[HN Gopher] A proto-pizza emerges from a fresco on a Pompeii wall
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A proto-pizza emerges from a fresco on a Pompeii wall
Author : JumpCrisscross
Score : 275 points
Date : 2023-06-28 04:41 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pompeiisites.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (pompeiisites.org)
| MoSattler wrote:
| For me, it's astounding to witness such vibrant and colorful
| imagery from 2000 years ago. It forges an unexpected, yet
| profound, sense of connection to the past.
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing. What "technology" (chemicals)
| did they use to paint that? It's crazy that has such level of
| detail after 2k years.
| Daub wrote:
| The painting was a fresco. There are a few ways to make
| frescos but the one employed here was likely buono fresco:
| colored pigment applied directly to wet plaster. In this way
| the painting becomes a physical part of the wall. In
| contrast, an oil painting is typically a thin layer of paint
| applied on top of another layer of paint on top of fabric.
|
| Though this way of painting is ridiculously long lived, it is
| very difficult to work with. The plaster dries so quickly
| that the painting has to be done is small chunks, like a
| jigsaw puzzle. There is also very little room for correction.
| _giorgio_ wrote:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03054.
| ..
|
| " natural earths, minerals and rare artificial pigments.
| Paintings are made up of thin paint layers (0.01-0.10 mm
| thick) strongly adhering to the underlying preparation
| layer."
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13861.
| ..
|
| " To obtain the green color, green earths and malachite were
| used, together with mixture of Egyptian blue and yellow
| ochre."
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Me too. I think when we think about times before 100 AD, we
| think of unpainted marble, columns, and those ancient red-and-
| black Greek vases. We don't really consider that their painters
| also knew about, y'know, realistic portraits and shading and
| that sort of thing, but they absolutely knew how to do those
| things: https://joyofmuseums.com/museums/europe/italy-
| museums/naples...
| troad wrote:
| If you ever get the chance, I would highly recommend a visit to
| the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. There are many
| more vibrant images from Pompeii and Herculaneum preserved
| there. It's striking how lively some of the preserved images
| are. They really don't feel like they are over two thousand
| years old, and seeing them seriously deepened my appreciation
| for the civilisation of ancient Rome. It's a unique experience.
|
| (I would advise trying to read up a little in advance though.
| The labels in the museum are rather self-indulgent. There's
| reams of text about how various pieces came to be in the
| collection, and quite little about what the piece is /
| represents.)
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's amazing how delicious painted food can look 2000+ years
| later...
| afn wrote:
| Whoa, take it easy, Cookie Monster!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9PenLqJyHU
| speeder wrote:
| The word Pizza is related to the word Pitta (some people argue is
| same word even).
|
| Lots of people been eating round flat bread with toppings around
| the Mediterranean for a very long time now.
|
| One of the theories of the modern Pizza origin is that it was
| just a Pizza like any other (or Pitta...) until a certain
| restaurant in Naples invented the version with tomato sauce (the
| Marinara Pizza). And modern Pizza are just variations of the dish
| of that restaurant.
|
| By the way, that restaurant still exists, or so people claim.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antica_Pizzeria_Port'Alba
| anonu wrote:
| If pitta refers to pita bread, as in the round flatbread
| originating in the middle east, I can tell you the word is not
| used in Arabic.
| detourdog wrote:
| That is pretty interesting. Khobz appears to be the word in
| the Arab speaking world. (can't think of a good name for this
| group).
|
| A thing as basic as a bread staple to have different names in
| the same region seems very significant.
|
| Does anyone have any insight into this? I'm definitely going
| to try to dig deeper.
|
| I used to go to a "pizza" restaurant in Jaffa. It claimed to
| be the oldest pizza restaurant. It has high lip edges and
| eggs... I think it was like shakuka on a type of pita. I wish
| I could remember what they called it.
| toyg wrote:
| _> A thing as basic as a bread staple to have different
| names in the same region seems very significant._
|
| Nah. It's just the result of a long history. In Italy,
| different towns can call the same specialties with
| completely different names (crescentina / gnocco fritto,
| etc...), often simply out of spite or because of some long-
| forgotten feud.
|
| 40 years ago, in Rome a pizza was often called a "torta",
| which is the word the rest of Italy uses for sweet cakes.
| detourdog wrote:
| I would think that also but I'm hung up on some details.
|
| Pita is a pretty basic word for a human staple. Large
| regional areas use a very similar word for millenniums.
| One culture doesn't and is just as interspersed as
| through time and space as the others.
|
| In fact they share many texts.
|
| I think this is different than the examples you provided.
|
| I would describe some pizza's in Berkshire Country as a
| Torte.
| boulos wrote:
| Right, the closest word is the turkic "pide" which isn't
| Arabic but is from the Aramaic for bread
| (https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/pide)
| __void wrote:
| or from 'pinsa' (from the Latin verb 'pinsere' or from the verb
| 'pansere', 'to pound'), or from the Greek dish plakous or from
| the piada (or piadina), mentioned in Virgil's Aeneid
|
| frankly speaking, I don't think we can find the true origin of
| this dish, it's like looking for the inventor of the wheel or
| the three-year rotation
|
| either way, the history of modern pizza in northern Italy is
| truly fascinating (and controversial)[1]
|
| [1] https://www.vanillamagazine.it/le-pizzerie-furono-
| sconosciut...
| riffraff wrote:
| In Italy there's a bunch of things called "pizza" which are not
| round flat bread.
|
| Consider the pizza di Pasqua (dough with liquor, chocolate,
| cheese, +20cm tall), pizza alla pala (1.5m long), pizza
| sbattuta (sponge cake), pizza in teglia (rectangular and cut in
| square slices), and many more.
|
| Could be related to pita, and I would not argue every culture
| on earth made flat round dough and put stuff on it, but it's a
| very large family.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_di_Pasqua
|
| https://www.tasteatlas.com/pizza-alla-pala
|
| https://blog.giallozafferano.it/inventaricette/pizza-sbattut...
| carlob wrote:
| I know there are several versions of Pizza di Pasqua, but the
| one I'm more familiar with (and the one you link to) is made
| with cheese and is to be eaten on Easter breakfast with
| salami.
| pizza234 wrote:
| > In Italy there's a bunch of things called "pizza" which are
| not round flat bread.
|
| True, although the canonical/widespread pizza is the
| round/flat one.
|
| I've never heard of "Pizza di Pasqua" and "Pizza sbattuta" in
| Italy (I don't doubt they exist, but they must be very
| uncommon).
|
| Pizza in teglia is common, at least in certain parts of
| Italy; I believe it's generally sold in bakeries rather than
| in pizzerias (restaurants).
|
| Pizza alla pala is not so common in Italy, at least in
| restaurants (not that I remember). In other countries is very
| common in takeaways.
|
| There's also a type of pizza that is round but thick, and
| with lower-quality toppings. I can't find any reference to
| it; it's somewhat widespread over Italy, but considered a
| "lesser pizza" :)
| __void wrote:
| > There's also a type of pizza that is round but thick,
|
| do you mean 'pizzetta'?
| pvdoom wrote:
| If you look at historical sources, what is called pizza, in
| i.e. Scampi's "Opera Nova" is more of a pie, that may be
| open or closed, sweet or savoury, and may not even have
| flour dough, but say almond flour
| asimpletune wrote:
| I just want to add this because i think it's interesting,
| but the word pasqua (Easter) actually comes from Passover.
| Also Passover in Italian is Pasqua ebraica.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Passover in Italian is Pasqua ebraica_
|
| Funny, in Romanian, Pasqua(spelled Pasca) is a sweet
| bread Easter dish.
| OJFord wrote:
| Pizza inferiore that you allude to without reference - this
| is the one often often found entombed in a cardboard box?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| And delivered in 30 minutes or your next one is free?
| detourdog wrote:
| In Berkshire County Massachusetts
| [deleted]
| leipert wrote:
| Etymology wise it's a thing and loads of cultures around the
| Mediterranean have some similar words:
| https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/pita#Ancient_Greek
| pb060 wrote:
| > In Italy there's a bunch of things called "pizza" which are
| not round flat bread.
|
| In certain regions of Southern Italy, the word 'pizza' also
| refers to a part of the male anatomy which is not flat.
|
| Edit: feels good to be downvoted by people with socially
| acceptable sense of humor
| adql wrote:
| Is "I will put my pizza in your oven" also a joke there ?
| hanslub42 wrote:
| I have in front of me a reprint of Pellegrino Artusi's famous
| "la Scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene" (1891). It
| has a recipe for "Pizza alla napoletana" (recipe #609) which
| is a shortcrust filled with a cream of "ricotta, sweet
| almonds, sugar, lemon peel or vanilla, milk", about which he
| comments "... a me sembra che questo riesca un dolce di gusto
| squisito" - a _dessert_ of exquisite taste.
|
| He mentions two other pizze: "Pizza a libretti" and "Pizza
| gravida", both of them sweet. "Our" pizza is completely
| absent.
|
| It is intriguing that the above 19th century "pizza" recipe
| is called _alla napoletana_ given that Wikipedia states that
| "... modern pizza evolved from similar flatbread dishes in
| Naples, Italy, in the 18th or early 19th century."
| bee_rider wrote:
| Dessert pizza. The past truly is a foreign country.
|
| Although I guess fry dough is basically dessert pizza if
| you think about it.
| borbulon wrote:
| isn't a proto-pizza just foccacia with some stuff on top?
| hinkley wrote:
| I've had foccacia "pizza" and it didn't look anything like
| this.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I'm reading Nathan Myhrvold's excellent Book Modernist Pizza at
| the moment: https://modernistcuisine.com/books/modernist-pizza/
|
| The book along with its excellent predecessor Modernist Bread and
| the companion podcasts to both do a great job of both
| illustrating the history of bread and pizza but also debunking a
| lot of popular myths about their origin.
|
| A lot of pizza (and bread for that matter) traditions and styles
| are much more recent than you might think. I'd highly recommend
| the volumes to anyone curious about the topic.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| That's not too surprising, b/c you need massive amounts of
| cheese to make a pizza. This means a lot of milk and a lot of
| rennet. It just seems it'd be really extravagant in premodern
| times.
|
| And I think that goes for a lot of cuisine. While in China I
| learned that actually a lot of Chinese cuisine is quite recent
| - and yet it's really central to regional identity and has a
| interesting timeless quality to it. For instance people will
| rarely get experimental or make significant modification to the
| original recipe (the idea of "fusion food" is mostly absent
| outside of bougie areas)
|
| I've heard similar things about Korean food - a lot is very
| recent and meat heavy. Go not too far back in time and people
| rarely ate meat at all.
|
| In Taiwan a lot of the "traditional food" is based around beef
| - but traditional/elderly Chinese would normally refuse to eat
| beef entirely - so it must be a product of the past few
| decades.
|
| I'm skeptical anything deep-fried goes back too far as well
| since it's a colossal waste of oil
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| On the subject of "massive amounts of cheese being really
| extravagant in premodern times", the Roman army ate a lot of
| "hard tack" cheese
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecorino_Romano because it was
| durable and energy-dense. No doubt it was expensive in the
| way that the military often is, and did not make up all of
| the rations.
|
| On the subject of "how much cheese do you need to make a
| pizza" - in traditional styles, not all that much really. And
| with even less, just a sprinkling, it would still be
| recognisably the same dish.
| contingencies wrote:
| On the subject of food history... Taiwanese food is so recent
| as to be a study in nothing at all. Chinese did not invent
| steamed buns (they came from the Ottomans) and are the only
| civilization known to have lost the recipe for baklava. Ramen
| is Chinese and super modern and derives from US dumping wheat
| on postwar Japan as a staple. Pasta was exceptionally rare
| and reserved for the aristocrats in pre-modern Italy. Which
| begs the question: what did they eat? Probably meat, fish,
| bread, fruit and rice. Finally, rice noodles were popularised
| in Thailand by political machinations as a means to stave off
| hunger by preserving rice stocks.
| ragazzina wrote:
| > Chinese (...) are the only civilization known to have
| lost the recipe for baklava
|
| What does this mean?
| YChacker100 wrote:
| I wonder what the first pizza would've tasted like...
| lynx23 wrote:
| I once bought a pizza at a Pizzahut in Quito, Ecuador. I am
| pretty sure it tasted similar to the "first pizza"... I forget
| how the seasoning is called, but people in Ecuador put a
| strange herb on almost every food which I never really got the
| hang of, despite trying for at least 2 months. But that pizza
| was the worst experience, because I sort of expected oregano.
| Nope, nothing resembling what I knew as a pizza, so might as
| well have been the first pizza ever :-)
| lapama wrote:
| What do you mean proto-pizza? The whole Mediterranean and MENA
| regions are full of similar stuff. Why to look at it from our
| westerner modern mindset?
| [deleted]
| verisimi wrote:
| "This submission has been brought to you by the pizza marketing
| board, proud to promote tasty pizzas!"
| zetazzed wrote:
| For those interested in food and history, I would definitely
| recommend the Tasting History series on YouTube. Every episode,
| Max Miller makes a dish from a (sometimes vague) old recipe and
| does a short, relevant history lesson. E.g. he covers 500 year
| old proto-pizza here
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6XvMKdD2tY&t=12s), medieval
| trenchers here
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6XvMKdD2tY&t=12s), and lots of
| Roman recipes.
|
| For something more academic, Ken Albala has a whole course on the
| cultural history of food here: https://www.wondrium.com/food-a-
| cultural-culinary-history
|
| I'm not connected to either - they are both just great sources of
| fun that will make you think about food differently.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| As a fellow fan I'll second that recommendation, and add the
| Townsends to the mix (https://www.youtube.com/@townsends). I
| got into them before Tasting History was around, and I feel
| like they complement each other in a lot of ways. The Townsend
| stuff also has a wonderful "living history" approach with their
| historical homestead, and it's always incredibly informative.
|
| Like you I'm not affiliated with any of this, it's just a
| desire to get other people into something I love.
| sumobob2112 wrote:
| Also a shoutout if you like Tasting History, he just put out
| his first cookbook, it is a fascinating read and great recipes
| lordnacho wrote:
| One thing that struck me was that this image seems to be done in
| perspective? I thought that wasn't a thing that was done until
| much later?
| nunuvit wrote:
| Did you scroll down and see the painting of the animal skull
| next to it? It looks 3D.
| Inityx wrote:
| > Systematic attempts to evolve a system of perspective are
| usually considered to have begun around the fifth century BC in
| the art of ancient Greece, as part of a developing interest in
| illusionism allied to theatrical scenery.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_(graphical)
| lurkmurk wrote:
| I was also surprised when I first saw a huge Roman fresco in
| person. It seems that the medieval times were indeed the dark
| times. I get the historical reasons and all that but it's
| almost laughable looking at this art in museums.
| Balgair wrote:
| Not a Historian here, but I've heard that looking at Medieval
| art is more akin to looking at Anime art. Yes, the art is
| more stylized and cartoonish, but so are many art forms of
| today. I'm not certain of this, but I believe we have
| examples of 'classical'/realistic paintings from the medieval
| period/places alongside the stylized/cartoonish pictures too.
| As in, medieval art was a fad. Again, not a historian,
| someone please correct me!
| redroyal wrote:
| Is pizza an innovation so meaningful we need to fight over who
| invented it? It's flat bread with food on top heated. I'm sure
| it's been a thing since day 2 of bread
| causality0 wrote:
| Every time I see one of these I'm amazed at their skill, since
| high school gives students the impression nothing but simplistic
| medieval doodles existed until the rennaisance. It makes me
| wonder why museums reconstruct painted statuary with flat pastels
| like they were painted by a four year old.
| thessa wrote:
| I always enjoyed the story of early proto pizza appearing in
| Virgil's Aeneid represented as the people so hungry they eat
| their plates.
|
| (Dupe comment on dupe submission)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36498783
| nologic01 wrote:
| Looks like a pineapple pizza
| mrtksn wrote:
| Back in the day the civilisation was not advanced enough to
| know better. A similar mistake the Romans made by using lead
| pipes for drinking water.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Came here to post the same comment but you beat me to it :-)
|
| And don't forget that the inventor/father of the Hawaiian pizza
| (my favorite) was a Greek Canadian ;-)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_pizza
| mav88 wrote:
| >From a passage of Virgil's Aeneid, (book VII, v.128 sgg.) it is
| possible to understand the position of fruits and other products
| of the fields, on sacrificial breads that function as "tables".
| This reminds us of the moment in which the Trojan heroes who had
| finished their meal of fruits, chose to eat the bread which they
| had used as containers (tables). This showed the realisation of
| the Virgilian Epos, where a prophecy had stated that the Trojans
| would find a new homeland when they "arrived on unknown beaches,
| finished all the food," and their hunger made them "devour also
| the tables".
|
| Once upon a time, I did the Aeneid in the original and we came
| across this meaning of the word 'mensa' as a bread base which was
| weird because it was the very first Latin word we had all
| learned: table. And then immediately afterwards in the text one
| of the warriors makes the joke that they're so hungry they're
| eating their tables as well. It still blows my mind that I could
| understand a pun written thousands of years ago and find it
| amusing.
| jessehattabaugh wrote:
| > the position of fruits and other products of the fields, on
| sacrificial breads
|
| So you're saying pineapple _is_ in fact a pizza topping!
| slim wrote:
| tomato is a fruit
| jalk wrote:
| Tomatoes comes from South America so couldn't have been on
| the Pompeii pizza
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| You didn't read the article at all, didn't you? Yet here
| you are commenting like an expert.
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| The very first sentence: Whilst it looks like a pizza,
| this image from a Pompeian painting from 2000 years ago
| obviously can't be, since some of the most characteristic
| ingredients are missing, namely tomatoes and mozzarella.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I think they were saying that the argument "fruit doesn't
| belong on pizza, thus pineapples don't belong on pizza"
| is invalid because most people agree that tomatoes go on
| pizza, and tomatoes are biologically fruits.
| corvuscorvid wrote:
| ...and ketchup is a jam
| bee_rider wrote:
| If we are to accept the madness of treating tomato as a
| fruit culinarily (although, your comment makes a strong
| argument for not doing so), would it be a jam, jelly,
| or...?
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| How many jams, jellies, marmalades, or confitures do you
| know of that contain vinegar, savory spices, and salt? In
| a recipe calling for jam, would you replace it with
| ketchup?
| boulos wrote:
| There are several chutneys that include vinegar. They
| aren't in the same category as you listed, but the parent
| included an ellipsis, which I'll include chutney under.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Some "fruit preserves" also use vinegars and other acids.
| Which leads to the Venn diagrams of the definitions of
| pickles, chutneys, and preserves (fruit) all have a
| massive overlap and ketchup is right there in the middle
| as pickled tomatoes, tomato chutney, or tomato preserve
| depending on how much you want to classify it is a fruit,
| vegetable, or "it doesn't matter". (I would at least
| argue that "preserve" is the more accurate fruit term
| over jam or jelly.)
| nameless_prole wrote:
| [dead]
| yeahwhatever10 wrote:
| Ketchup is my jam.
| datavirtue wrote:
| It's not a pizza. Period.
| dangerboysteve wrote:
| well, that's just crazy talk.
| twoodfin wrote:
| This reminds me of modern Ethiopian dining with injera.
| h2odragon wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trencher_(tableware)
| dugite-code wrote:
| > Whilst it looks like a pizza, this image from a Pompeian
| painting from 2000 years ago obviously can't be, since some of
| the most characteristic ingredients are missing, namely tomatoes
| and mozzarella.
|
| There are more types of pizza than the now globally common
| tomatoes and mozzarella pizza. Heck olive oil and garlic pizza is
| thing, unless there is more specifics regarding the origins of
| pizza available it's possible it is indeed just a pizza.
| jrmg wrote:
| They'd have to be missing tomatoes - they were unknown in
| Europe during Roman times because they're native to the
| Americas. Tomato usage in Italian food is _relatively_ recent.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_crops
| dash2 wrote:
| What's weird is on the right of the picture, there is what
| looks like a slice of tomato? What else could it be?
| INTPenis wrote:
| The article says pomegranate.
| sph wrote:
| There's a legend below the picture. Do you mean cacao
| beans?
| dugite-code wrote:
| Yes as I said, there are more pizza's than the now common
| Tomato and mozzarella combination we have today, Especially
| in Italy.
| cubefox wrote:
| Does something count as a Pizza when it doesn't even have
| tomato sauce?
| bjohnson225 wrote:
| Why wouldn't it? At least a third of the menu in most
| pizzeria's in Italy will be white pizza with no tomato
| sauce.
| cubefox wrote:
| Oh, that surprises me.
| bunga-bunga wrote:
| Commonly speaking you need either tomato sauce or
| mozzarella to call it a pizza. Without either one, it
| would be called "pizza pane" but that's basically
| flatbread and to be eaten as bread. Pretty rare to find a
| "pizza" without some sort of sauce to make it _wet._
| timeon wrote:
| Depends on ingredients but some do not go well with
| tomato sauce. For example pineapple[0] + blue cheese
| would be better on white base or no sauce at all than on
| tomato one.
|
| [0] Read it as pear or fig if you are Italian.
| Symbiote wrote:
| It has to, since tomatoes were not discovered by
| Europeans until the 16th century.
|
| Nowadays you can ask for white pizza.
| cubefox wrote:
| There is no rule saying "Pizza" has to have existed
| before the 16th century...
| gostsamo wrote:
| yes, you can do cuatro formagi or other white pizzas and
| they are pretty good.
| alberto_ol wrote:
| Italian ortography is not as bad as the english one, but
| nonetheless is sometimes illogical. We have a useless
| lettere 'q' which is pronounced like the the hard c. 'Q'
| is used only before 'u'. So there some words that are
| written with "qu" and other with "cu" only for
| etymologyical reasons. The number 4 is spelled 'quattro'.
| The pizza with the four cheeses is 'quattro formaggi'.
| jaclaz wrote:
| To be picky, the general rule is that q goes before u
| only if u is followed by another vowel (qui, quo, qua), c
| is used in the other cases, but - of course - there are a
| few exceptions, the most common being "cui".
| cubefox wrote:
| Okay, then it seems to be less the toppings than the
| "recipe ancestry" that determines what counts as Pizza.
| Otherwise _flammkuchen_ would also count:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammekueche
| timeon wrote:
| > "recipe ancestry"
|
| I think it is mostly about language. Pizza is loan word
| from Italian in German language in this case. So you may
| also say it other way around: Pizza counts as
| flammkuchen.
| cubefox wrote:
| But it doesn't! I haven't heard anyone label one as a
| type of the other.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| Yes, besides the toppings, for which there is no rule
| (there is pizza bianca without tomato, and there is pizza
| marina without cheese), I believe everybody agrees that
| pizza dough needs to be made with yeast or sourdough.
| Flammkuchen dough has neither.
| tpm wrote:
| Pizza bianca, white pizza:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_pizza
|
| There is also a relatively new series of Chef's Table:
| Pizza if you want to see some uncommon pizzas in a
| beautiful documentary.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Tomato usage in Italian food is _relatively_ recent.
|
| Italy as a country is VERY recent. There is no such thing as
| "Italian food", it used to be small estates in the peninsula
| for a very long time after the romans
| sph wrote:
| You know that you can have a shared culture even if you're
| not under the same flag.
|
| Italy the country might be young, but the Italian language,
| for example, has been around for 600+ years. The _Divine
| Comedy_ is from 1308.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I always chuckle when Italian-Americans refer to coming
| from "the old country". I know they mean "the country I was
| born in", but it sounds like Italy is older than the USA,
| when the USA is nearly a century older.
| dumpster_fire wrote:
| It looks like a round, wooden board being used as a sliced fruit
| platter to me.
| layer8 wrote:
| Yes. I have small wooden boards at home that look exactly like
| that, with a rounded edge.
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| At least it's not a fruitcake. Legend has it some of those
| survived the Dark Ages and are still being regularly regifted
| between family members.
| jameslk wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36494776
| MarvinYork wrote:
| Looks like a wooden cutting board to me tbh. A pizza wouldn't
| have those light reflexes, but oiled wood does.
| n1b0m wrote:
| Not pizza unless it has pineapple on it
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Isn't that picture better than what art historians imagine humans
| were doing anywhere on the planet?
| VVayneTracker wrote:
| If modern pizzas evolved from mini-pizzas, then how come mini-
| pizzas still exist?
| LesZedCB wrote:
| i will never be surprised by the transcendence of pizza
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Pizza is one of those things I can't believe someone "invented".
| Flat bread must have been the first kind of bread: you just mix
| flour and water and heat it. Put something on that flat bread and
| eat it together and you have a "pizza" as much as this fresco is
| a "pizza".
| netrus wrote:
| I am not aware of any traditional German dish that resembles a
| pizza - and we definitely have a tradition of bread making. So
| apparently it was not obvious to everyone.
| omnibrain wrote:
| Flammkuchen got already mentioned, but there is also
| "Dinnele/Dinnete/Dunnele". Both sweet and savory.
| gfaure wrote:
| What about Flammekueche?
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| Les Alsaciens m aimerait avoir son mot a dire.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Peut-etre il fallait ecrire en alsacien. :)
| b3orn wrote:
| Flammkuchen, from south western parts of Germany.
| twic wrote:
| There's a very old German word which mean some sort of baked
| flat thing:
|
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Etymological_Dictionary_of.
| ..
|
| But i haven't been able to find out if we know whether it was
| sweet or savoury, or anything else about it.
| mrtksn wrote:
| IMHO it's more like a case of getting invented in many places
| because it still needs to be invented and people are inventing
| it in very different forms.
|
| You have the French/German Flammkuchen, which is an amazingly
| good version that I don't know why it's not widely known.
|
| There's Lahmacun, which is the "Turkish Pizza" - a lot more
| spicy and thin version with minced meat with spice as topping.
| There's also Pide, which is thicker and closer to Italian pizza
| but the shape and the toppings are quite different(cubed meat,
| egg).
|
| Then there are the American pizza types like Chicago-style that
| look significantly different than the Italian ones.
|
| The one on the fresco looks like the Italian version.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Once in Basel I had a laugh, because a restaurant decided to
| translate Flammkuchen as "French Pizza" on their menus.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I'd like to promote British cuisine by including cheese on
| toast in your list.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese_on_toast
| amelius wrote:
| There's also:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melt_sandwich
| toyg wrote:
| _> British cuisine_
|
| No such thing has actually existed since at least WWI.
| xyzzy3000 wrote:
| Chicken Tikka Masala says otherwise.
| gm3dmo wrote:
| Fish and Chips has entered the chat.
| xyzzy3000 wrote:
| Although fish and chips predate the first world war by
| quite a bit.
|
| Let us not overlook the deep-fried Mars bar.
| ziftface wrote:
| I think lahmacun's origins are at least more complicated than
| just Turkish. Even the name means "meat with dough" in
| Arabic.
|
| As you said it was invented in many places though.
| sirfz wrote:
| Indeed, lahmacun (lahmajoon) clearly comes from Arabic
| "lahm b ajin" (meat with bread) which is just another
| variation of the Mankoushe (mnqwsh@) - a flat bread with
| different toppings such as thyme, cheese and the famous
| meat variation.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Sure, due to the history of the region(which is old as the
| history of humanity and religions) it's really not easy to
| attribute anything to any particular civilisation. It's
| almost a sport to argue over the origin of the dish between
| Greeks, Turks and Arabs.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| > you just mix flour and water and heat it
|
| Presumably though the domestication of wheat had a symbiotic
| relationship with bread making. The (ancestral) wheat that
| exists today is like bread-powder when it is milled, but it was
| probably bred for that purpose (no pun intended). So I'm not
| sure we can be confident what the first breads were like, made
| with whatever pre-wheat grasses they had at the time. Perhaps
| it required other ingredients at first before those aspects
| were "automated" into the grass itself, etc
| eru wrote:
| You can make something like bread with lots of different
| grains, not just wheat.
|
| However, if you eg want to make a 100% rye bread, you really
| have to make it a sourdough, because otherwise the chemistry
| doesn't work out.
| lisper wrote:
| Aha! So that's why a true rye bread tastes so good!
| OJFord wrote:
| That doesn't make sense to me, unless you mean the 'normal'
| instant yeasts supermarkets sell only work with wheat? If
| yeast from natural exposure would work then surely one of
| the plethora commercial yeasts (or marketed for homebrew)
| would do the trick?
| moritz wrote:
| You _can_ use commercial yeast, but it will never be as
| light as with sourdough fermentation, but very dense and
| "soggy".
|
| There are more factors at play here but the tldr is that,
| other than wheat, rye flour contains a very high level of
| amylase, an enzyme that breaks starches into sugars.
| Amylase prevents bread from rising, and rye contains so
| much of it that it stays active even with the high
| temperatures of baking. Add that to the fact that rye has
| very little gluten to hold up the structure of the
| bread...
|
| That's where sourdough comes into play. The acids
| produced during a slow fermentation slow down the
| reaction of amylase, giving you a lighter bread. For a
| good rye bread, I ferment for over 24h in three steps.
| OJFord wrote:
| Is that a lot? I ferment my regular wheat bread for over
| 24h. (Started some off this morning as it happens, will
| likely bake it tomorrow evening.)
| [deleted]
| datavirtue wrote:
| Any self-reapecting pizzeria will cold ferment for three
| days before attempting to make pizzas with it.
| OJFord wrote:
| I think/thought this thread had devolved into 'regular'
| loaf bread - indeed my pizza dough spends at least a day
| in the fridge after a slightly shorter time 'bulk'
| outside.
|
| Interesting you say that though, because I find three
| days about the limit, starts to really over-ferment,
| becoming really 'pockety', even at refrigeration
| temperatures. I suppose if I did it all in there as you
| imply, no fermentation time at room temp. at all, that
| might be better?
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Flat bread must have been the first kind of bread: you just
| mix flour and water and heat it.
|
| And keep some "old dough" for starting the next batch. The
| general concept of a "sourdough starter" arises from that. This
| was pretty much the only form of bread yeast until 1850 or so
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker%27s_yeast#History
|
| And have a look at the wood-fired bead ovens in Pompeii.
| They're quite similar to the Pizza ovens down the road in
| Napoli. It's likely that the Romans made similar dishes:
| flatbread with cheese, meat, sauce and herbs baked on top.
|
| But not tomatoes yet, until 1600s or later, after the Columbian
| exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange
| idontwantthis wrote:
| > And keep some "old dough" for starting the next batch.
|
| It wouldn't even need to rise. Just heat dough and you'll
| have something you can put other food on top of and eat the
| whole thing.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| But also the technique of leavening using natural yeast has
| been known for thousands of years; it pre-dates the Romans,
| who definitely used it in their regular bread.
|
| I'd say that running a bakery under those conditions: i.e.
| would always be yeast around and there is no refrigeration,
| so for any given dough it's a question of when, not if, a
| given piece of dough will start to rise.
| datavirtue wrote:
| You will also have a brick in your colon. Not good advice.
| timeon wrote:
| > But not tomatoes yet
|
| Pineapple about same time.
| prox wrote:
| Pompeii had snackbars as well. People bought their food on
| the street.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/26/exceptionally-.
| ..
|
| In some districts in Rome, they had large apartment blocks
| (insualae) several levels high, and fire was forbidden, so
| people had to buy food on the streets.
|
| From wiki: The insulae could be built up to nine storeys,
| before Augustus introduced a height limit of about 68 feet.
| Later, this was reduced further, to about 58 feet
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| Spiced flatbreads of the middle east are pretty damn good.
|
| I think enough people, early enough, tried every combination of
| tasty things on bread. Oil and vinegar with bread were probably
| found thousands of years ago.
|
| Tomato and corn don't arrive in the Old World until the early
| 16th c. Cheese goes back to 7th mill. BCE but was too expensive
| for most people.
| jojobas wrote:
| Well, someone had to do it first, therefore "invented". For the
| Greeks, bread was almost as separate from other foods as drinks
| were, so maybe the concept of baking that other food with dough
| is not that obvious.
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| It tastes so good so why isn't it available in multiple places
| then?
|
| Did some of the peoples involved in the parallel construction
| have their bloodlines wiped off the whiteboard of humanity? Or
| did they just get sick of eating it?
| _giorgio_ wrote:
| Exactly, and nowdays pizza is just a trendy "tray" used to
| serve some exotic and new ingredients.
| graypegg wrote:
| I'm not sure if we can call "pizza with toppings other than
| the strictly Italian defaults" as "trendy" anymore. Most
| Swedish pizzerias will happily make you a banana curry pizza,
| and it'll be the one of the standard topping options on the
| menu. Is it a trend if it's normal?
|
| I think we (humans) have been putting different things on
| bread for as long as we've had bread, like GP said.
| adql wrote:
| always has been
| delecti wrote:
| Once upon a time (only about 500 years ago), tomato was a new
| exotic ingredient in Italy too.
| toyg wrote:
| So exotic they called it "the gold fruit", _" pomo d'oro"_
| - gold being the seeds inside.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Pizza evolved in America. High gluten flour, tomatoes, and
| mozzarella. Don't confuse pizza with Italy.
|
| American wheat flour has been the key innovation. No one else
| has the gluten to hang. People import Americanized flour from
| Italy with Italian names and such but you can get better in the
| US. The lower gluten flours from Italy are good for the style
| they make over there...margherita (the Italianized version of
| pizza--very thin, high temp).
| [deleted]
| lostlogin wrote:
| Your idea makes sense but that recipe of yours doesn't sound
| like any pizza I want.
| activiation wrote:
| Good idea, i will patent it first though.
| paxys wrote:
| If you consider all flatbreads with toppings to be "pizza" then
| sure, that goes back basically forever.
|
| People however usually think of the origin of pizza to be when
| tomatoes were added to the equation, and that has a much more
| well-defined history (mainly due to the limited availability
| and spread of tomatoes in Europe and around the world).
| VVayneTracker wrote:
| If modern pizzas evolved from mini-pizzas, how come mini-pizzas
| still exist?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Upvoted simply because this has a _picture of the (cough) pizza._
|
| I heard about this on the radio during my commute. Obviously, no
| picture!
|
| Then, this story popped up in my Android news feed... But it had
| no picture of the item that the article was about. (Seriously,
| WTF is with news articles that don't include a picture of the
| thing they're writing about?)
|
| But this contains a _picture of the (cough) pizza._ I didn 't
| even bother reading the article. I just wanted to see the damn
| thing after hearing about it for 10 minutes on the radio and
| seeing another 1-million word article last night.
| pimpampum wrote:
| That looks way better than most pizzas today to be called a
| proto-pizza, I'd call Domino's and such degenerate-pizza. I mean,
| look at that airy crust.
| ekianjo wrote:
| The headline invents something that is not even in the article or
| even in the headline of the article, against all rules of HN
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I read this New York _Times_ piece [1] and "submit[ted] the
| original source" per HN Guidelines. It's a creative reading of
| the rules, but I think it works.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/world/europe/pizza-
| mural-...
| Pigalowda wrote:
| Your earlier comments regarding free speech and the recent
| Supreme Court ruling make more sense now. "Creative" indeed.
| hinkley wrote:
| And if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing's
| changed at all?
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