The most basic pizza of all is pizza Bianca, which may be lubricated with olive oil and flavoured
with garlic. Slightly more sophisticated and no less ancient, is pizza marinara, so called because
sailors – marinai – could take the
ingredients with them to sea. The ingredients for the topping were just tomato
puree, garlic, olive oil and oregano. Had pizzaioli
stuck to such inspired simplicity, all might have been fine, but they didn’t.
In 1889 Queen Margherita of Savoy paid a visit to the city**, and the pizza
Margherita, which combines
tomato, mozzarella and basil leaves in imitation of the Italian flag, was
invented in her honour and that has become the archetypal pizza, and the
standard by which pizzas may be judged – and that is the problem.
** Naples
From Eating Up Italy by Matthew Fort
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