Back to photostream

Photo.Italy.Pizza.Portobello.01.120721.0596.jpg

Italy, pizza, “Portobello”, thin pizza with a golden brown crusty border, outside crunchy, inside soft, topped with pizza sauce, buffalo mozzarella & grated Appenzeller cheese, Portobello mushrooms, rosemary.

 

Italian Pizza should be baked at temperatures between 360°C - 575°F & 426°C - 800°F, best in a pizza wood-fired brick oven by placing them on the very hot oven stone floor. If the oven dome has the above mentioned baking temperature, the oven floor will typically be cooler than that temperature.

 

📌...This very tasty variant of the brown mushroom came from America via the Netherlands to Europe, also known as a “Grill-Mushroom”.

The Portobello becomes a giant mushroom thanks to a special cultivation method. The mushroom has a large cap measuring 6 to 12 cm in size with a small stalk. The fins on the underside of the hat are brown in colour & clearly visible. The flesh is brown & very firm good for grilling, without the stalk also for stuffing & baked in the oven, also great as a tempura etc. etc.

 

📌…. a little slice of Italian pizza history..............

 

Etymologically, the term “Picea or Piza” first appeared in the Neapolitan dialect around the year 1000 & meant something like "push, jolt" & thus probably referred to the hand movement when lifting the pizza with a pizza turning peel out of the oven.

 

Tomatoes were first introduced to Italy from South America in 1522. At first the tomato was believed by the poorer peasants to be poisonous, fortunately they farmers overcame their doubts about tomatoes in the 17th century & started adding it to the bread dough,…focaccia was created & became the "gran, gran, gran mother" of today's pizzas.

 

Mozzarella had become available in Italy after water buffalos were imported from India in the 7th century, but its popularity grew very slowly until the last half of the 18th century. Like the growing acceptance of tomatoes, mozzarella cheese was slowly gaining ground too. But the cheese & tomatoes did not meet on a pizza until 1889 when Don Raffaele Esposito, an Italian tavern owner developed a pizza featuring tomatoes, mozzarella cheese & basil, components bearing the colours of the Italian flag. He named it "Pizza Margherita", after the Queen of Italy, Margherita Teresa Giovanni.

 

Italy unified in 1861, King Umberto I & Queen Margherita visited Naples in 1889, legend has it that the traveling pair became bored with their steady diet of French haute cuisine & asked for an assortment of pizzas from the city’s Pizzeria Brandi.

 

In the late half of the 19th century, Italians migrated to North-America & with them their pizza bread recipe from Naples, replicating their trusty, crusty pizzas in New York & other American cities, relatively quickly, the flavours & aromas of pizza began to intrigue also non-Italians.

 

Beginning of the 20th century, Italian immigrants begun to open their own bakeries & were selling besides groceries as well pizza. The first documented United States pizzeria was Gennaro Lombardi’s, licensed to sell pizza in 1905 on Spring Street in Manhattan, a part known as “Little Italy” Lombardi’s, is still in operation today, however, no longer at its 1905 site, but has the same oven as it did originally. Pizza as we know & the world likes took the United States by storm before it became popular in its native Italy

 

Especially in the 50th, pizza’s popularity in the United States boomed & no longer seen as an Italian folkloric treat, it was increasingly identified as fast & fun food. Regional, decidedly non-Neapolitan variations emerged, eventually including California-gourmet pizzas topped with anything from barbecued chicken to smoked salmon.

 

Post-war pizza finally reached Italy & beyond their borders also influenced by the starting tourism. Like blue jeans, rock & roll, fast food etc. the Italians & the rest of the world picked up on pizza just because it was "Americano"…easy to eat, fast & tasty.

 

📍 …So actually pizza the way we like it is an "Italo-American" creation.

 

I personally like the pizza thin with a nice crunchy crust, fresh & hot with the particular flavour only a pizza right out of a pizza wood-fired brick oven has, sprinkled with a little oregano & a drizzle of Calabrian native olive oil, …but there is a pizza for each & everyone's age, taste & favours.

 

👉…One World one Dream,

🙏...Danke, Xièxie 谢谢, Thanks, Gracias, Merci, Grazie, Obrigado, Arigatô, Dhanyavad, Chokrane to you & over

17 million visits in my photostream with countless motivating comments

3,922 views
13 faves
81 comments
Uploaded on July 19, 2022
Taken on December 21, 2007