About Village Pizza

How far back does pizza go? A long way, more than a thousand years.

According to Ed Behr in his Art of Eating newsletter, "The written record of the word pizza, in the sense of focaccia, goes back to the Codex Cajetanus of the year 997."

Evelyne Slomon in The Pizza Book says even before that Plato gave an account of pizza in his Republic: "They will provide meal from their barley and flour from their wheat and kneading and cook these ... they [the cakes] will also have relishes—salt ... and of olives and cheese; and onions and greens."

It's a bit of a stretch, but the idea of Plato waxing philosophical about pizza is a delicious notion. Behr goes on to say that "pizza is an alternation of the Greek word pitta, which was introduced to southern Italy during the Byzantine conquest of the sixth century."

Slomon says, "The name [pizza] comes from a southern Italian corruption of the Latin adjective picea (peechia), which described the black tarlike coating underneath the placenta, a pie made of the finest flours, a topping of cheese mixed with honey, and a seasoning of bay leaves and oil."

The first pizzas, as we would recognize them today, were white pies, made with lard.