked 30 to 45 minutes in a 2-inch deep steel pan.
- Detroit-style pizza. Buddy’s Rendezvous, 1946. Square or rectangular, baked in blue-steel automotive parts trays, with cheese pushed to the edge to caramelize against the pan.
- New Haven apizza. Frank Pepe, 1925. Coal-oven, hand-tossed, charred, oblong. White clam pie added by the 1960s.
- Hawaiian pizza. Sam Panopoulos, Satellite Restaurant, Chatham, Ontario, Canada, 1962. Greek-Canadian invention named after the canned-pineapple brand.
- Pizza Hut founding. Frank and Dan Carney, May 31, 1958, in Wichita, Kansas. Borrowed $600 from their mother. The 8-letter sign space chose the name.
- Domino’s founding. Tom and James Monaghan, 1960, Ypsilanti, Michigan. James traded his half for a Volkswagen Beetle 8 months in.
- Domino’s ‘30 minutes or it’s free.’ Introduced 1973, ended December 1993 after a $79 million St. Louis jury verdict in a delivery-driver crash case.
- National Pizza Day in the US. February 9, observed since around 2000.
- Pizza in space. Pizza Hut paid roughly $1 million to deliver a vacuum-packed salami pizza to cosmonaut Yuri Usachov on the International Space Station in 2001, the only known commercial food delivery to orbit.
Common myths about pizza
Myth: Pizza was invented when Queen Margherita visited Naples in 1889. The Esposito-and-the-Queen story is partially mythologized. The tomato-mozzarella-basil topping combination is documented in Neapolitan menus from 1796 to 1810, decades before Esposito served the queen. The ‘Italian flag colors’ framing is real, but it was applied retrospectively to a dish that already existed; the queen-as-the-customer detail is what made the legend famous, and the supposed thank-you letter is a forgery.
Myth: Italians eat pineapple on pizza. Italians don’t eat much pineapple on pizza. Hawaiian pizza was invented in 1962 by a Greek-Canadian, Sam Panopoulos, in Chatham, Ontario, and is more popular in Canada and the United States than in Italy. Italian chefs have publicly objected to the combination, although it does appear on some pizzeria menus in Italian cities catering to tourists.
Myth: Pepperoni is an Italian topping. ‘Pepperoni’ is American. The cured spicy salami sold under that name in US delis was invented in early 20th-century Italian-American kitchens; in Italy, ‘peperoni’ (with one ‘p’) means bell peppers. An American who orders ‘pepperoni pizza’ in Italy will likely get a vegetable pizza. The Italian equivalent of US pepperoni is salame piccante.
Myth: Chicago deep-dish is the original American pizza. Chicago deep-dish was invented at Pizzeria Uno in 1943, almost 40 years after Lombardi’s opened in New York City in 1905. The original American pizza was the Neapolitan-style coal-oven thin-crust that Italian immigrants brought with them. Deep-dish is a 20th-century regional variant.
Myth: Domino’s still has a 30-minutes-or-free guarantee. The chain ended the guarantee on December 21, 1993, after a $79 million jury verdict against the company in a St. Louis case involving a delivery driver who ran a red light and killed a pedestrian. Domino’s still markets fast delivery, but no longer with a hard time guarantee.
Myth: Cooking pizza in a home oven is the same as cooking it in a restaurant oven. A home oven typically reaches 500 °F (260 °C); a Neapolitan wood-fired oven reaches 905 °F (485 °C), almost twice as hot. The temperature difference is the main reason home pizza never tastes quite like the version at a good Italian restaurant: the high heat puffs the crust and chars the rim while leaving the cheese loose and the toppings barely cooked, in 60 to 90 seconds. A home oven cannot replicate this except with specialized stones, steel slabs, or dedicated countertop pizza ovens.
Myth: All pizzas are round. Detroit-style and most Sicilian-style pizzas are rectangular. Roman pizza al taglio is sold in long rectangular trays, cut to order with scissors and weighed by the gram. The ‘round and triangular slice’ format is dominant globally but far from universal.
Frequently asked questions about pizza
What does it mean for a pizza to be ‘authentic Neapolitan’?
Two organizations define the standard. The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN), founded in Naples in 1984, certifies pizzerias around the world that meet specifications for ingredients, technique, and equipment: 00-grade Italian flour with specific gluten characteristics, San Marzano tomatoes from the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, mozzarella di bufala campana or fior di latte, hand-stretching only, baking on the floor of a wood-fired oven at about 485 °C (905 °F) for 60 to 90 seconds, and a final pizza diameter not exceeding 35 cm (14 in). The European Union granted Pizza Napoletana ‘Traditional Specialty Guaranteed’ (TSG) status in 2010, and UNESCO added the ‘Art of the Neapolitan Pizzaiuolo’ to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2017. None of these protections prevents a non-certified shop from selling ‘Neapolitan-style’ pizza, but a true ‘pizza Napoletana’ label inside the EU is reserved for certified producers.
Why is mozzarella the standard pizza cheese?
Mozzarella melts smoothly without separating into oil and curds, which is unusual among cheeses; harder cheeses like cheddar split when melted at pizza-oven temperatures. Mozzarella also has a mild flavor that does not overpower toppings. The original water-buffalo version (mozzarella di bufala) was the cheese available around Naples, where the wet coastal lowlands of Campania support buffalo herds; cow-milk mozzarella (fior di latte) emerged later as a cheaper alternative and now dominates the global pizza supply. American supermarket pizza cheese is usually ‘low-moisture mozzarella,’ a partly aged version that melts well without releasing too much water onto the crust.
Why is Italian-style pizza so much faster to cook than home pizza?
The temperature. A wood-fired Neapolitan oven runs at roughly 485 °C (905 °F), about 245 °C above a typical home oven set to its maximum. At that heat, water in the dough flashes to steam in seconds, lifting the rim into the airy ‘cornicione’ (crust); cheese melts before the bottom of the dough has time to dry out; the rim reaches the slightly charred ‘leoparding’ that defines a good Naples pizza. The whole bake takes 60 to 90 seconds. A home oven, even with a pizza stone preheated for 45 minutes, can rarely match this and typically takes 8 to 12 minutes per pie, by which point the crust is drier and the cheese has lost its initial gloss.
How big is the global pizza industry?
The US chain pizza segment alone is worth roughly $50 billion in 2024, across more than 75,000 establishments. The global pizza market, including independent restaurants, frozen pizzas, and ingredients sold for home cooking, is estimated at over $150 billion annually. The category continues to grow at single-digit annual percentages, faster than most prepared-food sectors. Domino’s is the global leader by store count and US sales, with more than 21,000 locations worldwide as of the mid-2020s.
Why are there so many regional pizza styles in the United States?
The US has had pizza for over a century, and immigrant communities in different cities adapted the dish to local oven types, equipment, and tastes. New York-style descended directly from Naples through Italian immigrants in the early 1900s. New Haven apizza (1925) refined the coal-oven approach; Detroit-style (1946) borrowed steel automotive parts trays for a focaccia-like pan pizza; Chicago deep-dish (1943) reimagined pizza as a knife-and-fork casserole; California-style (1980s) added Wolfgang Puck-era restaurant innovations like smoked salmon and goat cheese. Each style tracks the local food culture and the specific equipment that local pizzerias had on hand. The fact that all 5 styles are still produced today, more than half a century after the youngest of them was invented, says something about both regional pride and the structural decentralization of US food.
Source notes
The standard reference for the global history of pizza is Wikipedia’s pizza and history of pizza entries. The 1889 Margherita story and its disputes are at Pizza Margherita; the UNESCO inscription is at Art of Neapolitan Pizzaiuolo. For US history, Lombardi’s Pizza, Chicago-style pizza, Detroit-style pizza, and Hawaiian pizza document the major styles. The chain origins are at Domino’s and Pizza Hut. Industry figures for 2024 come from Toast’s Top Pizza Chains in America.
You can test these facts on the pizza trivia quiz, a 10-question true-or-bluff round at the Sharp reading level.
