Last Updated on October 28, 2022 by Jim Edwards
If you ask us, every day should be National Pizza Day! Sadly, no one cares about our opinion on the matter, so we have to make do with February 9th. That’s the day all pizza lovers go nuts and stop counting slices after three.
National Pizza Day is celebrated everywhere without limits on deals or the number of pizzas you order. People love it all over the world, so it’s only natural to have a day dedicated to it. However, there is not much known about pizza and its history.
Yes, we know it’s from Italy, but how did it reach America? Why do people cherish it so much, and why do we never get tired of eating it? Let’s get to know why we celebrate National Pizza Day with so much gusto!
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History of National Pizza Day
Flatbread topped with dates and cheese is the earliest known ancestor of pizza. The writings from Darius the Great from the 6th century BC record this as ordinary food. However, there’s no continuation of pizza with dates or any other topping in the records that we know of.
Fast forward to 1522 AD, when the genius minds of Naples combined flatbread with tomatoes. They imported the produce from Europe. The combination of rich tomatoes with flatbread just spoke to the people of Naples. As it was a port city, travelers and sailors from all over Europe would visit and try the pizza-like food.
The people of Naples had no idea how big of a revolution they’d create with a simple flatbread with tomatoes!
For centuries, Italians continued to experiment with toppings to make pizza more delicious for the masses. However, they did not try to change the taste, which was sweet. The savory flavor of pizza that we are accustomed to was not introduced until the early 20th century.
In fact, it was around the same time that the first American merchant got the license to bake pizza on the streets of New York City. Lombardi’s became the first pizzeria in the US to get a license for selling pizza.
If you have to thank someone for pizza, you can thank any of these folks! From the people of the 6th century to the first American merchant who got the license, all of these people have contributed tremendously. As they say, pizza wasn’t created in a day. Or was it Rome?
Related: The Tastiest Items on the Blaze Pizza Menu
How to Celebrate National Pizza Day
There are more ways than one to celebrate National Pizza Day. Of course, the main idea is to eat pizza without limiting the number of slices, but you can try to cherish this occasion by
Make Pizza at Home
Pizzerias will be serving their best pizzas throughout the year, but you can use this day to bake one for yourself or your loved ones. The satisfaction of preparing the pizza from scratch and eating it pippin’ hot is an experience you do not want to miss. You can make this a yearly tradition or a family thing for holidays.
Host a Pizza Party
Invite your friends and neighbors to celebrate National Pizza Day! Host a party with various flavors and toppings of pizza. You can even have a friendly competition. Regardless of how you spend the day, it’s simply an excuse to spend time with the people you love while eating food you like.
Related: A Complete Guide to Different Types of Pizza
Organize a City-Wide Tour
Prepare in advance if you want to hit all the best places in the city within the day. Enjoy National Pizza Day by creating a list of all the pizzerias with the best offers. Hit them one by one, eat hot pizzas right from the oven, and rank them!
You can also invite friends to join you on this day-long adventure. If you are lucky, you will discover a place with a fantastic pizza that you’ve never had before.
Fun Facts about Pizza You Don’t Want to Miss!
1. Pepperoni is the most popular topping among pizza lovers. Italy may take the credit for introducing pizza to the world, but pepperoni pizza is all-American.
2. On an average day, about 13% of Americans eat pizza. So, unofficially, every day is National Pizza Day for most of us!
3. It was introduced in 1905 but popularized after World War II. American soldiers stationed in Italy developed a taste for pizza. Once they returned after the war, they consumed enough pizza to make it a popular dish of the country.
4. Scotland has a unique take on customizing pizza. They offer deep-fried pizza, a typical dish offered by Scottish pizzerias in America. Scots do it a lot—fry things like pizza or ice cream!
5. Americans do not want to let go of their belief that pizza is a breakfast meal, which it’s not. 36% of Americans eat the leftover pizza from the previous night for breakfast and go about their day.
6. Mozzarella is the most popular cheese for pizza. Mozzarella tends to bring out the best in each slice among the many delicious varieties!
7. The word “Pizza” does not have a known origin. Gaeta, Italy, was the first place to document it in 997 AD. No one knows what was the use of this word before then.
8. The world consumes 5 billion pizzas every year. And 3 billion of those are from the US alone!
9. The pizza crust is a debate that can last for days. We don’t have time for that, so let’s just go with the stats and say that thin crust pizza is a popular option. Around 61% of pizza lovers prefer thin crust over any other form.
10. Pizza used to be a cheap food for dirt-poor people. That’s how it originated in Italy, as street food. However, times have changed and so has the population of pizza. Some pizzerias in the world sell it for thousands of dollars. In fact, the most expensive pizza in the world is worth $12,000!
11.Americans love pizza; that’s not even a fact anymore. It’s a simple statement. However, how much they love it is still surprising. Americans eat 350 slices of pizza per second! Despite this fact, 93% of the people only eat pizza once a month.
12. Pizza was delivered in cake boxes before. When the pizzerias saw that the pies were falling apart and the boxes were getting wet, they came up with a better option—a cardboard box! That’s how pizza boxes came to be. They keep the crust warm and crispy, so they are a perfect choice.
Celebrating National Pizza Day with Viral Slice
What’s so special about a slice of pizza other than its gooey goodness? Let’s find out why a slice of pizza went viral! CBS2’s John Elliott takes us to Yonkers, where he found a slice that’s gone viral.
Summary
Celebrate the love of pizza on National Pizza Day! Let your inner pizza freak get the best of you for just one day, and enjoy all the flavors as long as you can stomach them. Share a slice or two with the people you love, visit pizzerias in your town to check out scrumptious deals, and don’t forget to savor every moment of that cheesy, saucy goodness!
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I’m Jim Edwards and I started this website to share my love of Junk Food. We cover new junk food, desserts, snack foods, fast food secret menus, candy (of course!) and other related news. We love trying “secret menus” at restaurants. And we love trying new products too. So, we are trying to have some fun with our hobby and share some useful information with you, our community. Please feel to send us your suggestions and feedback through the contact form. And if you have products you would like us to try, let us know…!
