Pizza is one of those foods that is hard to mess up. Bread, sauce, cheese and toppings
is simply a winning combination so even if it's not great it's usually good enough to
eat. But there's still some hidden secrets about pizza out there that you should know
about. So on that note, let’s look at 10 untold truths about pizza.
Pizza Pi
What's better than Pizza? The answer seems to be pizza in paradise. Sasha and Tara Bouis
are the creators of Pizza Pi - a company you're going to wish you had thought of first. As
is often said, necessity is the mother of invention and the Bouis's are a great example
of this. One evening while sitting in their boat they got hungry for pizza and realized
there could be a big opportunity for them to fill a delicious niche. Mr. and Mrs. Bouis
decided to cash in their land jobs and move to the Caribbean to start their own pizza
business. But this isn't just any pizza business, this is one the couple launched from their
small boat. Pizza Pi's speciality is gluten free, made from scratch pies. Sasha worked
in New York City so he prefers to make thin, New York style crust. The Pizza Pi menu includes
such local favorites as Plain Jane, Mad Shroom, and Sweet Home. They use their 37 foot aluminum
boat to motor around the Virgin Islands delivering fresh, hot pizza to the masses. The bad news
is Pizza Pi does not dock to deliver pizzas so customer must have a boat to get their
pizza delivered to them on the beautiful blue Caribbean Sea. Maybe you didn't think you
could get good pizza in the Caribbean, but Pizza Pi shows that where there's a will there's
a way.
Pizza Cars
It seems like everyone wants to get in on the pizza action so now Domino’s have developed
partnerships with multiple companies currently producing self-driving cars. The companies
are working together to use driverless cars to deliver fresh, hot pizzas right to your
door. Although the cars would be packed with the latest technology including spacial algorithms
and radar, some cities are still hesitant to allow the driverless cars to roam freely
in their neighborhoods. It's a question of safety. For example, can these car accurately
"see" a pedestrian in a crosswalk regardless of the traffic conditions or the configuration
of the intersection? Apparently these are the types of questions that will have to be
answered before the driverless cars are allowed to deliver Domino’s pizza to your house.
Domino’s is optimistic that they'll have the cars on the road sometime in 2021. While
this might be good news for pizza, it seems like bad news for pizza delivery guys who
are trying to earn some good tips. So there's one more question that should be cleared up
before they hit the road, should customers feel obligated to tip the driverless cars?
Vegetable Or Pizza?
Does pizza qualify as a vegetable? There's tomato sauce on it but tomatoes are technically
a fruit even though we think of it as a vegetable. Many pizzas have vegetable toppings like peppers
and onions, but many do not. In an effort to make school lunches healthier there were
attempts to reform the rules that govern school lunch programs. Currently, the designation
of tomato sauce is as a vegetable, that counts towards a child's daily serving totals. Some
officials have also considered calling french fries vegetables as well. So while no, kids
aren't being fed pizza and french fries everyday, they are consistently on the menu, and often
being considered as a proper serving of vegetables, which seems a little misleading. One thing
is for sure, when the creators of the food pyramid chart first created it, they did not
have pizza or french fries in mind when they were trying to educate people about proper
nutrition.
I, Pizza
Science fiction stories have taught us that we really can't trust robots to not take over
the world and enslave humanity. Hopefully we can trust them to make our pizzas because
a number of restaurants and chains are gearing up to do just that. Zume Pizza is one example
of a company that plans to use hi-tech machines to knead dough, spread sauce and sprinkle
cheese and toppings on your favorite pies. Do you think they'll be able to spin the dough,
toss it in the air and catch it the way the traditional pizza chefs do? Let's hope so
or those kitchens could get messy. Anyway, Zume's CEO Julia Collins is going full steam
ahead in the San Fransisco Bay area and plans to serve the entire market. Ms. Collins and
others who plan to replace people with technology are confident that robots can do the job better
and with more consistency for better overall quality. This may or may not be true, but
would seem to only apply to mass produced pizzas anyway. When it comes to your local
mom and pop pizza shops hopefully you'll still be able to get a hand-crafted pizza, not one
made with cold metal robot hands - that want to take over the world.
Here's Pizza In Your Eye
Many of us love pizza, but apparently some of us don't know which pizza we love most
and have a little trouble deciding what kind to order. But fear not because Pizza Hut thinks
it has come up with a way to help these indecisive customers. The giant pizza chain has come
up with a system they call a "subconscious menu." This technology was developed by a
Swedish company called Tobii Technology. The key to the technology is its ability to track
the eye movements of customers as they look at pictures of pizza toppings. Based on what
the customers' eyes focus on Pizza Hut will be able to suggest a specific pizza to a customer
from among up to 4,896 possible combinations of toppings. That's a lot of choices considering
that the most popular pizzas are still your basic cheese and of course the king - pepperoni.
The software was said to be very accurate in choosing the right pizzas for customers
when tested in Pizza Huts in the United Kingdom. The chain is considering introducing the technology
into American restaurants. Do you need a computer program to tell you what kind of pizza to
eat?
Pizza Farm
We live in an era of technological specialization so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise
that some farms now specialize in specific foods. All pizzas are equal, but some pizzas
are more equal than others. There are now actual farms that devote all of their time
and energy to cultivating the ingredients that make up one of the world's favorite foods
- pizza! Government agencies, small farmers and industrial farming companies have all
had a role in creating these so-called pizza farms in places like Wisconsin. Some of the
farms are even circular in shape and divided into as many as twelve "slices" or wedges.
Each wedge is used to grow different ingredients, such as tomatoes or herbs, that could someday
find their way into one of your pizzas. These pizza farms even have a slice of pasture set
aside for the cows that produce the milk used to make the different cheeses used as pizza
toppings such as mozzarella. Some of these pizza farms have become fun destinations for
school trips where children can learn about the basics of farming and learn how the food
they eat makes the journey from the dirt to their tables. This isn't the only way to make
pizzas, but it sounds like a one good way and hopefully you'll see a pizza farm sprout
up near you.
Animals Love Pizza Too
Many people love pizza, but apparently we're not the only ones. All kinds of animals including
cats, dogs, squirrels and mice have been caught scarfing a slice of pizza when they get a
chance. Can you blame them? The combination of bread, meats and cheeses is a big temptation.
We can assume that not all of these animals have to snatch up what they can on the sly
as some pet owners are probably willing to share their pizza goodness with their animal
friends. There are stories about a New York City rodent called "Pizza Rat" by his admirers
who has become known for making off with pizza scraps whenever it can and taking them back
to his lair. I’m sure his pack was always very happy with his bounty. Some subway riders
claim to have footage of one of these pizza stand-offs. Similar sightings have been made
in other big pizza cities such as Chicago. Foxes are known as slippery and clever creatures
who will make off with chicken eggs and the like, but when pizza is available all bets
are off. A "Pizza Fox" has been known to slip into an unlocked car and steal slices from
unattended pizzas.
The Ultimate Pizza Box
This is either the ultimate pizza or the ultimate pizza box. No doubt many of you will decide
it’s both and who could argue with this? It's really two pizzas in one awesome package.
It's like a pizza mirage - seemingly too good to be true, but in this case it is. We've
all seen the salads with edible bowls, but this takes edible to a whole new level. For
years pizza chains have been trying different ways to stuff more toppings and more cheese
onto and into a pizza, but apparently the answer is to just make the box into a pizza!
This invention supposedly came to pass because of one of the enterprising co-owners of Vinnie's
Pizzeria in Brooklyn, NY. Sean Berthiaume was concerned by the mountain of empty pizza
boxes that he saw piling up because of all the pizza they sold so he decided to - yes,
you guessed it - make a pizza box into a pizza. It's a win, win situation because there is
less trash to fill the dumpsters and more pizza so what could be better than that? A
little experimentation and Mr. Berthiaume came up with his tasty pizza box. This pizza
and pizza box comes in a non edible standard bag instead of a traditional pizza box. So
if you prefer pizza to cardboard you'll want to give this pizza a try if you're ever in
Brooklyn.
Pizza 997 C.E.
Archeologists have found evidence that man baked bread as many as 7,000 years ago. Fresh
bread with toppings is a delicious food that stretches all the way back to that time. Pizza
experts seems to agree that one of the forerunners to pizza was an ancient Greek invention called
plakous. This food was topped with toppings like garlic, onions and cheese and is recognizable
as pizza without the sauce. Focaccia is flat bread treat that was popular with the Romans
- who may have borrowed this from their Greek neighbors. Many ancient cultures from around
the Mediterranean World have made claim to the original pizza, but the exact origins
are not completely clear. There is a reference to a food similar to pizza made in the classic
Roman epic by Virgil, The Aeneid. The word "pizza" first known to have appeared in the
historical record in 997 C.E. in a small town in central Italy called Gaeta. For a long
time pizza was mostly eaten by Italians and Italian immigrants to other countries. As
popular as pizza is today, this seems hard to believe, but it took the upheaval of World
War II to begin to internationalize pizza. American troops who had fought in Italy brought
their new found love for pizza back to America and the rest is tasty pizza history.
The Mathematics Of Pizza
Apparently, we're all fans of pizza - even mathematicians. In 2013 Eugenia Cheng decided
to put her formidable math skills to good use and work on a pizza formula. What did
she come up with? The ideal size of a pizza pie! She discovered that the key part of the
pizza for the purposes of her size formula is the crust. She worked on her formula with
the assumption that smaller slices have proportionately more toppings that larger slices. The second
part of her assumption is that the center of the pizza holds more toppings than the
edges. One of her conclusions based on the math was that thinner crusts make for tastier
pizza because thinner crust means a better toppings to crust ratio. All this is well
and good, but did her formula actually translate into pizza makers making better pizza for
pizza lovers? In at least one case it probably did, because the company that commissioned
her work modified its recipe. A pizza chain based in Britain called PizzaExpress took
her conclusions to heart and started making pizzas with crisper crusts with slightly more
dough and an increased amount of toppings. This sounds like pretty common sense improvements
that perhaps shouldn't have needed a mathematical study, but if the result is better pizza than
go for it!
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