25 Nov It’s a pizza history!
How times are always changing for the world’s favourite food.
Have you been down to the pizza aisle recently? You’re sure of a big surprise.
Frozen pizza, fresh pizza, thin crust, stuffed crust, tiger crust, wood-fired, plant-based, meat feast, posh or dirty, savoury and even sweet, the Italian mamma or papa who first flipped a ball of pizza dough would be ‘stupefatto’ (blown away to you and me!).
Long a stalwart on the roll of Product of the Year winners, it’s the ultimate food of reinvention and shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. Dr Oetker, Chicago Town and Goodfella’s have shown innovations and all been previous winners.
The old argument about whether pineapple has a place on pizza (er…no) now belongs to the dark ages of dough. Looking at all the options now available, pizza purists have got a whole lot more to worry about.
The pizza mash-ups are among the most controversial. A ‘dirty burger pizza’ from one of the supermarkets earlier this year claimed to combine two of the nation’s favourite foods. Halloween pizzas, Valentine’s pizzas and even Christmas pizzas are getting a slice of fast-food action. We kid you not. Morrisons Chocolate Gingerbread, Caramelised Biscuit and Pigs in Blankets pizzas are available from the store’s pizza counter in the run up to 25th December.
But there’s also a much more serious side to this pizza diversity. Built upon the bastion of flour-fuelled indulgence, pizza has for decades been off limits to those who are intolerant to the gluten that is its essential ingredient. But that is all changing. A quick look at the Waitrose website shows seven different brands catering to gluten-free needs, while market leader for pizza takeaways, Dominos, has five options for those who are gluten intolerant.
Vegans are also now well-catered for, whether with non-dairy cheese or no-meat pepperoni, plant-based orders are flying off the shelves, White Rabbit Pizza has definitely caught our eye. Just a few months ago, PizzaExpress put its money where its diners’ mouths are and opened its very first Vegan restaurant in London serving only all-vegan items. Meanwhile Papa John’s has revealed that orders of its six plant-based pizzas from their stores almost doubled over the past two years.
Thought to have evolved from toppings simply being added to the top of focaccia bread, pizza has a long history of innovation, not least when the classic Italian thin-based pizza was given a makeover into the American deep-dish style in Chicago in the 1940s. Innovation may have started with the crust, but there’s not a single aspect of it that hasn’t been tinkered with, from the shape, to the toppings, and the type of cheese on top.
What’s great about pizza is that in its most simple, untinkered form it remains utterly delicious and completely loved. But equally, many innovations have also found their own tasty niche.
It’s the world’s favourite food and the king of innovation. Just hold off on the pineapple.