6 A2 slice by slice

CHAPTER 1 Anyone for Pizza? WHAT IS PIZZA? WHAT KINDS OF PIZZA DO PEOPLE EAT? People around the world love pizza. In the United States alone there are about 70,000 pizzerias (pizza restaurants). It's popular in Brazil, Japan, India, Pakistan, and South Korea. And in 2008, the first pizzeria opened in North Korea! A regular pizza is a flat, round piece of bread with tomato sauce, cheese, and maybe other toppings on it. There are many kinds of toppings. How about four different cheeses? Or maybe you like chicken or fish? Many people enjoy pepperoni, a kind of sausage. Egg, onion, herbs— they all go on pizzas. Pizzas from Italy often have salty anchovies, capers, and olives as toppings. Some people hate those foods. What about you?

In France, they have a pizza with potato and cheese. Not good if you're dieting! There are sweet pizzas, too. You can learn how to make a chocolate, banana, and ice cream pizza on the Internet. Pizza bases are always made of dough, but they can have different shapes. In Chicago, USA, they have "pizza pie" with a base like a deep dish. And to make a calzone, you fold the pizza and close the base like a book before you cook it. The "topping" is inside. The world's largest pizza was made in 1990 in Norwood, south Africa. It weighed over 12,000 kilos and was more than 37 meters wide! To make it, they used 4,500 kilos of flour, 1,800 kilos of cheese, and 900 kilos of tomato sauce!

CHAPTER 2 The Pizza Story WHEN AND WHERE DID PIZZA START? It's hard to say when and where pizza started. People began to make bread about 30,000 years ago. We can be sure they put meat and other kinds of foods on it. The Ancient Greeks made flat bread called pita. They put oil, herbs, and cheese on it. Later, the Ancient Romans made a flat bread with cheese, herbs, and honey called placenta. But this wasn't what we call pizza today. Then in the 16th century, a new fruit arrived in Italy from the Americas— the tomato. By the 18th century, the Italians were making tomato sauce. Then someone thought of putting it on bread. The modern pizza was born!

At first, rich Italians thought tomatoes were dangerous! But poor Italians put tomato on their pizza. When rich people tried pizza, they loved it. Pizza was for everyone! In 1889, a pizzaiolo, or pizza maker, in Naples made a special new pizza for Italy's Queen Margherita. He used the national colors: red tomato, white cheese, and a green herb called basil. His "Margherita" is the most famous type of pizza today. The first pizzeria in the United States was probably Lombardi's, which opened in 1905 in Little Italy, a neighborhood in New York City, and is still there today. About 94 percent of people in the USA enjoy pizza regularly. They have a national pizza month: October. They eat 3,000,000,000 pizzas each year— 350 slices every second!

How do you make a pizza? First, you have to make the base, so you need dough. You can make dough yourself with water, flour, oil, and salt. Or you can buy the base from a store. That's easier! Then you have to make a round, flat base with the dough. That isn't easy. Pizza makers have to practice a lot to learn to do it by hand. They spin the dough in the air to make it flatter and rounder. In some pizzerias, you can watch the pizzaiolo do this. When the base is ready, it's time to choose the toppings. Usually, the first one is tomato sauce and then small pieces of cheese. Italian mozzarella cheese is best. You can use any toppings you want. Do you like meat? Put your favorite meat on the pizza. Fish? Have a seafood pizza. Maybe you're a vegetarian. Pizza without meat or fish is really good, too!

Now, your pizza is ready for the oven. For home cooking, you can get a special pizza stone. Put it in a cold oven: a cold pizza stone can break in a hot oven. Turn on the oven and wait 45 minutes for the oven and the stone to get very hot. Then put your pizza on the stone. But the best way to cook a pizza is in a brick oven with a wood fire— much better than an electric oven!