Here's another gee-whiz tidbit for you pie pals. There are 3 billion pizzas sold annually in the United States. Every man, woman and child in America eats an average of 23 pounds of pizza a year. My dad, Walt, eats none. The least favorite topping is the lowly anchovy.
Pizza is one of our oldest cooked foods.
Prehistoric peoples would cook primitive grains, pound them out and add chunks of meat or vegetation. Tomatoes are native to Ecuador and Peru and when they were brought over to Europe from the New World in the 1600s, the little red fruit was thought to be poison. The first pizzeria was built in 1830. The restaurant was called Port' Alba and the pizzas there were cooked in an oven lined with lava from Mount Vesuvius. According to Smithsonian Magazine, the first modern pizza was cooked in honor of Queen Margherita Teresa Giovanni.