Pop quiz hot shot!
What's the Pope's favorite pizza topping?
I actually don't know but in 1570 it might have been rose water and sugar
and that's what we're making today.
A 16th century Italian pizza served in the Papal Court which calls for exactly those ingredients.
So thank you to Bright Cellars for sponsoring this video,
as we slice into the history of pizza this time on Tasting History.
So this recipe comes from the Opera di Bartolomeo Scappi which I did an entire episode on and I'll
put a link up here in the corner so you can watch it, or I'll put one in the description as well.
The entire book is filled with recipes that are quintessentially Italian Renaissance that kind of
mixture of sweet and spice that our palette might just be like what and this one is is no different.
Another way to prepare flakey pizza.
Bring together three pounds of fine flour and two ounces of yeast starter, four ounces of bread
crumb that is soaked in warm water, and enough salt. When the dough is made let it rest covered
in a warm place to rise as is done with bread. Then knead it again on the table for a half hour,
adding in little by little two pounds of fresh butter. Knead until all of the butter has been
worked into the dough and it has become soft. Split the dough up into two or three pieces,
and with each piece make the pizza in a tort pan which has fresh butter in it. Bake it in an oven
with melted butter on top. Make several holes on top with the tip of a knife so it will not puff
up too much. When it is nearly done sprinkle with sugar and rose water. This pastry should
be baked slowly and serve it hot. So does that sound at all like a pizza to you? No,
not really, but frankly the definition of pizza is kind of weird. I mean look at Chicago style pizza,
it's basically soup. Anyway for this recipe what you'll need is:
4 cups or 480 grams of bread flour, a quarter cup or 60 grams of high yeast biga.
This will need to have a much higher yeast and flour content than your typical sourdough starter
so it might take you a little while to to make that, or just add in more yeast. If you just want
to use dried yeast I'd use about a teaspoon. 6 tablespoons or 60 grams of bread crumbs
soaked in one cup or 240 milliliters of warm water,
an additional half cup of water, 2 teaspoons of salt,
1 pound or 400 grams of unsalted butter cut into pieces.
So usually during Scappi's time butter would have a lot of salt in it. More than we'd be used to but
he specifically in this recipe calls for fresh butter so my thought is that he's not adding the
salt because the salt was added as a preservative. I don't know that but he also calls out salt
individually in the recipe so we're doing unsalted butter, and just adding salt where we need.
Two tablespoons of melted butter, one tablespoon of sugar, and one teaspoon of rose water.
Now you'll notice that these are not the exact quantities that Scappi called for because
he must be making a pizza to feed well the entire Papal Court which he probably was.
I cut everything in half and it's still a lot of dough. So first whisk the salt
into the flour, then add your yeast and soaked breadcrumbs and then mix everything together.
Then add in the additional half cup of water but only as much as you need to make it form a dough.
This dough ends up being super, super sticky once you add in all of the butter. So
don't add any more water than you need to to get it to come together.
If you need to add more later on you can but it's going to be really sticky.
Then knead the dough for about 10 minutes until the dough starts to smooth out.
Then put it in a lightly greased bowl and cover allowing it to double in size.
Now depending on the yeast it could take two to four hours to rise. Mine took about four,
but it was so worth the wait. Plus it gave me time to pour myself a glass of wine courtesy
of today's sponsor Bright Cellars. Now if you've ever watched this show before you will know that
occasionally I do enjoy a glass of wine, and one of my favorite things about wine is trying
new wines, but whenever I go to the store I always end up getting the same wines that I know because
I already know that I'm going to like them. So the cure to my wine monotony I found is Bright
Cellars. You take a seven question quiz on what you enjoy, and then they send you a box of wine.
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selection of full bodied juicy red wines like this syrah, It's called Pet Name and Jaime chose it.
Jaime liked the name so that's why he went with it, but I like a syrah.
Que sera, sera. Whatever would be you know.
Oh that's nice. It's got a lot of fruit in it. Those plums, those blackberries,
it's everything I like. The quiz worked.
Also don't give your cats wine but do let them play in the box the wine comes in.
So for viewers of Tasting History Bright Cellars is giving you
60% off of your first 4-bottle box. Just click the link in the description
and take your quiz to get started. Now back to your regularly scheduled pizza.
Once the dough is risen punch it down and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Stretch
it into a square or rectangle and scatter a few pieces of butter on top. Then fold it over to
cover the butter then knead it until the butter is fully incorporated. Then do this again, and again,
and again until all of the butter is incorporated. Pro tip, use a stand mixer if you got it.
Also as you add butter into this dough it is going to get super, super sticky,
and if it comes too sticky to work with which it probably will at some point,
just add some more flour. One or two tablespoons at a time.
Just to keep it you know in dough form rather than like liquid butter form Hmm.... fattening.
Once all the butter is incorporated and the dough is silky smooth divide it into 3 pieces.
Then let it rest preferably in the refrigerator for about a half an hour and while you wait
preheat your oven to 350 Fahrenheit or 175 Celsius. Then butter the bottom and the sides
of a large pie or cake pan. It's going to work best if you have one of those false bottom cake
pans it's just easier to get out, but you don't need it. What you do want to use is the biggest
frickin pan that you can find because even halfed which is what i'm doing this recipe calls for a
lot of dough. You can also half what I'm doing which is a quarter of what Scappi's doing because
I mean if you don't have a 10 inch cake pan which is what I used, half it.
Once the dough is rested roll it into discs the diameter of the pan
and form the pizza by layering the dough pieces in the pan on top of each other. Then top it all
off by brushing on a layer of melted butter. Then using a knife poke some holes all over the top to
keep it from puffing up too much. Then set the pizza on a lined baking sheet and bake for an
hour and 15 minutes. Now that is a long bake time but it's because it's a lot of freaking dough but
that gives me time to top off my glass of wine and tell you how we got from this pizza to this pizza.
So when tracking the history of pizza we really have to figure out where to start because if
your idea of pizza is just some flatbread with stuff on it then the ancient Greeks,
Egyptians and Indians had pizza, but I don't consider naan with some oil on it pizza.
In the 6th century BC Persian soldiers under Darius the Great baked
flatbread on their shields and put cheese and dates on top
Closer, but pizza?
I mean they didn't call it pizza, and frankly if you're going to call that pizza then you have to
call pancakes that have syrup and berries on it pizza, and then where do you draw the line?
Is tostada a pizza?
No I don't think so.
Well then when does pizza become a thing?
Well the very first mention of pizza using the word pizza comes from 997 in Gaeta Italy.
It was found in a contract between Bernardo the son of Duke Marino II
and the Bishop of Gaeta and basically if Bernardo wanted to use the Bishop's mill then,
"Every year on Christmas Day... you and your heirs must pay us duodecim pizze
(twelve pizzas)... and similarly twelve pizzas and a couple of chickens
on the day of holy Easter of resurrection."
So even before our papal pizza today, Bishops were eating it. Very popular dish amongst the clergy.
Now the first recipe for something called pizza comes from 1524 in the Manuscritto Lucano,
and then some years later in 1570 we have five
pizza recipes in Bartolomeo Scappi's Opera which we are making one of today.
Scappi is also the first mention of that link between Naples and pizza.
"To prepare a tourte with various ingredients, called pizza by Neapolitans."
Though some of the ingredients include pine nuts, dates, figs,
raisins, and cinnamon. None of which are available at Domino's, maybe at Papa John's.
Though now that connection between Naples and pizza is very important
because Naples is often credited with being the birthplace of what we know as pizza today,
but it was not papal pizza like we are making today,
it is poor people pizza. It was it was a food for the poor or the Lazzaroni as Alexandre Dumas said.
And he didn't seem to hold them in high regard but the pizza that they were eating
sounds a lot more like what we would know as pizza today.
"The lazzarona usually only eats two things:
pizza and watermelon... pizza is round in shape, and is kneaded from the same dough as bread.
It comes in different widths, depending on the price. A two-farthing pizza is enough for a man;
a two penny should fill a whole family. The pizza is with oil,
the pizza is with bacon, the pizza is with lard,
the pizza is with cheese, the pizza is with tomatoes, the pizza is with small
fish." The word pizza has lost all meaning at this point in the video. Now he mentions
cheese and tomatoes, And those I would think are pretty important to pizza today.
And for more on the amazing history of tomatoes specifically
you should watch this video up here. I'll put it in the description
on the history of tomatoes aka the badass name wolf peach. It's a really good video.
Now the Lazzarone mostly ate these pizzas on
weekdays as they saved up their money so they could buy macaroni on Sundays,
though macaroni did not necessarily look like macaroni as we think of it.
And if you still had trouble saving up enough then you could get a discount pizza
if you were fine with day old pizza which I usually am.
Dumas even says, "There are week-old pizzas for those with small purses;
these can, if not pleasantly, at least advantageously,
replace seafood biscuits." Week old pizza? Before refrigerators?
The cheese is old and moldy.
I'm guessing it was one of these pizzas that prompted Samuel Morris the inventor
of the telegraph to describe pizza as "A species of most nauseating cake...
covered over with slices of pomodoro or tomatoes,
and sprinkled with little fish and black pepper and I know not what other ingredients,
it all together looks like a piece of bread that had been taken reeking out
of the sewer." That was probably just a piece of Chicago style deep dish. Ooh fighting words!
Now in general the pizza was not looked on with high regard,
and Dumas even says, "You can't eat a pizza without risking suffocation."
Was Dumas a drama queen or severely gluten intolerant? You decide.
Though I do wonder if Dumas actually mixed up this week old pizza with pizza Aotto
which was basically you got fresh pizza today but you had to pay for
it eight days later like layaway, or the payday lenders of 19th century Naples.
Now these pizzas tended to be small kind of personal
sized pizzas that were sold on the streets by street vendors.
Though there were some more reputable locations where you could eat pizza
including a tavern that was founded in the 18th century called Pizzeria
di Pietro e basta cosi which translates roughly to the most
stereotypically Italian sounding name ever Peter's Pizza Place, and that's enough. How great is that.
And it is in this shop later renamed Pizzeria Brandi
where we get pizza's most famous origin story.
It's probably well- it's definitely not completely true, it's probably somewhat true but here it is.
In 1889 Umberto I King of a recently unified Italy
and his wife Queen Margherita decided to branch out from the French cuisine of the palace,
and headed to Naples where they commissioned Rafael Esposito,
the then owner of Pizzeria Brandi to make three pizzas:
one with lard, one with fish, and one with basil, tomato, and fresh mozzarella.
Queen Margherita tried the first pizza and said
this pizza is too fatty. She tried the second pizza and said this pizza is too fishy.
Finally she tried the third pizza, the one with mozzarella,
tomato, and basil and she said this pizza is just right,
and thus was born the pizza Margherita. It even had the three colori, or colors, of the italian
flag: green basil, white mozzarella and red tomatoes. Again probably not entirely true,
well that's definitely not entirely true, but there might be some truth to it, but Naples
says that this is how it happened and the story is just too good not to accept without question, but
even with the Queen on board. Pizza still stayed a food of the poor and thank god it did because
those were the people who brought it to America. In the late 19th and early 20th century
poor Italian immigrants brought pizza to the streets of New York City.
Now pizza was being sold all over the streets of New York especially in Little Italy but
the first place that is credited with the first pizza because they went and got a license,
that's why, is called Lombardi's on Spring and Mott street in Little Italy,
and that is just one block from my first New York apartment.
It was so small, great area, but it was so small that my
bedroom door could not open all the way because I had a twin bed in there, and that got in the way.
So could you really call it a bedroom if it can't fit a bed, hm?
But pizza still really hadn't taken off outside of the Italian American community. For that
we would have to go to war.
When our brave boys returned home from fighting in Italy in WW2
they brought back a love of Italian food, and one of those Italian foods was pizza.
It was the perfect food for the new suburban lifestyle. It could be made at home
or it could be made for delivery and pizza places started popping up in cities all over the country.
In 1958 Pizza Hut opened. Pizza the Hutt!
And in 1960 Tom and James Monaghan bought the Michigan pizzeria Dominic's
and changed the name to Domino's.
This is also when frozen pizza was becoming popular, and I do love a frozen pizza. To this day
I cannot do Halloween- Halloween has to start with a Red Baron pizza. I do not know why,
but every Halloween I eat myself an entire Red Baron pizza all by myself,
just as I did when I was a little kid.
I was a chubby kid. I was a big kid. I wore husky pants but
man I do love a Red Baron pizza.I only do it once a year now though.
What's interesting is that back in Old Italy
pizza still hadn't really gotten out of Naples, and a few other places like Sicily
but when American tourists started showing up in Italy and they wanted pizza in Pisa
the other parts of Italy had to step up and start making their own kinds of pizza,
and it didn't go great at first. Some of the country was so bad at mimicking Neapolitan pizza
that the city of Naples founded AVPN, or the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana
which laid the groundwork for what makes pizza, pizza. But I think that it was
a little too late. The cat was already out of the bag because here in America
we were making sushi pizza and pizza bagels, and we had really done whatever we want with pizza.
Heck you could even come over to my house later tonight,
and have yourself a pizza with rose water and sugar, because
I'm pretty sure my pizza's about done. S So in an hour and 15 minutes open up the oven
and quickly brush on the rose water and sprinkle with sugar. Then let it bake for another 15
minutes or until it's baked all the way through, and then your papal pizza is ready to eat.
And here we are Scappi's pizza from the Italian Renaissance. Now this is a real pizza work. So
it smells amazing. I mean it smells like fresh-
it kind of smells like croissants. I let it cool, you need to let it cool before you cut into it,
because the butter needs- so much butter. Here we go. Let's give this a- let's give
this a taste. I don't think it- maybe it over rose or i'm not sure. It's gonna be fine.
Hmm. Hm!
That's delicious.
It's not pizza. xD
I mean that's fantastic. The rose is so subtle.
Let me just taste some of the top. The rose is so subtle.
There on the top.
That's wonderful. Wow I would make it thinner next time. I do like a half of my recipe. I really- I
really think that that's probably the way to go. This is nice, but oh my god. It's so much bread.
You know we're not gonna eat this but is it pizza? I mean it's called pizza, but
I think it would be like if somebody said hey are you a doctor, and I said yes I'm a doctor,
and then they found out I'm a doctor of you know like the oboe performance or something like that.
I mean yeah I'm a doctor but "not a doctor" by the way, I'm not a doctor of anything. So that's just
a story but this is some really good pizza, just you know don't tell your friends that it's pizza.
They'll think you're crazy. Instead tell them this is pizza which is also delicious, and this
is what i'm going to have for dinner tonight. I'll see you next time on Tasting History.
*chomp
That's pizza.
That's Pizza!