Food lovers across the country enjoy National Sausage Pizza Day on October 11th each year. Whether served on a thin or thick crust, sausage pizza goes well with other toppings, too. Don’t hesitate to add mushrooms and a variety of cheeses. What’s even better about sausage pizza are the different kinds of sausage to choose from.
- In ancient Greece, they covered their bread with oils, herbs, and cheese, which some attribute to the beginning of the pizza.
- In Byzantine Greek, the word was spelled “πίτα,” pita, meaning pie.
- The Romans developed a pastry with a sheet of dough topped with cheese and honey, then flavored with bay leaves.
- The modern pizza had its beginning in Italy as the Neapolitan flatbread.
- The original pizza used only mozzarella cheese, mainly the highest quality buffalo mozzarella variant. It was produced in the surroundings of Naples.
- Roughly 1,000 years ago herb-and-spice-covered circles of baked dough grew exceptionally popular in Naples, Italy. Known as focaccia, these rounds were served as an appetizer or a snack.
- An estimated 2 billion pounds of pizza cheese was produced in the United States in 1997.
- The first United States pizza establishment opened in New York’s Little Italy in 1905.
- About 93% of Americans eat at least one pizza every month.
- About 350 slices of pizza are consumed every second in the United States.
- The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink says the average American eats 24 pounds of pizza each year, of which two pounds is pepperoni. Do the math, and that’s more than 650 million pounds of pepperoni as of 2019. (A commonly cited but less-substantiated statistic pegs the number at about 252 million pounds.)
- One-eighth of Americans (13 percent) eat pizza on any given day, according to federal data. (Also, a typical slice is one-eighth of a pizza. Coincidence? Who knows!)
- The most pizzas are delivered (and eaten) on New Year’s Day, New Year’s Eve, Halloween, Thanksgiving Eve, and Super Bowl Sunday.
- Pepperoni is the most popular pizza topping in the United States.
- In 1830 pizza truly began with the opening of the world’s first pizzeria. Named Port’Alba, the pizzas were cooked in an oven lined with lava from Mount Vesuvius, a volcano located on the Bay of Naples.
- In the 1800s, most Italians thought of pizza as a peasant meal. That changed when a baker named Raffaele Esposito created a margarita pizza for visiting royalty. The king and queen were impressed by the colors of the Italian flag represented by the pizza’s white mozzarella cheese, red tomato sauce, and green basil. Pizza became fashionable overnight and was soon a staple in restaurants all across the country.
- There are approximately 78,000 pizzerias in the United States.
- In 1905, Gennaro Lombardi opened the first licensed American pizzeria, Lombardi’s Pizzeria Napoletana, at 53-1/2 Spring Street in New York City.
- Each year, thousands of people involved in the pizza industry attend Pizza Expo, the world’s largest pizza-only trade show. Pizza Expo is held each year in Las Vegas, Nevada.
- Regular thin pizza crust is still the most popular crust, preferred by 61 percent of the population. Thick crust and deep dish tied for second, at 14%. Only 11 percent of the population prefers extra thin.
- 36% of Americans believe that pizza is a breakfast meal
- In 2001, the Russian Space Agency was paid more than a million bucks to deliver a six-inch pizza to the International Space Station. Russian cosmonaut,Yuri Usachov had the honor of being the first person to receive a pizza delivery while in orbit.
- The word “pizza” was first recorded in a Latin text from the southern Italian town of Gaeta in 997 AD. It is believed to have derived from a Langobard word similar to the Old High German “bizzo” or “pizzo,” which is, in turn, related to English “bite” and “bit.”
- Sixty percent of restaurants offer at least one item that includes sausage
- Italian sausage is more broadly defined. The kind most of us know from pizza is coarsely ground pork (and sometimes beef) with fennel, also known as “mild” Italian sausage. The “hot” variety adds spicy peppers, while “sweet” Italian sausage includes sweet basil. It can be sliced or loose, and prepared in different ways or with different spices.
- The Outer Edge Is Called the Cornicione
- Papa’s Tomato Pies is America’s Oldest Continuously Operating Pizzeria,
founded by Giuseppe Papa in 1912 on South Clinton Avenue in Trenton, New Jersey, - There is a mathematical theorem named after pizza. It’s called the Pizza theorem, it states the equality of two areas that arise when one partitions a disk in a certain way.
- The first frozen pizza hit the market in 1962. Totino’s, which started as Totino’s Italian Kitchen is said to be the first company to offer frozen pizza in 1962.
- Dough-spinning has its own professional-level sporting event. At the World Pizza Championships, you would be competing against the best in five competitive events Freestyle Acrobatic Dough Tossing, Fastest Dough, Largest Dough Stretch, Fastest Pizza Box Folding and the Pizza Triathlon. There’s also the masters division of Freestyle Acrobatic Dough Tossing.
- There’s a pizza museum in Philadelphia. Pizza Brain is home to the world’s largest collection of pizza memorabilia.
- According to the leading publisher of market research Packaged Facts, the average American will eat 46 slices of pizza a year, or almost six full pizza’s.
- One of the first documented Internet purchases was a pizza. Pepperoni with mushrooms and extra cheese. In 1994 was one of the first recorded purchases online
- There are 26,484 books on Amazon about pizza
- Finland’s Pizza Berlusconi is topped with smoked reindeer.
- In Brazil, pizza toppings include green peas, corn, and hearts of palm.
- In Sweden, pizza is often topped with bananas and curry powder.
- Popular Australian pizza toppings include kangaroo, emu, and crocodile meat.
- In Scotland, favorite pizza toppings include sheep heart, liver, and lungs, which are minced with oatmeal, onion, suet, spices, and stock. It is known to have a rather nutty texture.
- In Cambodia, some pizzerias offer “happy pizzas”—pizzas that are topped with high-quality marijuana
- Hawaiian pizza was not invented in Hawaii. Rather, it was created in Ontario, Canada, in 1962.
- Mayo Jinga is a Japanese pizza that features corn, potatoes, pancetta, and mayonnaise
- In France, a fried egg is either baked directly on top of a pizza or baked in a separate pan and then placed on top
- There are over 34 million ways to create a single Domino’s pizza
- Since the early 1960s, the price of pizza has uncannily matched the price of a New York subway ride. Known as the “Pizza Principle” or the “Pizza-Subway Connection,” this “economic law” is generally accurate.
- A restaurant in Alaska, Airport Pizza, delivers pizza by airplane
- Thanksgiving is the day Americans eat the least amount of pizza.
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