Pizza Facts Straight from the Farm

We’ve rounded up the hottest pizza facts to celebrate National Pizza Day!

I love pizza. You love pizza. We all love pizza! So let’s serve up some hot and fresh pizza facts! Pizza as we know it hasn’t always been around… In fact, modern pizza is thought to have evolved from basic flatbreads (like focaccia) with toppings.

The word ‘pizza’ was first documented in 997 A.D., but what we would consider ‘modern’ pizza had its glow up in the 18th or early 19th century. Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba, which opened in 1738 in Naples, Italy, is widely considered to be the world’s very first pizzeria. From there, the popularity of pizzerias grew and by 1807 there were already 54 pizzerias in Naples!

Fast Pizza Facts

• The top 5 days for the largest pizza sales are New Year’s Day, New Year’s Eve, Super Bowl Sunday, Halloween and the day before Thanksgiving.
• 94 percent of Americans eat pizza regularly and 93 percent of Americans have eaten pizza in the last month.
• Americans eat around 100 acres of pizza per day. That’s 350 slices per second!
• Speaking of acres….. Kansas wheat acre
• While National Pizza Day is February 9, October is National Pizza Month. That just gives us more time to celebrate!
• Pepperoni is placed on 36 percent of all pizzas, which makes it the most popular topping in the U.S.!
• Created in 1962, the first frozen pizza tasted more like ‘cardboard’ than its modern successors.
• Pizza Hut delivered a six-inch pizza to the International Space Station in 2001. This marked the first outer-space pizza delivery!

Crusty Questions

• All-purpose flour is a great flour for thin, Sicilian style and deep-dish pizza crusts. Be aware that that that lower gluten content does mean that it’s a little more difficult to stretch the dough out, and it may tear more easily, but the result will still be tasty!
• Bread flour is great for chewier crusts. It will help your crust be crispy on the outside while retaining the chewy consistency on the inside. Dough tears aren’t typically an issue for bread flour due to the higher gluten content, but the gluten does mean that it can be hard to form into the desired shape.
• Many say that Captuo ’00’ Bread Flour is the ideal flour for pizza crust. The ’00’ refers to the coarseness of the milled flour. There is a scale from 00 to 1 in Italian flour milling for the fineness of the product, with 00 being the finest and 1 being the most coarse. There is a rumor that ’00’ flour is made with soft wheat for a low protein (aka gluten) content, but that’s not accurate! If your oven doesn’t perform well at temps over 500° F, the ’00’ flour may not char and brown enough for a great Neapolitan-style pizza, so be aware!

Pizza Recipe Roundup

What’s your favorite pizza fact? Don’t forget to try our hot ‘n fresh pizza recipes below!

Wheat Facts: A Primer for Pizza

• In 1889, an Italian tavern owner named Don Raffaele Esposito developed a pizza featuring tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and basil – ingredients bearing the colors of the Italian flag. He named it the Margherita Pizza, after the Queen of Italy, Margherita Teresa Giovanni. Thus, modern-day tomato-and-cheese pizza was born.
• Ninety-three percent of Americans eat AT LEAST one pizza per month. (Source: Bolia Wines.)
• Approximately 3 billion pizzas are sold in the United States each year.
• Each man, woman and child in America eats an average of 46 slices, (23 pounds), of pizza per year. (Source: Packaged Facts, New York.)