Da real story of da pizza of America, as told by M

M and I sometimes exchange emails. Last May I sent her an email that included this link. Here is part of her reply:


Pizza did not originate in Italy! No way and no how! Focaccia bread is the pizza of Italy and there are different variations of that depending on the family and province. But when Americans started selling the delicious bread like pastry, they cheapened it for mass production so the American version of Focaccia doesn't do the real stuff justice.

Pizza was created by a bored baker who needed to put something on his stale old unsold bread dough one day in 1923. He found a can of tomato paste in the cupboard, some mixed frozen veggies and some spicy sausage that Louigi, the deli man 2 doors down calls pepperoni and smeared, sprinkled and layered it on the dough. He baked it and brought it home to feed his family. They liked it and wanted to know what it was called. The baker in his broken European accent said "I donno. I make it today wit a pizza dis and a pizza dat, a lillo of dis, a lillo of dat." Anna his lillo dauta say "Hey daddy, we'll call this pizza". But because the baker wasn't so smart and didn't know how to market his new creation, he made no money on it and even told this new found secret recipe to Louigi the deli man, who proceeded to market the "pizza" which took off with flying colors and made millions on it. They're both dead now but if they were alive, they still wouldn't be talking to each other.

And dis is da real story of da pizza of America, as told by M.