February 9 is Pizza Day. While pizza is undeniably popular in all four corners of the world, the exact origins of this favourite dish are still widely debated. Early indications show that pizza throughout history was served in the forms of flatbread, naan and pita bread. It’s wasn’t until the 1600s that one started to get a taste of the traditional pizza we know and love today.

The lower-class citizens of Naples combined cheap ingredients such as tomatoes, olive oil, oregano and garlic on top of a flat-bread dough base. This dish, now popularly known as The Marinara, knows its origins to the time when ‘la marinara’ (the sailor’s wife) would commonly prepare this dish for her husband returning home from work at sea.

In the years to come, pizza became a staple of the city. Tourists as well as locals mingled with the lower-class areas of Naples to try out this local speciality. Even food critics, who initially snubbed the idea of eating food with your hands, found themselves eating their own words as well as the pizza.

The popular pizza Margherita we know today owes its name to Italy’s Queen Margherita, who in 1889 visited Naples. Legend has it that the Queen and her husband grew increasingly tired of their diet of French cuisine, prompting Queen Margherita to request a different dish. Raffaele Esposito, the pizzaiolo on duty at Pizzeria Brandi, created a pizza containing the three colours of the Italian flag: the red tomato, the white mozzarella and the green basil. This thin pizza later became better known as Pizza Margherita.

However, the idea of pizza was slow to move out of Naples. It was only thanks to allied soldiers returning home to America who had tasted this dish during the war that pizza started to gain worldwide popularity. In a short matter of time, the dish made its way all around the states, where many pizzerias and even worldwide franchises like Domino’s lit their ovens to present their own take on pizza. 

The commercialisation of pizza enabled Domino’s to grow into a worldwide franchise, expanding so rapidly all over the world that there is hardly a city where its pizza cannot be found. Favourite variations of the dish include Peperoni, BBQ Chicken and the controversial Hawaiian.

For more information, call 2144 2144 or visit www.dominos.com.mt. Domino’s Malta is a retail and hospitality business unit within Famalco/Building Businesses.