Pizzeria Luigi   New York Style Pies
		It`s kind of silly to talk about anyone"inventing"pizza. Pizza has undergone a very slow process of evolution over the centuries, but it is quite certain that the cultures of the Mediterranean deserve credit for creating it. Historical records suggest that people in ancient Egypt,Greece and Rome all ate things very similar to our modern pizza crust. Ancient Egyptians had a custom of celebrating the Pharaoh`s birthday with flat bread seasoned with herbs. Herodotus,a Greek historian, described Babylonian recipes very similar to contemporary pizza crust. The word pizza may be a derivative of the Latin word "picea" which the Romans used to describe the blackening of bread in an oven. It also emerged some time in the Middel Ages to describe both sweet and salty pies that were becoming increasingly popular among Italian aristocracy. Pizza most clearly took it's familiar form in pre-Renaissance Naples,a large city in central Italy. Poor peasants used their limited ingredients (wheat flour,olive oil,lard,cheese and natural herbs)to make a seasoned flat bread garnished with cheese. Mozzarella cheese was one benefit of an invasion from Asian peoples,who brought the water buffalo to Italy. Today,the best mozzarella cheese is still made from water buffalo's milk. Europeans returning from Peru and Mexico brought with them what originally was thought to be a very poisonous fruit: The TOMATO. Precisely how it was decided that the tomato was actualy edible is unclear, but as Southern Europeans overcame their suspicions, the tomato became enormously popular. Today,of course, the tomato is a cruciel component of Mediterranean cuisine, and is still used in most pizza recipes.