Pop quiz hot shot! What's the Pope's favorite pizza topping? I actually don't know but in 1570 it
might have been rose water and sugar and that's what we're making today. A 16th century Italian pizza served in the Papal
Court which calls for exactly those ingredients. So thank you to Bright Cellars
for sponsoring this video, as we slice into the history of
pizza this time on Tasting History. So this recipe comes from the Opera di Bartolomeo
Scappi which I did an entire episode on and I'll put a link up here in the corner so you can watch
it, or I'll put one in the description as well. The entire book is filled with recipes that are
quintessentially Italian Renaissance that kind of mixture of sweet and spice that our palette might
just be like what and this one is is no different. Another way to prepare flakey pizza. Bring together three pounds of fine flour and two
ounces of yeast starter, four ounces of bread crumb that is soaked in warm water, and enough
salt. When the dough is made let it rest covered in a warm place to rise as is done with bread.
Then knead it again on the table for a half hour, adding in little by little two pounds of fresh
butter. Knead until all of the butter has been worked into the dough and it has become soft.
Split the dough up into two or three pieces, and with each piece make the pizza in a tort pan
which has fresh butter in it. Bake it in an oven with melted butter on top. Make several holes on
top with the tip of a knife so it will not puff up too much. When it is nearly done sprinkle
with sugar and rose water. This pastry should be baked slowly and serve it hot. So does
that sound at all like a pizza to you? No, not really, but frankly the definition of pizza is
kind of weird. I mean look at Chicago style pizza, it's basically soup. Anyway for
this recipe what you'll need is: 4 cups or 480 grams of bread flour, a
quarter cup or 60 grams of high yeast biga. This will need to have a much higher yeast and
flour content than your typical sourdough starter so it might take you a little while to to make
that, or just add in more yeast. If you just want to use dried yeast I'd use about a teaspoon.
6 tablespoons or 60 grams of bread crumbs soaked in one cup or 240
milliliters of warm water, an additional half cup of
water, 2 teaspoons of salt, 1 pound or 400 grams of
unsalted butter cut into pieces. So usually during Scappi's time butter would have
a lot of salt in it. More than we'd be used to but he specifically in this recipe calls for fresh
butter so my thought is that he's not adding the salt because the salt was added as a preservative.
I don't know that but he also calls out salt individually in the recipe so we're doing unsalted
butter, and just adding salt where we need. Two tablespoons of melted butter, one tablespoon
of sugar, and one teaspoon of rose water. Now you'll notice that these are not the exact
quantities that Scappi called for because he must be making a pizza to feed well the
entire Papal Court which he probably was. I cut everything in half and it's still
a lot of dough. So first whisk the salt into the flour, then add your yeast and soaked
breadcrumbs and then mix everything together. Then add in the additional half cup of water but
only as much as you need to make it form a dough. This dough ends up being super, super
sticky once you add in all of the butter. So don't add any more water than you
need to to get it to come together. If you need to add more later on you
can but it's going to be really sticky. Then knead the dough for about 10 minutes
until the dough starts to smooth out. Then put it in a lightly greased bowl
and cover allowing it to double in size. Now depending on the yeast it could take two
to four hours to rise. Mine took about four, but it was so worth the wait. Plus it gave me
time to pour myself a glass of wine courtesy of today's sponsor Bright Cellars. Now if you've
ever watched this show before you will know that occasionally I do enjoy a glass of wine, and
one of my favorite things about wine is trying new wines, but whenever I go to the store I always
end up getting the same wines that I know because I already know that I'm going to like them. So
the cure to my wine monotony I found is Bright Cellars. You take a seven question quiz on what
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Just click the link in the description and take your quiz to get started. Now
back to your regularly scheduled pizza. Once the dough is risen punch it down and turn
it out onto a lightly floured surface. Stretch it into a square or rectangle and scatter a few
pieces of butter on top. Then fold it over to cover the butter then knead it until the butter is
fully incorporated. Then do this again, and again, and again until all of the butter is incorporated.
Pro tip, use a stand mixer if you got it. Also as you add butter into this dough
it is going to get super, super sticky, and if it comes too sticky to work with
which it probably will at some point, just add some more flour. One
or two tablespoons at a time. Just to keep it you know in dough form rather
than like liquid butter form Hmm.... fattening. Once all the butter is incorporated and the
dough is silky smooth divide it into 3 pieces. Then let it rest preferably in the refrigerator
for about a half an hour and while you wait preheat your oven to 350 Fahrenheit or 175
Celsius. Then butter the bottom and the sides of a large pie or cake pan. It's going to work
best if you have one of those false bottom cake pans it's just easier to get out, but you don't
need it. What you do want to use is the biggest frickin pan that you can find because even halfed
which is what i'm doing this recipe calls for a lot of dough. You can also half what I'm doing
which is a quarter of what Scappi's doing because I mean if you don't have a 10 inch
cake pan which is what I used, half it. Once the dough is rested roll it
into discs the diameter of the pan and form the pizza by layering the dough pieces
in the pan on top of each other. Then top it all off by brushing on a layer of melted butter. Then
using a knife poke some holes all over the top to keep it from puffing up too much. Then set the
pizza on a lined baking sheet and bake for an hour and 15 minutes. Now that is a long bake time
but it's because it's a lot of freaking dough but that gives me time to top off my glass of wine and
tell you how we got from this pizza to this pizza. So when tracking the history of pizza we really
have to figure out where to start because if your idea of pizza is just some flatbread
with stuff on it then the ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Indians had pizza, but I don't
consider naan with some oil on it pizza. In the 6th century BC Persian
soldiers under Darius the Great baked flatbread on their shields and
put cheese and dates on top Closer, but pizza? I mean they didn't call it pizza, and frankly if
you're going to call that pizza then you have to call pancakes that have syrup and berries on
it pizza, and then where do you draw the line? Is tostada a pizza? No I don't think so. Well then when does pizza become a thing? Well the very first mention of pizza using
the word pizza comes from 997 in Gaeta Italy. It was found in a contract between
Bernardo the son of Duke Marino II and the Bishop of Gaeta and basically if
Bernardo wanted to use the Bishop's mill then, "Every year on Christmas Day... you and
your heirs must pay us duodecim pizze (twelve pizzas)... and similarly
twelve pizzas and a couple of chickens on the day of holy Easter of resurrection." So even before our papal pizza today, Bishops were
eating it. Very popular dish amongst the clergy. Now the first recipe for something called pizza
comes from 1524 in the Manuscritto Lucano, and then some years later in 1570 we have five pizza recipes in Bartolomeo Scappi's
Opera which we are making one of today. Scappi is also the first mention of
that link between Naples and pizza. "To prepare a tourte with various
ingredients, called pizza by Neapolitans." Though some of the ingredients
include pine nuts, dates, figs, raisins, and cinnamon. None of which are
available at Domino's, maybe at Papa John's. Though now that connection between
Naples and pizza is very important because Naples is often credited with being
the birthplace of what we know as pizza today, but it was not papal pizza
like we are making today, it is poor people pizza. It was it was a food for
the poor or the Lazzaroni as Alexandre Dumas said. And he didn't seem to hold them in high
regard but the pizza that they were eating sounds a lot more like what
we would know as pizza today. "The lazzarona usually only eats two things: pizza and watermelon... pizza is round in shape,
and is kneaded from the same dough as bread. It comes in different widths, depending on the
price. A two-farthing pizza is enough for a man; a two penny should fill a whole
family. The pizza is with oil, the pizza is with bacon, the pizza is with lard, the pizza is with cheese, the pizza is
with tomatoes, the pizza is with small fish." The word pizza has lost all meaning
at this point in the video. Now he mentions cheese and tomatoes, And those I would
think are pretty important to pizza today. And for more on the amazing
history of tomatoes specifically you should watch this video up
here. I'll put it in the description on the history of tomatoes aka the badass
name wolf peach. It's a really good video. Now the Lazzarone mostly ate these pizzas on weekdays as they saved up their money
so they could buy macaroni on Sundays, though macaroni did not necessarily
look like macaroni as we think of it. And if you still had trouble saving up
enough then you could get a discount pizza if you were fine with day
old pizza which I usually am. Dumas even says, "There are week-old
pizzas for those with small purses; these can, if not pleasantly,
at least advantageously, replace seafood biscuits." Week
old pizza? Before refrigerators? The cheese is old and moldy. I'm guessing it was one of these pizzas
that prompted Samuel Morris the inventor of the telegraph to describe pizza as
"A species of most nauseating cake... covered over with slices of pomodoro or tomatoes, and sprinkled with little fish and black
pepper and I know not what other ingredients, it all together looks like a piece of
bread that had been taken reeking out of the sewer." That was probably just a piece
of Chicago style deep dish. Ooh fighting words! Now in general the pizza was
not looked on with high regard, and Dumas even says, "You can't eat
a pizza without risking suffocation." Was Dumas a drama queen or severely
gluten intolerant? You decide. Though I do wonder if Dumas actually mixed
up this week old pizza with pizza Aotto which was basically you got fresh
pizza today but you had to pay for it eight days later like layaway, or the
payday lenders of 19th century Naples. Now these pizzas tended to
be small kind of personal sized pizzas that were sold on
the streets by street vendors. Though there were some more reputable
locations where you could eat pizza including a tavern that was founded
in the 18th century called Pizzeria di Pietro e basta cosi which
translates roughly to the most stereotypically Italian sounding name ever Peter's
Pizza Place, and that's enough. How great is that. And it is in this shop later
renamed Pizzeria Brandi where we get pizza's most famous origin story. It's probably well- it's definitely not completely
true, it's probably somewhat true but here it is. In 1889 Umberto I King of a recently unified Italy and his wife Queen Margherita decided to branch
out from the French cuisine of the palace, and headed to Naples where they
commissioned Rafael Esposito, the then owner of Pizzeria
Brandi to make three pizzas: one with lard, one with fish, and one
with basil, tomato, and fresh mozzarella. Queen Margherita tried the first pizza and said this pizza is too fatty. She tried the second
pizza and said this pizza is too fishy. Finally she tried the third
pizza, the one with mozzarella, tomato, and basil and she said
this pizza is just right, and thus was born the pizza Margherita. It even
had the three colori, or colors, of the italian flag: green basil, white mozzarella and red
tomatoes. Again probably not entirely true, well that's definitely not entirely true, but
there might be some truth to it, but Naples says that this is how it happened and the story is
just too good not to accept without question, but even with the Queen on board. Pizza still stayed
a food of the poor and thank god it did because those were the people who brought it to America.
In the late 19th and early 20th century poor Italian immigrants brought pizza
to the streets of New York City. Now pizza was being sold all over the streets
of New York especially in Little Italy but the first place that is credited with the first
pizza because they went and got a license, that's why, is called Lombardi's on
Spring and Mott street in Little Italy, and that is just one block from
my first New York apartment. It was so small, great area,
but it was so small that my bedroom door could not open all the way because I
had a twin bed in there, and that got in the way. So could you really call it a
bedroom if it can't fit a bed, hm? But pizza still really hadn't taken off outside
of the Italian American community. For that we would have to go to war. When our brave boys returned home
from fighting in Italy in WW2 they brought back a love of Italian food,
and one of those Italian foods was pizza. It was the perfect food for the new
suburban lifestyle. It could be made at home or it could be made for delivery and pizza places
started popping up in cities all over the country. In 1958 Pizza Hut opened. Pizza the Hutt! And in 1960 Tom and James Monaghan
bought the Michigan pizzeria Dominic's and changed the name to Domino's. This is also when frozen pizza was becoming
popular, and I do love a frozen pizza. To this day I cannot do Halloween- Halloween has to start
with a Red Baron pizza. I do not know why, but every Halloween I eat myself an
entire Red Baron pizza all by myself, just as I did when I was a little kid. I was a chubby kid. I was a
big kid. I wore husky pants but man I do love a Red Baron pizza.I
only do it once a year now though. What's interesting is that back in Old Italy pizza still hadn't really gotten out of
Naples, and a few other places like Sicily but when American tourists started showing
up in Italy and they wanted pizza in Pisa the other parts of Italy had to step up
and start making their own kinds of pizza, and it didn't go great at first. Some of the
country was so bad at mimicking Neapolitan pizza that the city of Naples founded AVPN, or
the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana which laid the groundwork for what makes
pizza, pizza. But I think that it was a little too late. The cat was already
out of the bag because here in America we were making sushi pizza and pizza bagels, and
we had really done whatever we want with pizza. Heck you could even come over
to my house later tonight, and have yourself a pizza with
rose water and sugar, because I'm pretty sure my pizza's about done. S
So in an hour and 15 minutes open up the oven and quickly brush on the rose water and sprinkle
with sugar. Then let it bake for another 15 minutes or until it's baked all the way through,
and then your papal pizza is ready to eat. And here we are Scappi's pizza from the Italian
Renaissance. Now this is a real pizza work. So it smells amazing. I mean it smells like fresh- it kind of smells like croissants. I let it cool,
you need to let it cool before you cut into it, because the butter needs- so much butter.
Here we go. Let's give this a- let's give this a taste. I don't think it- maybe it over
rose or i'm not sure. It's gonna be fine. Hmm. Hm! That's delicious. It's not pizza. xD I mean that's fantastic. The rose is so subtle. Let me just taste some of the
top. The rose is so subtle. There on the top. That's wonderful. Wow I would make it thinner next
time. I do like a half of my recipe. I really- I really think that that's probably the way to go.
This is nice, but oh my god. It's so much bread. You know we're not gonna eat this but is
it pizza? I mean it's called pizza, but I think it would be like if somebody said hey
are you a doctor, and I said yes I'm a doctor, and then they found out I'm a doctor of you know
like the oboe performance or something like that. I mean yeah I'm a doctor but "not a doctor" by the
way, I'm not a doctor of anything. So that's just a story but this is some really good pizza, just
you know don't tell your friends that it's pizza. They'll think you're crazy. Instead tell them
this is pizza which is also delicious, and this is what i'm going to have for dinner tonight.
I'll see you next time on Tasting History. *chomp That's pizza. That's Pizza!
I had so much fun making this video. Hope everyone has fun watching!
This video is awesome. Who knew there was so much shade being thrown about pizza from the very start?
Another Scappi recipe. I’ve made the previous one but I’ll have to pass on this one since I’m horrible at handling dough. Managed to make Cato’s Globi explode for example(no, I’m not joking).
Though Scappi was enough of a madman that I’m kinda tempted regardless.
As usual, an excellent episode! Next time someone asks what I like on my pizza I’m just gonna say, “butter.”
My mother grew up in the countryside of what's now Poland (Silesia), and a good eighty years ago she'd help her gran make bread for the farm. They used to do this thing where they'd take small bits of bread dough, flatten them like a pizza, put bacon and a bit of sugar on top and bake them as a kind of baker's perks. Sounds really tasty, especially if you like candied bacon.
With that much butter, it seems like an easy croissant recipe.
However, speaking of pizzas, I'm gonna have to ask:
Pineapple?
As a Jojo fan, I now get why poor Narancia just wanted some Neapolitan Pizza. 😭😭😭
Shots fired! Gave me a giggle.
Watching right now! Might have to bake today now...