Celebrating Pizza!

By: JoJo Giuliano

Pizza has been a source of comfort and celebration for as long as its been around!

Pizza dough is a serious science…you change one small step, ferment the dough a bit longer or change the water temperature by a few degrees, and you get an entirely new style of pizza! The beauty of pizza is the variety of different styles, all of them each having their own unique spin on the favorite crowd pleaser ranging from the thinnest, cracker like crust to the heartiest, thickest pie.

The Italian delicacy came to the United States as recently as the late 19th century, the ingredients imported by Italian immigrants. The country’s first pizzeria was born in New York’s Little Italy neighborhood by Neapolitan immigrant, Gennaro Lombardi. Lombardi adapted his simple Neapolitan-style pizza to America, transitioning from wood-fired ovens to coal-fired ones, substituting fior di latte for mozzarella di bufala.

In 1905, a slice of pizza cost five cents. During the Depression, when families did not have much money, pizza became popular with everyone in the United States. Families were eating different types of pizza on the east and west coasts. A thick-crust pizza was called double-crust pizza or west coast pizza.

Pizza was mostly limited to Italian immigrant communities until after World War II, when American soldiers returning from Italy still wanted their pies. Popularity spread, and various American styles developed.

Since then, pizza has become one of the most popular members of the American food family and a takeout staple.

Over the past few years, with the opening of our other restaurant, Piccini Italian Takeout, we have grown to be even more passionate about pizza as it is a large part of our menu there. By researching the best dough for our customer base and countless hours of experiments, we are in constant pursuit of perfecting our style of pizza, including the pizza here at Gaetano’s. Recently, we invested in a new oven that will create more consistency in the baking process and even speeds up baking time! You might call us Pizza nerds, but we like to think of ourselves as Pizza enthusiasts.

My personal favorite pizza on the menu currently is the Porcini & Pepperoni pizza. If you haven’t tried our pizza lately, try it out the next time you dine in with us or order takeout.