where did the new york city pizza come from and why is it popular welcome to part two of
our series on new york pizza in case you missed part one that covers the basics of new york pizza
link to that is in the description below and while we're at it make sure you hit that like button
many of us know that pizza originated in italy specifically in naples pizza arrived in new york
city a hundred plus years ago when the italian immigrants were coming into the city by the
hundreds of thousands because pizza was food from home the italian immigrants made pizza for
themselves and their families so at first the only place to find pizza was in the homes of italian
immigrants there's a little bit of a debate on who really was the first to commercialize pizza both
in new york and the united states the problem i find with history is that it's a popularity
contest it's the popular story that gets handed down so my advice take history with a grain of
salt and anything on the internet for that matter and speaking of the internet the internet points
to a man named gennaro lombardi who had a grocery shop in little italy in manhattan this grocery
shop eventually sold pizza today there's still a lombardi's pizzeria on spring street in little
italy manhattan although it's not the original location some say his employee antonio totonno
pero was the reason lombardi sold pizza in the first place and internet stories also say that it
was totano who figured out that using coal versus wood like they do in naples made the oven hotter
and cooked the dough faster eventually titano also opened up a shop of his own in coney island which
is also still there today lombardi also had two other employees that opened up their own pizzerias
and the nephew of one of them also opened up their own business and from here some of
these original pizzerias added other locations and the pizza business in new york expanded
i consider three things that give new york pizza its popularity it's sold by the slice world war ii
and gas back then a lot of people were short on cash and at the same time workers were always
looking for a quick lunch it was only logical that pizza had started to be sold by the slice
selling by the slice made it cheap and popular among the workers then during world war ii the
american military was sent to fight in italy they were there long enough to acquire taste for pizza
so when they came back they were like yo i want some pizza thus a new market for pizza was born
which made pizza even more popular but the road to pizza fame doesn't stop here
here's where the story of how gas came into play so coal and wood ovens give pizza that signature
charred crust that you don't really get with gas ovens but most pizzerias in new york today use gas
which gives pizza a bit of a crunch but it's not really the same if you're a pizza connoisseur you
will definitely notice the difference but why is the gas more popular today when coal oven
pizzas make for a better taste we'll have to take a deep dive into this one so settle in coal ovens
often used a particular coal and most of this particular coal was mined in eastern pennsylvania
because the northeastern part of the united states has easy access to this particular coal
coal ovens were popularly used in this area not so much the western part of the united states because
shipping coal to the western half is pretty expensive so people found other ways to heat an
oven and gas became a crowd favorite over time people came to realize that gas ovens were way
cooler they were more efficient to use less fussy to maintain and best of all they were cheaper
in general in short the gas oven started to gain notoriety so back in new york city people started
using gas ovens as well before not a lot of people could have coal ovens because everything about
coal ovens was a lot of hassle from installing to cleaning to maintaining but not the gas oven
the gas oven was easier and cheaper to have to say the least the gas oven democratized pizza making
suddenly a lot of people including non-italian americans started to make pizza so now you have
the perfect storm of people wanting pizza and the ability of almost anyone to gain
pizza making powers because of the gas oven so what do you get pizza explosion in new york city
but coal ovens are still around today if you really want a coal oven pizza
but most pizzerias are going to have gas ovens it's really a matter of being old school artisanal
versus being efficient so we just finished part two of our three-part new york pizza series
hit subscribe and that notification bell so you won't miss part three where we talk about the
dollar pizza and until next time thank you so much for watching and happy new yorking