Definition: pizza
An pizza is a food that people eat for lunch or dinner. To make pizza, a kind of flour dough is made into
a round shape and pressed flat. Then the dough is usually covered with tomato sauce and cheese and baked in an oven.
Other things often go on top of pizza too, such as sausage or vegetables..
Fun Facts
1. The word "pizza" is over 1,000 years old. The first recorded use of the word "pizza" was found in a Latin text written in 997 AD in Gaeta, Italy, where a local tenant promised to pay the local bishop 12 pizzas every Christmas Day and Easter Sunday!
2. Pepperoni is the undisputed favorite topping. In the United States, pepperoni is by far the most popular pizza topping! Over 250 million pounds of pepperoni are eaten on pizzas across America every single year.
3. Margherita pizza was made for a queen. In 1889, baker Raffaele Esposito created a special pizza in Naples, Italy, to honor Queen Margherita. He used red tomatoes, white mozzarella cheese, and green basil leaves to represent the three colors of the Italian flag!
4. People eat 350 slices of pizza every second in the US. Pizza is so insanely popular in the United States that Americans eat about 100 acres of pizza every single day—which equals around 350 slices scarfed down every single second!
5. Pizzas used to be eaten as a cheap street breakfast. In 18th-century Naples, pizza wasn't eaten in fancy sit-down restaurants. It was a cheap, flat bread topped with garlic and salt sold by street vendors to hardworking laborers who needed a quick morning meal!
6. The world's largest pizza was over 13,000 square feet. In 2023, a team in Los Angeles set a Guinness World Record by baking a massive pizza measuring 13,990 square feet (1,299 square meters) using over 8,800 pounds of cheese and 13,600 pounds of dough!
7. Hawaiian pizza was actually invented in Canada. Despite its name, pineapple-topped Hawaiian pizza wasn't created in Hawaii! A Greek-Canadian chef named Sam Panopoulos invented it in Ontario, Canada, in 1962, naming it "Hawaiian" after the brand of canned pineapple he used.