Today’s celebration of World Pizza Day highlights that culinary preparation, which already belongs to the whole world and is highly present in Cuba.
Dish par excellence of Italian gastronomy, it is one of the most consumed on the planet and that everyone likes, due to the diversity of ingredients included.
In the Cuban case, it has its particularities, with variants that are outside the lists of experts at a global level, but persist on the island today.
More spongy, thick, with sometimes unknown sauces, it occupies street lunches or simply delights the palate of families, whether they are the most generous or those with few ingredients.
In 2017, pizza was declared Intangible Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), due to its role in social life and the transmission of this culinary art.
It was approved by the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of UNESCO Heritage at a meeting held on the island of Jeju (South Korea), backed by a global petition of more than two million signatures (diainternacionalde.com).
As a curiosity, the word pizza comes from the Greek pektos, which means solid or coagulated.
It consists of a dough baked in a circular shape, usually made with wheat flour, salt, water and yeast.
It is covered with a sauce base made of tomato and cheese, to which various ingredients can be added in pieces, such as onion, paprika, ham, pepperoni, anchovies, bacon, corn or any other accompaniment.
The traditional way of cooking it is in a wood oven, although it is very common to use a domestic or industrial one in the case of restaurants.
One of the most recent commercial presentations of this traditional product is frozen or ready-to-bake pizzas. In terms of history, one of the main antecedents of pizza is related to the consumption of wheat bread in the ancient cultures of Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome.
For the period 521-500 BC, Persian soldiers ate flat bread, melted cheese and dates.
In ancient Rome armies ate that type of bread and pizza as it is known today originated in Naples, Italy.
Previously, people who lived in the outskirts of the city added tomato to a yeast-based flatbread.
Modern pizza is believed to have been the brainchild of baker Raffaele Esposito from Naples.
